In This edition

1. The Principles of Conscious Transformation
2. Are You a Transforming Leader?
3. Making The Most Of Informal Mentoring
4. Talent Reviews: A New Standard Practice
5. Is Your Job Just Work?
6. HR - Victim, Dinosaur or Hero?
7. Case Law & Legislation Review
8. Book Reviews
9. Unsubscribe & Moving Soon

Jeff Sacht: Publisher-editor

www.equityskillsweb.com
jeffs@worldonline.co.za
'A MUST TO PRINT & READ'

30,000+ AND STILL GROWING!

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LATEST RELEASE: MOVING HR INTO LINE e-TOOLKIT

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Stop talking about becoming a Line Partner. Start today, and master the practices required to reposition and transform your HR function with this tried and tested toolkit developed for the highly acclaimed workshop "Moving HR Into Line For The New Economy". The e-Toolkit is now available as an electronic download. The kit consists of a detailed 125 page manual, a project workbook, & 8 PowerPoint slide shows. Contact Jeff Sacht on jeffs@worldonline.co.za or call 082 4561049 for a preview pack and pricing details. Don't delay start today with your HR top team for the price of one download.

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1. The Principles of Conscious Transformation*

By Dean Anderson & Linda Ackerman Anderson who can be contacted at

www.beingfirst.com 

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Introduction

After twenty years of coaching change leaders and consulting to their transformation efforts, we have identified ten operating principles that promote conscious transformational leadership. Inevitably, when we see transformational change efforts working, we can trace the success to these principles being used, purposefully or intuitively, in the shaping of the change strategy, plan and communications. When a change effort sputters, the cause is more often than not because its leaders have made decisions or taken action inconsistent with these principles.

These principles are not the answer to all of the possible problems in transformation. Transformational processes are just too complex for such a simple solution. However, our experience suggests that if you learn these principles and adhere to them in the planning and oversight of your change effort, you will increase the probability of designing your change strategy and guiding its rollout as well as you possibly can.

This article overviews the ten principles and offers examples of how the principles can be applied by change leaders in the creation of relevant and pragmatic change strategies. We provide the first five principles in this newsletter, and the remaining five in our next issue.

The basic premise of conscious transformation is that transformation includes people and process dynamics that most leaders do not know how to resolve. In fact, most leaders do not see or understand these dynamics because their mindset, or worldview, does not allow them to do so. The key to success, then, is leaders expanding their awareness to become conscious of these dynamics so they can effectively deal with them. And as they become conscious of these principles as guides for their actions, they can use the principles to not only predict, but to respond to the people and process dynamics both intelligently and compassionately. As leaders increase their conscious awareness, they increase their probability of success.

Use these operating principles as decision and design criteria for your change effort-for both its outcomes and its change strategy--and you will unleash the fundamental benefit of greater conscious awareness into your organization's transformation.

# Wholeness

• Promote what is best for the whole system

• See the system and its components as one integrated entity

• Treat individual components of the system as wholes themselves, and

• Design one integrated overall change effort.

IMPLICATIONS FOR CHANGE LEADERS: Clarify the outcome that supports the whole organization, not just one function or part. Even though your overall transformation process likely includes numerous individual change initiatives, each initiative must clearly support the enterprise's primary change outcome. Employees must overtly understand that all of your change initiatives and activities fit into and support the whole system's transformation, be it the whole enterprise, a line of business, or a region. Link everything to your overall change objective. If any activity does not link, then modify, stop, or replace that activity with ones that do support the whole. This is a great opportunity to take work off of people's plates! And, when decisions are required that may serve one initiative but hurt another, make this dynamic overt and create a process that looks after the good of the whole rather than just the political agenda of one part. Think Big Picture first, part second.

# Inter-Connectedness

• Integrate and coordinate your sub-initiatives and activities; integrate organizational/technical initiatives with cultural/ human initiatives, enterprise-wide initiatives with area-specific initiatives, corporate-centered initiatives with line or business unit initiatives.

• Think about the impacts of any decision, event or action across organizational boundaries; see everything as connected and affected; consider the distant impacts of local actions, and vice versa, and

• Build and sustain relationships between your organizational entities--and the people within them--to enhance mutual and system-wide effectiveness and support. Create true partnerships!

IMPLICATIONS FOR CHANGE LEADERS: Attend fully to the interdependencies of your various change initiatives. Build bridges across functions, processes, stakeholder groups, and change initiatives to ensure collaboration, information-sharing, and shared accountability for enterprise outcomes. In addition, be sure to establish the infrastructure and governance systems you need to accomplish this integration of mutually dependent components. Perform impact analyses from the perspective of how interdependent functions or efforts will be affected, short and long-term. Assess in terms of individual (human) impacts, team and organizational impacts, and external impacts, such as those on constituents, customers or vendors. Think about how relationships are affected or are needed to support overall success, and when you create or strengthen relationships, work towards partnerships that have a shared Big Win as their purpose.

