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Does Management Performance Increase Profits?

The correlation between management performance and organisational performance is taken as an article of faith in many quarters – not least in the training and development industry.

Management Pocketbooks has a vested interest here, too.  If Pocketbook readers did not believe that reading the books and learning about management would improve their management skills and that this would improve their organisation’s performance, then Pocketbooks would become redundant.

Investors in People

Another organisation with a vested interest is the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES).  This is a non-departmental public body (NDPB) that describes its mission as being to ‘raise skill levels and drive investment, enterprise, jobs and growth.’

One of the tools they have to achieve this is the Investors in People (IiP) standard.  This is designed to improve business performance – but does it?  Like most external standards, achieving IiP accreditation is a costly and time-consuming process.

Research Evidence

Prof Mike Bourne
Prof Mike Bourne (LinkedIn)

So IiP commissioned Cranfield University Researcher Professor Mike Bourne to discover whether IiP accreditation really does return a value to businesses that invest.

To do this, Professor Bourne and his team considered two questions:

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  1. The relationship between IiP accreditation and management performance
  2. The relationship between IiP accreditation and business performance

What the team found was this:

  1. IiP improves managerial performance
  2. IiP improves the financial performance of the sponsoring firm

You can review all of the evidence in the January 2010 paper, ‘Investors in People, Managerial Capabilities and Performance’ by Professor Mike Bourne and Dr Monica Franco-Santos.  Note that this academic paper is published by Cranfield University, and not in a peer-reviewed academic journal.  So too is an earlier – far more technical paper – ‘The Impact of Investors in People on People Management Practices and Firm Performance’ (2008).

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The figure illustrates the relationships that Professor Bourne’s team report.  Notice that their research seems to show that managerial capabilities and performance do indeed drive reported performance – as measured by profits recorded in Companies House data.

So here’s the deal

One must always be sceptical about research that supports the agenda of the sponsoring organisation (IiP in this case) and where the results are not published in peer reviewed journals.  And I have not taken the time to thoroughly assess the research methodology, nor review the extensive statistical analysis.  The researchers are clear in their reports that, while they assessed IiP, it is simply one example of a ‘commitment based HR policy’.

This is to say that their research evidence shows that systematically committing to your staff improves their capabilities and performance and that these lead to measurable financial improvements in performance.

Kirkpatrick Level 4

Last week’s Pocketblog talked about Kirkpatrick’s four levels of learning.  Trainers have become adept at measuring and demonstrating levels 1 and 2: How do participants react, and what do they learn?  However, the value of training is in levels 3 and 4: How does training affect behaviour and what results can the organisation measure?

Professor Bourne’s work has shown that the linkage from level 2 to level 3 to level 4 is a genuine one, which he and his team have validated statistically.

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This just leaves one problem:
Most trainers stop at Level 1: ‘Happy Sheets’.

Some Management Pocketbooks you might enjoy

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If I were an employer…

… but I’m not: I’m a trainer

imageAs a trainer, a lot of my focus is on giving my participants the best possible learning experience.  I want to give them the best, most relevant, most accurate, most practical information that I can.

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My clients are often Learning & Development departments in large organisations, who tell me what training their staff need, and agree with me what I will design and deliver to meet that need.  My public seminars advertise what you will get, and you turn up and get all of it and more.

The Gemba

As a trainer, I rarely get a chance to ‘go to the gemba’ – the place where the work gets done.  And that’s a problem, because, that’s where my training has an effect…

… or doesn’t.  Because, if I am not there, how can I know?  Happily, I am often asked to come in and coach staff directly, but as a trainer, I am really only able to directly influence whether participants like my training, and learn from my training.

These are, respectively, Levels 1 and 2 of Kirkpatrick’s four levels of learning.  The value to the business, however, comes with levels 3 and 4:

  1. Level 1: How do participants react?
  2. Level 2: What do participants learn?
  3. Level 3: How does the training affect workplace behaviour?
  4. Level 4: What results can the organisation measure?

Levels 3 and 4 result from the way that learners, trainers and employers collaborate to transfer participants’ learning back into their workplace.

So, If I were an employer…

If I were an employer, considering any training, or development investment at all, my first purchase would be the new Transfer of Learning Pocketbook.

This is an excellent addition to the Management Pocketbooks collection, by regular authors, Paul Donovan and John Townsend.  It offers you 17 factors that affect transfer of learning and allocates them into five stages.