# Multi-Dimensional

• Attend to all internal and external realities (physical, emotional, mental and spiritual) at the levels of the individual, relationship, team, whole system, and marketplace/ environment

IMPLICATIONS FOR CHANGE LEADERS: Change leaders must expand their focus and competency to be able to attend to not only external reality (i.e., tangible solutions, structure, systems or technology), but to the internal realities of individual mindset, interpersonal dynamics, and team and organizational culture. Discern the systems dynamics of your organization at all levels, as well as the influence of your organization's marketplace and environment. Furthermore, look for the potential impacts between the larger and smaller systems within your organization. Keep these forces in mind as you design and implement a transformational change strategy that attends to the needs of each dimension in an integrated way. Give the human/emotional/motivational data of your change efforts as much credence as the financial/organizational data. Keep track of the many dimensions as the change proceeds, since they will fluctuate and have evolving needs during the entire lifecycle of the change.

# Continuous Process through Time

• Think about impacts across time; think ahead and think behind; understand the influence of the past on your current situation and the impact of current decisions or actions on the future

• Build momentum and critical mass; leverage interactions between people and events to create a positive "snowball" effect over time; plan events so that each adds to the success of the next

• Go slow to go fast; take the time to build the upstream foundations for your downstream success; pace activities according to your people's and organization's true capacity to succeed

• Build off the best of the past and present, and

• Honor the natural order of death and rebirth in change; support the process to move ahead by attending to what needs to die and what needs to grow.

IMPLICATIONS FOR CHANGE LEADERS: Assess how your organization's recent change history will have an impact on how this change is initiated, and acknowledge it publicly. Minimize attempts to influence your transformation with isolated events. For example, when you decide to communicate about your change effort, first evaluate previous communications for how the content and delivery were received by the organization and then tailor the process and content of this next communication accordingly. Furthermore, plan future communications to reinforce your key messages over time and create further buy-in. In short, think of communications as a continuous process. Do the same for all of your transformational activities.

Transformation is often accompanied by a sense of urgency. Unchecked, this time pressure can actually slow the process. Learn when clear-headed and thorough planning up front can be an accelerator of future action. Often, taking the necessary time upstream to establish the proper conditions for success pays off handsomely downstream.

One such upstream condition is celebrating the past. Change often carries a tone that the past was somehow insufficient (why else would we be changing?). Instead, overtly celebrate the positive attributes of the past and present so that your people can build off their accomplishments as they move into the future. The death of your old state must be reframed in the minds of your employees from something bad to the necessary positive birth of something better, something more aligned with current and future needs.

# Continuously Learn and Course Correct

• Overtly communicate what you are clear about today and what you are in the process of discovering

• Proactively generate useful information and feedback about strengths and open questions and share them across boundaries to promote continuous learning

• Remove barriers to sharing information, insights and learnings; Always seek the value in mistakes and failures; befriend and explore aberrant information as guidance for future success, and

• Pilot possibilities; float test balloons; support forays into new ways of designing or operating your new state.

IMPLICATIONS FOR CHANGE LEADERS: In transformational change, more is uncertain and emergent than not. This can trigger leaders' desire for even more certainty and control. However, this desire causes them to fall into the trap of thinking that their current change decisions can be and are fixed and complete. They forget that all answers and plans are only temporary best guesses, because new information will likely surface and alter or improve the knowledge and plans they currently hold.

Instead of putting so much importance on being right, focus on learning and inquiring. Overtly design and establish a learning and course correction process that invites everyone's input about new ideas, alternative perspectives, and feedback about how the change is going--on any issue. Take this information into serious account, and communicate all significant course corrections that occur as a result of it. Change the culture of "kill the messenger of bad news" or "Make a mistake and you're dead."

Build learning communities around key transformation issues and create structures and processes to share insights and build best practices. Explore all mistakes or difficulties to clarify their causes and discover better approaches. Encourage your people to take risks and attempt new practices in all internal and external dimensions of your change, even though they are likely to make mistakes as they learn. Plus, make the results of their forays, positive or negative, available for everyone's insight.

Because information generation and sharing are integral to learning, build information generation processes that feed directly into your change process design and facilitation practices. There are numerous ways to promote learning through information exchange. Examples include:

• Give employees direct access to the marketplace by sending them on benchmarking missions, putting them on teams to study industry trends or exposing them to competitors' strategies and practices

• Employ open book management, exposing employees to your business strategies and rationales, and the business model they employ, as well as the financial performance of your organization

• Create an enterprise-wide project integration infrastructure so individual change initiatives continually share status reports and other information and resources with one another, and

• Deliver continuous "mid-process" communications about the marketplace and your change effort, rather than only share information when you have formalized an answer or solution.

• Engage everyone in the process of continuous course correction, and celebrate money and time saving adjustments.

Summary

These ten principles form the foundation of a worldview that is larger than profit and speed, which are so central to today's executive agenda. When changes ignited by new business directions are being planned, or more typically, are already struggling, the principles can be used to audit, inform and course correct the desired outcomes, the people dynamics, and the process of change. Use them to unleash the fundamental benefit of greater conscious awareness into your organization's transformation. Doing so will enhance the likelihood of profit and speed, and equally support a change experience that serves the larger good of the workforce making the change, and the marketplace being served by it.

*Reprinted by permission of the authors

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2. Making The Most Of Informal Mentoring*

By David Clutterbuck who can be contacted at

www.clutterbuckassociates.com

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One of the goals of many formal mentoring programmes is to bring the organisation to the point, where the majority of mentoring is carried out informally, without the need for substantial, structured support for Human Resources and elsewhere. The problem, in most cases, is that completely informal mentoring - where people come together without guidance and without clarity about the mentoring role - is a hit and miss affair. Not only is the quality of the relationships highly variable, but the pairings tend to exclude people who don't fit the mould, by virtue of their gender, race, culture or some other differentiating factor.

The good news is that, in general, organisations, which have a strong and extensive formal mentoring process, seem also to develop many thriving, healthy and inclusive informal mentoring relationships. The key appears to be that people, who have experienced effective mentoring (as mentor or mentee) and who have been well-trained in the respective roles, are open to a wide range of developmental alliances., In particular, they appreciate the value of difference and stretch in a learning relationship and seek out challenging partnerships.

This is, it has to be admitted, an area, in which there has been no significant research, so the evidence is largely anecdotal. The nearest to a detailed study of the issue is work by the US academic Belle Rose Ragins, who concludes that relationship quality is the critical ingredient in both formal and informal mentoring.

So how can we ensure that informal mentoring relationships are high quality relationships? The very absence of structure, measurement and control makes it difficult to exert any influence on them. Our discussions with informal mentoring pairs and with HR professionals, who have experience of both formal and informal mentoring is that the key lies in creating an environment, where effective mentoring can flourish. Such an environment would contain some elements of structure, in the form of support available, but require no third party intervention in pairings. Rather, it would allow market forces to drive both the matching process and the quality control of the mentoring provided.

I am not aware of an organisation that has proactively developed such an environment, but the possibility of doing so is of manifest interest to a number of multinational companies - particularly those, which have employees scattered in small numbers in lots of locations. These organisations often find it difficult to arrange matches and control relationship quality within a formal programme.

The essential elements in establishing a positive climate for informal mentoring seem to include:

• An on-line registration and matching system, where people can seek and make their own pairings. The system needs to have very good guidance as to how to go about selecting an appropriate partner and, ideally, a resource, which prospective mentees can go to for personal advice.

• Sufficient, visible role models of good mentoring practice to demonstrate what quality mentoring looks and feels like and to provide a voluntary, informal advisory resource for mentors. If top management can be among those role models, it provides a very strong message to the organisation.

• A mixture of voluntary training resources. These might include a regular open training programme, run in-house or externally with a consortium of other organisations; an e-learning package (our own 12 module resource, The Effective Mentor will be available in early 2004) to run on PC or online; and a library of wider reading materials on mentoring and related disciplines. It may also be useful to provide an option for people, who have a strong interest in developing their mentoring skills, to take a certificate or degree course through one of the several providers now available.

• An understanding that the quality of mentoring rests to a considerable extent on the amount and relevance of the training both parties have received. While an informal process can't insist that mentors and mentees are trained, the desire to have an effective relationship should drive both parties away from matching with someone, who is not sufficiently committed to be trained in the role.

• An opportunity for mentors (or developers in general) to meet informally as a mutual support and learning group through an on-line chat room and/ or self-organised gatherings. In this scenario, mentors may request some help from HR in arranging venues and perhaps finding external speakers on specific learning topics, but the impetus has to come from them. Some organisations already run "lunch and learn" events - in one case monthly - along these lines.

• Good practice "snippets", sent monthly to all managers (or indeed all employees), on developmental behaviours, from both the learner and the developer perspectives. This is perhaps the closest to a formal arrangement the organisation may go. These short advisory bulletins (no more than a few hundred words each time) would be generated by HR, with the aim of stimulating awareness, discussion and incremental improvements in people's behaviour to mentor and be mentored, coach and be coached and so on.

It should be obvious by now that all of these elements may also be useful in helping a formal mentoring programme to deliver results for both participants and the organisation. Our thinking increasingly is that the mentoring "package" that will give organisations greatest value is one that integrates both formal and informal mentoring, so that they become mutually supportive. Given the lack of experience of combined formal and informal approaches, there is some exciting learning to happen!