The Training Process

This creates an exceptionally thorough analysis of how you can boost the value of any training you offer.

How Transfer Friendly is your Organisation?

The book ends with a learning transfer test to help you assess how ‘transfer friendly’ your organisation is.  It has fifty questions that you score on a scale of 0, 1 or 2 depending on whether you:

0 – don’t agree
1 – Partly agree
2 – Fully agree

To give you a flavour, here are five sample questions:

  1. Training professionals regularly participate in business unit/departmental strategic planning meetings
  2. Our course venues provide adequate space for participants to associate and exchange
  3. Our managers communicate clear expectations of forthcoming training to future learners
  4. Wherever possible, learners’ managers send pairs of ‘learning buddies’ to the same course
  5. Our trainers understand and speak the workplace jargon of the trainees

This should give you a transfer-friendliness score out of 10.  For your full evaluation, out of 100, buy the book!

Other Management Pocketbooks by
Paul Donovan and John Townsend

Paul and John have, between them, written a lot of Pocketbooks on the subject of training.

And, finally:

The Great Training Robbery, and

The Red, Green and Blue Trainer’s Pocketfiles of Ready-to-Use Activities

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How to Understand your Toddler

imageI took a big step towards understanding toddler psychology today – which you would think would be very useful to a man with a two and a half year old.

And before you think you’ve come to the wrong blog, let me reassure you of two things:

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  1. What I learned offers real insights for managers, trainers, change agents and project leaders
  2. The practical application to toddler management – like all other theories – is pretty well nil

Like all good models, this one has explanatory power

The first criterion for a good model is that it must describe real world events.  In so doing, most models therefore help us to understand – and even explain – those events.  So it is with our model:

Icek Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behaviour

imageIcek Ajzen is Professor of Psychology at The University of Massachusetts. His research interests include how we form attitudes, how they affect our behaviour, the relation between knowledge, intentions and behaviour, and habitual versus reasoned action.

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Ajzen is, perhaps, best known for his theory of planned behaviour.  It was in refreshing my knowledge of this theory that I had my insight.

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The Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) suggests that our behaviour is driven by ‘behavioural intentions’.  These intentions are, themselves, determined by three things:

  1. Our attitude towards the behaviour
    That is, some sum of what we believe to be each of the likely consequences of that behaviour, modified by our beliefs about how likely they are (their expectancy).
    This links to Victor Vroom’s Expectancy Theory.  This is the section in the free extract you can view on the Management Models Pocketbook page, by clicking on ‘view extract’.
  2. Our subjective assessment of societal norms about the behaviour
    Based on an aggregate of all our beliefs about how society works
  3. Our perceptions of factors that might control our behaviour
    Note that there may indeed be real factors that do control our behaviour, leading to the dotted line in the figure above.

Uses of the TPB Model

This model is used by professional influencers, like the advertising industry.  It explains, for example, why information alone rarely results in behaviour change – Ajzen found it not to be a major factor in driving intention.  It is also valuable to change agents, who want to influence behavioural change.

Application to Toddlers

At a fairly young age, I observe that toddlers do start to plan their behaviour.  But the problem is that they are only poorly able to foresee possible consequences, they have little knowledge of societal norms (which were largely suspended when the toddler was a baby) and therefore it is only their perceptions about how their behaviour might be controlled that might check that behaviour.  But these are often fairly limited.

So here’s the deal

Therefore, only real behavioural control will alter a toddler’s behaviour, since toddlers are wired to explore the boundaries of their independence.

Management Pocketbooks you might enjoy

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The Apprentice and Five Levels of Leadership


One of the most compelling critiques of contemporary business leadership is Jim Collins’ ‘Good to Great‘ in which he defines five levels of business leadership.

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Level 1 Leaders

… are Highly Capable people who make ‘productive contributions through talent, knowledge, skills and good work habits.’

Level 2 Leaders

… are Contributing Team Members who contribute ‘individual capabilities to the achievement of group objectives and works effectively with others in a group setting.’

Level 3 Leaders

… are Competent Managers who ‘organize people and resources toward the effective and efficient pursuit of predetermined objectives.’

Level 4 Leaders

… are Effective Leaders who ‘catalyse commitment to and vigorous pursuit of a clear and compelling vision, stimulating higher performance standards.’

Level 5 Leaders

… are Executives who ‘build enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.’