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3. Are You a Transforming Leader?*

By Ken Keis who can be contacted at

www.crgleader.com 

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Leadership

Never has there been a greater need for it?nor such a lack of it. With over 850 conflicting and some shallow definitions of leadership published, I am not going to add another one to the list. This e-zine is about (you) the Leader and your skills, not about the multiple theories of leadership. We'll save that for another issue.

Everyone is a leader at some level with someone. Leadership skills are required when parenting and being a friend or part of a couple, both in your household and at work. You also have the responsibility of leading yourself.

Have you ever seen a four-year-old at the mall who has outdistanced the leadership skills of the parent . . . and you wished the parent would develop some leadership skills-quickly?

Leaders are not born. Leaders are developed. They hone their skills not in days, weeks, or months but over years. Except on rare occasions, most effective leaders are in their late 30s or older. Why? Experience, learning, developing, and maturing simply take time. Any winemaker will tell you that excellence can't be rushed. I recall that in my 20s, I was even defiant about that idea. Now I know I was dead wrong.

Most people agree that to be a successful leader, an individual must have certain foundational skills. Effective leaders are skilled in five core competencies, as documented by CRG's Dr. Terry Anderson in his book, Transforming Leadership. Dr. Anderson was talking about "transforming" leadership long before the current fad embraced it. Kenneth Blanchard, author of the One Minute Manager, endorsed the Transforming Leadership model in the 90s as the next step needed after his first book.

So what does this mean for you? Simply put, if you have any desire whatsoever to be an effective leader in any area of your life, you will need to be proficient in various leadership skills.

In our research, 57 specific skills in five categories were identified as critical to becoming a transforming leader. Depending on the situation and need, the skills required to be successful will vary. We found that skills are not independent of each other; they are interdependent. In other words, they build on one another like Lego blocks.

The purpose if this issue is to outline the skills sets, not to train you on them. If you identify some of these skills as gaps/deficiencies, I encourage you to investigate further and design a development plan for yourself.

# Transforming Leaders have first-rate Self-Management Skills. If you can't manage yourself, how can you possibly lead others? The clearer you are about who you are and what you stand for, the more credibility you will have as a leader of others. This includes your values, beliefs, purpose, goals, plans, being a continuous learner, and having confidence and a positive mental attitude. Go to previous issues of Living on Purpose to get support in these areas. (See Archives.)

# Transforming Leaders have excellent Interpersonal Communication Skills. Just being able to talk has little to do with effective communication. To be an effective leader, you must be an effective communicator. This includes understanding and being able to implement attending, observing, suspending, questioning, listening, assertiveness, and challenging skills.

# Transforming Leaders can Counsel Others and are Problem-Solvers. You need to be able to lead yourself, effectively communicate with others, solve problems, and persuade others to own their problems. Do you know how to show advanced empathy and encourage others to specify, own, and be held accountable to specific performance or outcomes? What about confrontation and the skill of immediacy? These skills are required not only in work situations, they are needed every day at home, where your role is spouse or parent.

# Transforming Leaders have exceptional Consulting Skills. The dynamics of leadership involve being awake and aware?not only to individuals but to groups of individuals. In this skill set, you can:

>> assess the current state of a team;

>> determine the group's needs, wants, problems, and fears;

>> facilitate and overcome resistance to change;

>> explore the readiness and willingness levels of the team and individuals; and

>> design and implement steps and solutions.

Could you imagine any sports coach being successful without these skills? Of course not.

# Transforming Leaders also have outstanding Organizational Development Skills. At any given moment, you are able to be grounded about yourself; communicate effectively with others; hold individuals accountable for their actions; facilitate team needs, wants, and performance; AND understand how those actions fit into the bigger picture of the organization?and what steps need to taken, when, with whom, and how. You must understand the five stages of organizational development and the steps needed to fulfill each one. They can equally apply to your home life as well as your work environment.

Upon reflection, many of you will feel overwhelmed about the prospect and complexity of becoming a transforming leader. The fact is, most people don't engage the process. That is why there are so few transforming leaders.

But if you want to rise to the challenge, there are unlimited opportunities for becoming transforming leaders. This is a long-term commitment with enormous rewards. Remember: US President Lincoln was a mature person before he reached the level of leadership skills that motivated others to vote for him.

To help you on your leadership development journey, we have a couple of special resources available. Fifteen years ago, I took this leadership development path seriously. I admit I am a long way from being finished but the number of skills I introduce to a leadership situation or into my life now, versus 1989, is truly amazing. I credit much of this to Dr. Anderson and his mentoring through his Transforming Leadership book and model.

If you are serious about your leadership development, one of the best resources for you will be the book Transforming Leadership. This 250 + page hardcover book goes into detail on each of the skill sets; it will give you examples of how to develop and embrace each skill. Admittedly this is an intense and content-driven book. If you are looking for something light and fluffy, this book is not for you.

I have used the Leadership Skills Inventory - Self assessment with many supervisory and leadership teams and found the process invaluable. You will rate yourself on 57 skills plus 12 additional questions on the Transforming Leadership Principles. The report will create an outline of how you are doing in each of the critical leadership skills areas. You will immediately see areas where you can improve. Many coaches use this assessment in their personal coaching sessions with others.

Leadership Skills Inventory - Others Version. For years, leaders have sought feedback from others to confirm the leaders' perceptions about how they were doing as a leader. LSI - O can provide that information, with others giving confidential feedback to help leaders better understand their impact and effectiveness.

I agree with Peter Drucker. Transforming Leaders are constantly growing and learning. They don't appear by accident.

Action Steps

Becoming a Transforming Leader

1. Leaders grow and develop: they are not born.

2. Everything you do in life requires certain levels of leadership skills.

3. Are you a transforming leader? Are you getting the results and outcomes you want?

4. What would others say about your leadership skills: good, bad, or indifferent?

5. Do you have all the leadership skills you need or desire to get the results you want in your life? If not, what do you need to develop? Summarize why it would be important to develop these skills. What will the benefits be?

6. Are you familiar with the five critical skill sets confirmed by most leadership research as required by a transforming leader? They are Self-Management, Interpersonal Communications, Counseling and Problem-Solving, Consulting, and Organizational Development Skills.

7. To confirm your leadership skills level in 57 specific leadership skills, take the online Leadership Skills Inventory - Self.

8. If you want an in-depth understanding of transforming leadership, get the book of the same name by Dr. Terry Anderson.

9. Start where you are with a plan of action. Don't worry about how many leaderships skills you currently have or don't have.

10. Encourage others to become transforming leaders. The best thing a true leader can do is help develop other leaders-not more followers.

*Reprinted by permission of the author

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PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT e-TOOLKIT

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The e-Toolkit takes the 'theory' and 'jargon' out of Performance Management. The kit contains all you need - a comprehensive set of line manager friendly policies, procedures, and paperwork. The e- manual has been developed in South Africa by South African Legal and HR professionals for companies to meet the requirements of the key labour Acts that stress the importance of fair & developmental people management practices. For a preview click on: http://www.workinfo.com/mall/pms.htm 

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4. Talent Reviews: A New Standard Practice

By David Creelman who can be contacted at

dcreelman@hr.com 

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In my recent conversations with American HR managers I have been surprised by how many mentioned that they do talent reviews. Talent reviews are meetings where a group of managers discuss the capability of the employees and identify the high and low performers. Employees identified as high performers may be given special developmental opportunities and efforts will be made to be sure they are happy. Low performers may need to be let go.

While firms typically think in terms of high and low performers there are a number of distinctions that can be helpful. High performers (people who do their current job very well) should be distinguished from high potential employees (people who have the potential to take on senior leadership roles). Harvard professor Dorothy Leonard writes about yet another important category of talent: people with "deep smarts". People with deep smarts have know-how developed over many years and cannot easily be replaced. A manufacturing supervisor may not a high performer or have high potential, but may be the only person who really understands the quirks of the manufacturing process. You can't hire someone with that knowledge by putting an ad on Monster.com, nor develop it by sending someone on a training course. This kind of talent needs to be retained and used to mentor others. There is also the talent that USC professor John Boudreau calls "pivotal talent." That is talent that is critical to the execution of strategy. In this case it is not about looking at individuals, but looking at jobs. A company implementing an enterprise software program will likely have programmers who are pivotal for the duration of the project.

Most of the focus is on the high potential employees and how to develop and retain them, but in GE's famous talent reviews identifying the low performers was just as important. Helen Handfield-Jones, one of the authors of The War for Talent, argues that managers rarely take on the unpleasant task of dealing with poor performers unless they are required to do so by a formal process.

There are other categories of employees one could potentially look at in a talent review. Talent management systems like Deploy Solutions allow companies to identify categories like "All employees with a good performance rating who have not been moved in three years."

I've listed six categories of talent that might be of interest and one can imagine a talent review process that carefully considered each category. However, the companies I spoke to, mostly small to mid-sized manufacturing firms, did not have a particularly sophisticated talent review process. They simply got the right people in the room once a year to discuss talent. Getting that far is half the battle and in smaller firms where the managers know all the employees there is no need to impose too much structure.