Personal Humility and Professional Will

Collins’ ‘paradoxical blend’ is not something we see in many Apprentice candidates. In fact most are at pains to describe themselves as charismatic, ruthless and ambitious.

Curiously, Level 5 Leaders are charismatic – but in a very different way. Their calm humility exudes a sense of wisdom and self control. They are ruthlessly determined, it is true, but with a commitment to integrity that means they take great trouble to be fair. And their ambition is not for themselves, but for their business.

Diligence and Details

Level 5 leaders are able to wrestle at length with the details, see through the gloss to the truth and work hard – relentlessly even – to build a business of lasting value. Their outward modesty – few were well known outside their industry – belied a ruthless advocacy for their business.

‘Built to Last’ was Collins’ earlier book (with Jerry Porras) about what made some companies great.

Collins concludes that each of the ‘good-to-great’ companies he studied was led by a Level 5 leader, but none of the less-successful companies he compared them with were.

The Apprentice: what level of leadership?

Until the Apprentice, one might have characterised Lord Sugar as a Level 5 Leader, but now he courts limelight in a way that Level 5 Leaders never would. Arguably though, he has built his business empire and created a property portfolio that meets all of his material needs and more, so it’s time to have fun.

But what message is he, through the needs of a prime-time TV reality show, sending to young business people? What levels of leadership do we see week after week?

I Leap to the Show’s Defence

Who knows how this series will end? But let’s step back a year and look at how the last series ended.

imageLast season’s winner (I hope this isn’t a spoiler for anyone still working through their over-full video collection) was Stella English. Far from the fluffy charisma bunny, Stella was accused by some peers as dull. But she knew how to focus on the business issues and – uncharacteristically for Apprentice candidates – could manage a team.

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Stella left school with no qualifications, but flourished in a Japanese bank that cannot possibly favour gobby managers with no substance and, interestingly, described herself as ‘like a dog with a bone. I can’t let go.’

Maybe Lord Sugar recognises the value of Level 5 Leadership after all.

That said…

Ellie Reed - The Apprentice Series 7As the voice-over and Lord S keep reminding viewers, this series is different. He is looking for an entrepreneur: not a manager. So he let calm and steady Ellie Reed (‘I’m just a nice person really, but I have got a dark side if somebody treats me badly’) go, alongside Level 0 Poseur Vincent.

Let’s keep watching.

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Management Pocketbooks the Candidates might Enjoy
… or just benefit from!

… hey! Maybe the people who get signed up for Series 8 should buy the whole DVD of 50 top Pocketbooks!

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More Apprentice?

We know that The Apprentice is not watched by everyone interested in management, so we won’t let the series take over your Pocketblog. If you are a fan, please do check out my own blog, where I aim to draw a management lesson from each episode, on the morning after.

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Dumb questions, voting for managers and open email

Web-based collaboration has come a long way, since the launch of Wikipedia.  In fact, Wikipedia, whilst undoubtedly a success story, may have reached its peak.  It seems to soon to start imagining a world without it, but there is evidence that the vitality that launched it is draining.

Plateau and decline of Wikipedia contributions

Chart taken from:
http://www.managementexchange.com/story/strategic-planning-wikimedia-way

Now, we are into stage two of web collaboration, and people are collaborating on all sorts of exciting projects to further knowledge.  As a scientist at heart, I have been taken by two particular recent examples:

Hanny’s Voorwerp

Galaxy Zoo is an open project where anybody can get involved in the world of professional astronomy and cosmology, by helping to classify the thousands of new galaxies that are being discovered by ever better telescopes. Over a quarter of a million people are collaborating in reviewing Hubble Space Telescope images of far distant galaxies to categorise them.  This is leading to new insights based on large statistical data sets that are too big for the small professional community to generate, yet rely on observational insight that is still beyond our computers.

Hanny Van Arkel is a Dutch school teacher who is passionately interested in astronomy.  So she joined the Galaxy Zoo project and started classifying objects.  One stumped her.  It did not fit into any of the classes of object.  After much further research, professional astronomers concluded that Hanny had found a completely new kind of astronomical object.  They looked up the Dutch for “object” and decided to call it Hanny’s Voorwerp, or Hanny’s object, for want of a better name.

It is an object the size of our own galaxy and is still mysterious.  Whilst astronomers have working hypotheses about what it is, how it relates to its neighbouring galaxy and how it is formed, the fact is, that web collaboration has taken us not just to the edge of the universe, but beyond the edge of current knowledge.