In the US there is now widespread recognition that talent matters. Talent reviews are one of the main systems used to ensure talent is being managed well. It is probable that these reviews will become a standard practice, just as performance appraisal is now. In fact, they may come to overshadow the much unloved performance appraisal. There is something to be said for focusing efforts on the top and bottom talent in the company, rather than spending so much effort deciding that 70 percent of employees are somewhere in the middle.

Managers do not need to wait for the organization to adopt an enterprise-wide talent review process. They can simply get the senior people in their own department together to discuss the talent in their area. One also doesn't need company programs to reward critical talent. According to Beverley Kaye, author of Love 'em or Lose 'em, one of the best tools is the "stay interview". This simply involves asking key people "What is it that makes you want to stay?" Often minor things, even just the very show of appreciation that the stay interview gives, is enough to retain and motivate key employees.

The importance and ease of doing talent reviews has led to their rapid adoption in the US. I expect companies around the world will adopt this process as standard practice-if they haven't done so already.

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5. Is Your Job Just Work?*

By Mallory Stark who can be contacted at Working Knowledge at

http://hbswk.hbs.edu 

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In the years after Russell Muirhead left college, he noticed an unexpected trend among his classmates: career restlessness. "Many were changing careers, going back to school, taking extended leaves of absence. They wriggled into and out of enviable jobs," says Muirhead, an associate professor of government at Harvard University.

This was something new, a generational change, Muirhead realized. He recalled a conversation with a friend who had told his father he was unhappy in his job.

"That's why they call it work," the father replied.

"Something profound had changed between the time his father made his career and today's world of work," Muirhead believes. Today, many of us want more than a secure job at a prestigious firm with a fat paycheck. "So many I know long for something more: they want work they find fulfilling and meaningful... Today we want to call our work "good work."

But that yearning raises intriguing questions about our expectations of work, the role of the employer in creating meaningful work for employees, and the whole notion of how work is divvied up in society. If everyone is off doing good work, who cleans the sewers?

His new book on this subject, Just Work was recently published. Muirhood participated in this HBS Working Knowledge e-mail interview.

Mallory Stark: The title of your book Just Work has a double meaning. Could you elaborate?

Russell Muirhead: The double meaning gets at the two faces of work. One is the side of necessity. Work is something compulsory, not merely an option or a lifestyle choice. The other side is more hopeful. It invites us to find work that is fulfilling, that is part of a good life.

On a particularly nasty day at work, when we complain about our jobs, someone-a boss, a coworker, a spouse, or most often, a voice inside us-says, "just work!" Complaints and criticism don't get the job done." Someone has to do the work, and that someone is you.

At the same time, it is natural-even inescapable-to criticize, to evaluate. Necessary as it is, we try to give an account of what we do every day that makes sense of it in terms of who we are and what we want from life. Exactly because it is necessary, because we return to it day after day, we cannot long resist trying to understand what is good and bad about our work. And we put together some idea of what work would be like if it answered our highest hopes and gave us what we deserve-if it were just work.

The two sides are in tension with each other. Perfectly just work would be work we choose and control, work we could leave behind if we pleased. Justice points toward freedom. But reality reminds us that work cannot be entirely escaped or fashioned exactly as we would have it. The hand of necessity bears ever down.

I don't think either side can ever overcome the other. Necessity cannot suffocate evaluation and hope; criticism cannot master necessity.

"Just work" seems to capture this tense combination, which makes work what it is.

The title has one more meaning, by the way. We might say that work is just work, as in only or merely work, nothing to make too big a deal about. But in America at least, and I doubt only in America, it is difficult to hem work into a small and insignificant part of life. It takes too much time, too much energy, to think of it as something trivial. And culturally, we make a big thing of work. It is a source of status, of personal identity, and a sign that we are contributing to the common good. Because of this, we cannot really help taking it seriously, and asking as much from it as it asks from us.

Q: When is work fitting?

A: First, let me explain why I talk about fitting work.

As I mentioned, there is a tendency to think of perfect work as being perfectly free. Take Marx: in his utopia, no one would ever be confined to a single work role: we could hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, and criticize after dinner, without ever being a hunter, fisherman, shepherd, or critic.

It's a powerful image. We can be what we are, not squeeze ourselves into the roles the workplace imposes on us. Many people have hoped over the years that new productive technologies would free us from the confines of work roles, of one career dominating over the whole of life. At the extreme, justice would bring the 'end of work.'

Alluring as this is-we all contain more than any one job can express-I think it is based in profound mistakes.

It would require enforcing a dour and frugal equality on everyone, which in turn would lead to inhuman and large-scale violence. The socialist experiments of the twentieth century make this abundantly clear.

The perfectly free life, with no roles, would not be a very happy one.

Also, this image of perfect freedom neglects the fact that many attractive and enjoyable human goods require some discipline and practice. Our enjoyment of cooking or poker or baseball is amplified when we are good at them. It is hard to live a happy life if we develop no talent whatsoever. Becoming good at one thing precludes doing other things. The perfectly free life, with no roles, would not be a very happy one.

This is why, when it comes to just work, I talk about fitting work rather than a world of perfect freedom and the end of work.

Q: But what is fitting work?

A: I think about fitting work in the same way we might think about other practices, often drawn from arts, games, or sports, like piano playing or baseball.

The first thing to ask is whether we have the right aptitudes. No aptitude, no fit. If you're tone deaf, music is probably not for you. This kind of fit is what society needs: from a social point of view, each person should do that job that his or her aptitude fits best. This way, tasks get done quickly and efficiently.

That's no small matter (how often do we wish to do what we are no good at!), but there is a second thing to ask about fit. There are lots of activities we might have an aptitude for, but cannot manage to identify with or enjoy. You might be very good at accounting.Yet you might not be able to think of yourself as an accountant, to take any enjoyment from the activity, to connect it in any deep way to who you are. Fitting work in the deepest sense means having an ability to realize and to enjoy the distinctive goods that your work offers. This kind of fit is what matters most on a personal level.

Fitting work asks something from us, and something from our work. We need to open ourselves to the possibility that our work offers something distinctive, something good and enjoyable that is hard to get in other ways. That means not thinking of it always as a chore, but thinking of it also as something like a game or a sport. This is easier with some kinds of work than with others. It might be impossible in the cases of the most repetitive or mundane or exhausting work. Some work-sweatshop labor comes to mind, at the extreme-cannot be said to fit anyone. But with lots of jobs, it is more possible than one might suppose at first glance.

Q: Should employers be concerned about creating just work for their employees, and, if so, how do they go about it?

A: Of course. Not to take any concern treats employees like cogs in a machine instead of like human beings. And unjust work-as we have known since the turn of the century-breeds the sort of sullenness, pain, and despair that ultimately saps what employers care about most: the bottom line.

How they go about it should always be sensitive to the specifics at hand. But in general, it means making room in the workplace for respect, variety, and responsibility.

Without respect for the fact that every employee is an independent human being with his or her own ends, that no one is simply an instrument to be used, there is no hope for fitting work or a just workplace.

The tendency to control what employees do-a necessary managerial instinct-is easily inflamed to the point where it suffocates variety and responsibility. Jobs need to be designed so they draw on more than one skill, and can be approached as integrated and complex tasks. People are both happier, and our human powers more activated, when we are challenged-and our work is more fitting.

Over-management saps responsibility. We care less for what is common than for what is our own. Products and outcomes need to be connected to individuals, so they can take praise and blame. Without that, our pride turns against our work, rather than attaching itself to work. No pride, no motivation. But pride requires an occasion for achievement.

The New Career Advice

For any good manager, this is common sense. A more radical and more risky approach would be to design work around the concept of a game or a sport. This means not simply giving people the chance to win or be recognized (as in the employee of the month), but creating jobs that integrate skills and tasks in a way that is absorbing. It means giving up on some oversight and control, and trusting that fitting work generates its own motivation.

Q: American culture and society have been built on the "work ethic," which essentially means 'work hard.' Will this ethos stand in the way of us moving toward a world of just work?

A: The work ethic does mean 'work hard' but it does not mean only that. It asks us to work hard for a reason.

Originally, this reason had to do with undertaking something of God's plan for human things, with demonstrating God's grace to ourselves and to our neighbors. Today the reason has more to do with the idea that work can be fulfilling, that it can connect in a profound way to our own identity. In both cases, the work ethic speaks to the most central and powerful purposes we serve-sometimes transcendent, sometimes earthly.

When work seems disconnected from our own central purposes, the work ethic loses its reason. Work is no longer something worthy of our devotion. And the work ethic, as a result, appears fragile.

The work ethic places a heavy burden on the working life. By asking a lot of work, it points us toward, not away from, a world of just work.

Q: What can we learn from the 19th century British philosopher, John Stuart Mill, regarding the fulfillment and promise of work?

A: John Stuart Mill put the promise of fulfillment at the center of liberalism-at a time when liberalism meant limiting government for the sake of protecting freedom, not funding the entitlements of the New Deal state. Liberal government gave each person the opportunity to cultivate his or her own individuality.

And John Stuart Mill was also a snob. He thought individuality was difficult, and that many were not made of the sort of stuff that would allow them to realize it.

Since Mill's time, we have broadened the promise of fulfillment: for everyone, a fulfilling career. What Mill can remind us is that fulfillment is not an easy thing. It takes bravery-and talent. Extending the promise of fulfillment in a casual way, as if we could easily find it, may be a recipe for a lot of disappointment.