Polymath

Polymath is wikipedia like collaboration among professional mathematicians and amateurs, aimed at solving mathematics problems collaboratively.  Led by two outstanding mathematicians, Timothy Gowers and Terence Tao, the collaboration early on solved a complex problem in just six weeks by drawing together contributions from 39 collaborators.  This is astonishingly fast for such leading edge maths.

Terence Tao

Timothy Gowers (left) and Terence Tao (right)

The founders view this as an early experiment, designed to find the best ways to foster collaboration.  It is an exciting development that could change the pace of mathematics research.

The MIX

And so to management…

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If you are reading this, you are doubtless interested in management.  So, whilst classifying astronomical objects or solving complex maths may not be for you, how about a chance to get in on the act of re-defining management practices for the 21st Century?  This is what the Management Information Exchange offers.  In their own words:

The Management Innovation eXchange (MIX) is an open innovation project aimed at reinventing management for the 21st century. The premise: while “modern” management is one of humankind’s most important inventions, it is now a mature technology that must be reinvented for a new age.

Here, you will find people like you starting and contributing to debates about management challenges or injecting and commenting on “Hacks” – radical ideas like voting for our managers or making a whole corporate email system open to all staff for searching and reading.  Why not ask more dumb questions and how can you make that into an organisational process?

My take is that some contributions are thin, some are verbose and a some are genuinely engaging and thought provoking.  But I have had little time so far to root around.  I am looking forward to spending more time and have joined the community.  Come on in.

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Go to the Gemba

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Gemba is a Japanese term that means ‘actual place’.  If like me, you like the odd bit of history, the gemba can sometimes send a shiver down your spine, to be where something important happened.  As an enthusiastic reader of Patrick O’Brian’s books, (see one of my favourite and most read posts: Aubrey and Maturin, Arthur and Merlin), visiting HMS Victory had that effect.

Schadenfreude

It’s a schadenfreude type of word – a word for a concept that we all recognise, but for which there is no word in our language – like schadenfreude.  I’m sure there should be a name for such a word – and there probably is: if not in English, then probably in some language.  Of course, in English, we don’t need to make up words, we just borrow or steal these ‘loan words’ from their source language.

There is in fact a whole book of these types of words and I expect it would tell me what they are called.  Is there a word for ‘a book I’d love to have but would probably only look at for a few minutes and then put on a shelf and never look at again, so I shan’t buy it unless it turns up for a quid at a charity shop’?  Suggestions below, please.

Back to the Gemba

Wikipedia tells me that gemba is used by Japanese police for the scene of a crime, and their on-the-spot reporters report from the gemba.

I discovered the word gemba through its association with another Japanese concept ‘kaizen’ or ‘improvement’.  In the body of knowledge, practices and tools called kaizen, ‘going to the gemba’ means heading for where the work is done and the value is created.  I spotted the word in The Improving Efficiency Pocketbook.

Inspiration

Usually, it’s pretty easy to come up with a topic for a Pocketblog, but this week, I had a serious bout of blogger’s block: about 24 hours’ worth.  My usual solutions failed me: flicking through Pocketbooks, grazing the web, walking about, taking my daughter to the park and sleeping on it.

So in desperation, with little time left, I went to the gemba.  I sat at my computer and stared.  I looked for a Pocketbook I’d not read yet and grabbed Improving Efficiency and decided that, come what may, I’d write about it.  Then I saw it:

‘got a problem? Go to the gemba.’

I could never resist irony.  I had to write about it.

So here’s the deal

Improving Efficiency PocketbookWhen you want to solve a problem or improve a process, go to where the work gets done, where the problem is happening, where the workers work.  As Philip Holman and Derek Snee say in the Improving Efficiency Pocketbook:

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‘Attempting to solve problems in isolation (perhaps in a management meeting) without visiting the workplace and involving the people who actually do the work is a recipe for failure.’

Other Pocketbooks you might like

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Learning and Happiness

It is Adult Learners’ Week again.

Adult Learners' Week 2011

It only seems like yesterday when we did our first Adult Learners’ Week blog.  Do you remember what the Three R’s really stand for?  If not, check back to last year’s blog.

What is Adult Learners’ Week?

Adult Learners’ Week is a campaign that ‘celebrates learning and learners in all their diversity, inspiring thousands of people each May to try something new. The initiative promotes the benefits of all kinds of learning, whether it is for fun or leading to a qualification.’

Happiness is on everyone’s agenda

The Saturday and Sunday papers are full of ‘happiness’ articles.  New Scientist (my favourite weekly) did a feature on it in April and Martin Seligman (the founder of Positive Psychology) has a new book out (Flourish: A New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being – and How To Achieve Them).

Of course, with spring in the air, it is a good time to feel happy, but what has this to do with Adult Learners’ Week?

Flow and Happiness

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog about flow.  Flow is a state where you become so immersed in something that time seems to stop, so that, when you finish, you have hardly an inkling of how much time has passed?  You may only then realise how cold, how hungry or even how desperate you are for the loo.

The originator of the concept and author of a fantastic book on the subject (Flow: The Psychology of Happiness) is Mihaly Csikszentmihaly.  Note the subtitle of the book: in it, he describes flow states as states of great pleasure and enjoyment.  So forget wealth, parties and drugs: get immersed in something with a clear goal and evident measures of progress, which stretches you to perform at your limits.

Flow and Learning

Let’s re-read the last part of that last sentence:

‘…get immersed in something with a clear goal and evident measures of progress, which stretches you to perform at your limits.’

This describes Csikszentmihaly’s three criteria for a flow state: a goal, feedback, and challenge.  It also is the definition of learning: knowing what you want to be able to do, understand, or create; being able to monitor your progress; and moving beyond your present capabilities.

The Fourth R (and maybe a fifth)

I hope that, by now, you’ll be curious enough to have discovered what the original three R’s were.  So I am ready to add my own extra R:

‘Reasoning and analysis’

Perhaps a fifth my be:

‘Remembering and recall’

Back when I did maths at school, we took a little foray into classical logic, which is based on maths, of course.  We learnt about robust and faulty reasoning, and in particular, I recall the concept of syllogism.  Take two statements:

Learning creates flow

Flow creates happiness

A syllogism is a form of argument that makes a deduction from two statements of known truth…

Learning and Happiness

Stephen Hawking was told by his publisher that every equation he put into ‘A Brief History of Time’ would halve its sales.  He didn’t do so badly!  So I’ll take a chance and put one of my own into this blog, knowing you don’t pay to read it anyway:

Learning = Happiness

So here’s the Deal

If it is not already a habit, make this week a week to learn.  Here are ten top tips for how.

  1. Check out the Adult Learners’ Week website for ideas and opportunities
  2. Set yourself a challenge to take your hobby or passion to the next level and start working on it
  3. Watch a documentary on TV
  4. Find a new blog to read
  5. Take an hour to research a topic you’ve always been interested in
  6. Go out to lunch with a colleague and ask them to tell you all about their specialism, hobby, degree subject or favourite book
  7. Sign up for an evening class
  8. Pick up a quality magazine or newspaper and read it cover to cover
  9. Go to a library or a bookstore, choose a subject at random, pick the most appealing book on the shelves and read it
  10. Go for a long walk, notice the things around you (weather, buildings, trees, animals, people, vehicles, …) and when you get home, research any one of them that captures your interest

Management Pocketbooks you might enjoy

It’s tempting to say: ‘all of them’ but let’s face it; we all have our favourites and there are some you won’t like as much.  So, as a learner, or a trainer, or a teacher, here are some pocketbooks you might like:

Learning

Training

Teaching
(Thank you to our sister blog,
The Teachers’ Pocketbooks Blog)

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Valuing Diversity

Peter_Honey.pngPeter Honey wrote a thought-provoking blog on the Training Journal website, where he opened by taking as read that valuing diversity is a good thing (my italics), but then he asked a really good question:

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‘If we were going to start doing it at 0900 tomorrow morning, what exactly would we do?’

As usual, Peter gives a very good answer to his own question, but, also typical of him, his question really made me think.

But that was a couple of weeks ago…

The first equal opportunities employer?

The topic came back to me last night (Saturday 7 May) when I was watching a documentary about the Untold story of the Battle of Trafalgar.  It looked at the foreign sailors who fought on one of Nelson’s ships of the line, HMS Bellerophon and made the point that, for the few years of the war with Napoleon, the British Navy treated its black sailors better than Europeans had ever treated black people, and better than they were to do so for many years: it gave them total equality of opportunity.

Black and other foreign sailors were treated exactly the same as all others and promoted and respected strictly according to merit.  Perhaps that is the answer to Peter’s question.

After the war, however, it was back to colonialist business as usual, as the black sailors, who were no longer needed, were abandoned to the streets.  You can watch the video here.

Diversity Works

I have no special expertise in the subject of diversity, just the simplistic view that evidence shows that diverse teams get better results.  That’s why Peter’s question so impressed me.  So I thought it was time to read the Diversity Pocketbook.

What I found was a nice little model that can apply to many different change projects.  The author, Linbert Spencer, may forgive me for turning it into a simple picture.

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Desire
How strong is it, really?

Definition
What do you mean by ‘diversity’?

Decision
A formal commitment from all the people who have real authority.

Determination
This is not an easy process.  You need to be in it for the long haul.

Discipline
When you make progress, celebrate, but keep up your commitment

So Here’s the Deal

Linbert Spencer offers a structured process to answer Peter Honey’s question.  He also gives lots of practical tips to supplement Peter’s eminently sound advice.  This does matter, because in tough times like these, you can’t afford to waste any opportunity to get the best team and to get the best from your team.

Management Pocketbooks you might enjoy

The Diversity Pocketbook

The Cross-cultural Business Pocketbook

The Empowerment Pocketbook

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Reciprocity and Expectation

I got a phone call out of the blue yesterday.  I have noticed that this kind of call can either be a complete waste of time (’do you want to save money on your toner cartridges/wine/mortgage/pet insurance?’) or thought-provoking.  This one was most certainly the latter.

Tip of the day

You may have noticed on the main Management Pocketbooks website (you can get to it by clicking the logo at the top of the right hand column next to this blog) the Tip of the Day function.

SeeOurTipoftheDayTipoftheDay29Apr2011

If you click on it, you will get a different tip each day.  This caller had done just that, and got one of mine.

Keeping Promises

‘If I keep my promise, will you keep yours?
If I don’t believe you will, why should I bother?
Vroom’s model of motivation!’

This tip came from the Management Models Pocketbook, where I describe Victor Vroom’s Expectancy Theory.  This is the section in the free extract you can view on the Management Models Pocketbook page, by clicking on ‘view extract’.

The tip was about the way that we can fail to motivate others if we get a reputation for not delivering on promised rewards.  But the tip had resonated with my caller in another way.

Honesty and Reciprocation

In her job, Alison had been thinking about the importance of truth and honesty.  She had read the quote and thought about the reciprocation of honesty, which got us into an interesting discussion about the nature of truth.

Reciprocation appears to be a fundamental part of human nature.  It is the basis of a large part of our society:

  • Trade, commerce and negotiation
  • Moral philosophy (do unto others… – the so-called ‘golden rule’)
  • Community and the trading of favours
  • Criminal justice (punishment fitting the crime – an eye for an eye)
  • Diplomatic exchange and warfare

Of course pure reciprocity is not always seen as the ideal in all of these cases.  In negotiation, a win-win goes beyond pure exchange of fair value and in moral philosophy, alternative approaches have developed and extended the golden rule, starting with Kant’s categorical imperative.  In community, the concept of paying forward, rather than paying back emerged in the 1950s and hit its peak of popular awareness in the 1990s with the film ‘Pay it Forward’.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPcwQi-AnWI]

There is no need to analyse the failings of tit-for-tat reciprocity in the criminal justice and diplomatic arenas!

In the world of influence, reciprocity is king

As Richard Storey points out in the Influencing Pocketbook, appeal to self interest is a powerful influencer.  But what is equally powerful is to appeal to our innate instinct to reciprocate a gift or a concession.  It is as if, your self interest served, you feel a need to express your gratitude with a reciprocal action.

This offers me a powerful way to influence your thinking or your behaviour.  If I meet your need or give you something you want, then you will feel an urge to give me something in return.  If I give you an honest answer, then you are more likely to be honest with me.

Game theory

But here is where the problem lies.  If I deal honestly with you, can I expect you to deal honestly with me?  If I do trust you and you reciprocate, we can get the best possible collective results, but if you cheat on  me, you optimise your gain, while I lose out.  So what should I do?

This is the domain of ‘game theory’ – the mathematical study of sequences of plays within a set of rules, where the players have some choice.  It turns out that tit-for-tat is a pretty good strategy…

… but not the best.  Constant cheating and constant trusting are both poor strategies, but one strategy stands out.

I am wondering whether I should share this.  What are the ethics of sharing a strategy that must mean some cheating, some trusting and some tit-for-tat behaviour?  Hmmm, that is something to think about.

So here’s the deal

The optimum strategy  in part depends on the strategy of your counter-party – your ‘opponent’ in the game.  But one of the most successful strategies seems to be ‘modified tit-for-tat’.  This means you start by reciprocating, to build trust, but every now and then, take advantage of the situation by cheating.  Then, revert to tit-for-tat behaviour to rebuild trust… and so on.

Does that sound familiar?  I have encountered it a number of times and it hurts.  For those of us who believe we act fairly and with integrity, encountering it in someone we trust is unpleasant.  It leaves us with a difficult choice: one I faced recently.

Should I reciprocate the cheating behaviour?  That was my instinct.  But maybe pure reciprocity is not the ideal strategy.  I relented and resorted to a tactic designed to rebuild trust.  Does this make me a gullible mark, ready to be fleeced the next time?  I don’t think so, because there is always one strategy I have not yet rolled out: not cheating, not trusting, not tit-for-tat.

You can always stop playing the game.

Some Management Pocketbooks you might enjoy

The Negotiator’s Pocketbook

The Influencing Pocketbook

The Handling Resistance Pocketbook

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Swift Trust–Why some Teams don’t Storm

One of the most familiar management models is Bruce Tuckman’s model of Group Development – sometimes known in the US as the ‘Orming Model’.

A Summary of Tuckman in under 100 words

Tuckmans Model of group Development

Forming

The team comes together in anticipation, enthusiasm, and uncertainty about their roles and their colleagues.

Storming

As they get to know their colleagues and leader, disputes arise over direction, leadership and status.

Norming

The team settles into productive work and establishes ways of working together.

Performing

Team members are comfortable with one another and understand their roles, so the team gets loads done.

Adjourning

The project comes to an end and team members go their separate ways.

For more detail on Tuckman, see the Management Models Pocketbook, or read some of our other blogs on the subject.

The Problem

One of the commonest questions I get asked is this:

‘Mike, I’m not complaining, but why didn’t my team storm?  We all got on with it and moved quickly from Forming to Norming and even Performing.’

My usual first answer is that ‘teams will storm’.  When the pressure for a new team to achieve quick results is lifted, the internal pressures will emerge and, albeit out of sequence, the team will storm.

Teams will storm

This is the Nature of Models

A model can predict or explain, but the nature of a model is to simplify.  This means that, by definition, it must be wrong sometimes!  The better a model, the less frequently it is wrong.

But neither this observation, nor my assertion that ‘teams will storm’ explains why they sometimes don’t storm at the ‘right’ time, nor more so, why some teams do not storm at all – yes, my assertion could be wrong too.

Swift Trust

My answer is hidden in an earlier Management Pocketblog, and in Ian Fleming’s Virtual Teams Pocketbook: ‘Swift Trust’.

The concept was first articulated by Debra Meyerson, Karl Weick and Roderick Kramer and is the subject of a chapter in the cross disciplinary review book, Trust in Organizations, edited by Kramer and Tom Tyler (1996).  Sometimes teams come together rapidly and need to work together effectively without the time it normally takes to build trust.

In some circumstances, trust can be built quickly and this, I suggest, is what delays and even stops the Storming phase.  In my earlier Pocketblog, I offered these six conditions:

  1. Presuming each team member has earned their place
  2. Trusting other people’s expertise and knowledge
  3. Creating shared goals and a shared recognition/reward scheme
  4. Defining a clear role for each person to play
  5. Focusing on tasks and actions
  6. Taking responsibility and acting responsively

Swift Trust emerges when people are willing to suspend their doubts and concerns about colleagues and just get on with a shared task.  They focus on their goals, their roles and the time constraint they are under.

Leadership Role in Creating Swift Trust

Leaders can help foster Swift Trust in seven ways:

  1. Building a great first impression in the earliest days – this will have a big influence on the team
  2. Building relationships from the outset and learning about team members
  3. Swiftly and constructively dealing with concerns and issues as they arise
  4. Creating a feeling that they are present even when they are elsewhere
  5. Encouraging frequent team communication
  6. Using private methods rather than public forums to deal with under-performance
  7. Recognising and celebrating achievements frequently

So here’s the deal

Your team doesn’t have to storm, but if you want to avoid it, you have to build trust: swiftly.

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