*Reprinted under license agreement with the regents of Working Knowledge and the Regents of Harvard Business School

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6. HR - Victim, Dinosaur or Hero?

By Steve Nutall who can be contacted at

www.hr.com 

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In a recent conversation with a senior HR professional, the subject turned to outsourcing. "Oh, that's people losing their jobs isn't it"? It was a depressing response - whether or not outsourcing is right for an organisation should be matter of considered business analysis, and can significantly enhance both corporate performance and individual opportunity. But this glass half-empty approach gives the impression of a conservative profession that is more concerned with protectionism than of driving businesses forward.

Now I don't want to give the wrong impression - there are many thought leaders in HR who paint pictures of how the future can be very different, about how successful Human Capital Management can be at the heart of a winning business strategy. They stimulate debate. Yet when you get to the coal face of HR it all seems too difficult and too many practitioners seem happy to fall back into welfare mode. Or even worse is the "well we tried that once but it didn't work" approach, without understanding why it didn't work, and how it could be made to.

It really is no wonder that regular surveys show HR to be held in much lower esteem by the rest of the business than it would like to see itself. But that is the reality check that needs to be faced. If it is not addressed you wonder how along HR can continue in it's current form.

Many HR departments are stuck between a rock and a hard place where they feel that the people inadequacies of an organisation are not really their own fault. Departments often have very good HR people who, on a daily basis, spend most of the time processing paperwork, answering general queries, fire fighting and making up for defects within line management. This last point is particularly important:

"AT THE HEART OF ANY SUCCESSFUL HCM STRATEGY WILL BE LINE MANAGERS WHO TAKE FULL ACCOUNTABILITY FOR THE RESOURCES AT THEIR DISPOSAL - AND THEIR PERFORMANCE IS MEASURED AGAINST THIS" (EDITOR'S CAPITALISATION OF SENTENCE)

If this does not happen, does HR fall into victim mode - "what can we do about managers not doing their jobs properly". Or does it fall into parent mode - "well if you can't do it for yourself we'll do it for you".

How often does HR take a proactive approach and demonstrate the clear business case for managers taking full responsibility, for the benefits of proper development strategy as opposed to hire and fire, or an understanding of what motivates and the extent to which motivation drives success?

The HR business partner model developed in part to provide support to such a structure of managers assuming responsibility, but in many cases still focuses helping out with disciplinaries or making sure the performance review forms are completed, rather than finding the hard evidence that informs business strategy and enable everyone to improve their effectiveness.

So when is the people strategic thinking done? If the Business Development or Operations departments operated without appropriate strategy it would be seen as a monumental business risk. But too often organisations are reacting tactically to internal or external people issues without any overall context. There is a great big hole here, and therefore an opportunity for someone to be developing, monitoring and informing strategy. If HR does not take the lead on this, they will surely find themselves forced further away from the top table.

The time has come to stop thinking about HR as department staffed with people who know about employment legislation or how to collect employee data, and treat it like a business in it's own right. To do this consider how it would be if we considered HR activities in the context of the separate aspects to any purposeful venture - strategy, advice, operational and informational.

The HR strategy must be developed from within and, to be successful, must be aligned to the company's business strategy. It should to include all aspects of resourcing, rewarding, development and engagement. If the prime role of the Board is to set strategy and ensure it is implemented, the prime role of the senior HR team is to ensure the organisations desired approach in those four key areas is clearly stated, is fully aligned with the business and is fully supported by the business. It is the only aspect of HR that must be done by the business itself - no-one else can do it for you. Yet to often it does not appear to happen at all.

The next stage is how to implement the strategy - the advisory and technical element. Most of us feel comfortable about accessing specialist external legal or technical advice, or say using specialist recruitment agencies. There may be a feeling though that we need to retain a broad knowledge within the organisation to provide interpretation and advice that take full account of the culture of the organisation. Understandable, but do you know how necessary this is - can you show it is the most effective way of delivering what the organisation needs.

Then there is the general administration, the day-to-day queries and the processing and analysing of information. This ties HR departments up and prevents them from focussing on the big picture. Some are getting comfortable with outsourcing bits and pieces - payroll or benefits administration say. Some are setting up shared service centres, often combined with other functions, which have been successful in reducing costs. The big opportunity still to be taken here is to show that they improve service - employees and managers get the information they need when they need it first time every time. Models aided by smart and flexible technology are making significant progress here; those that do not have access to such technologies for whatever reason will fall behind in effectiveness as more and more time is spent fire fighting.

The final step in the HR function is analysis of information. Do you know what it costs not to have an active absence management program? Do you know the true costs of your recruitment methods? Is your turnover rate high and is that good or bad for your business (both may be the case in different circumstances). Do you know what value your employees put on the benefits you provide them? Do you care?

The last question is I hope rhetorical, but although many people will read the above and say "Yes we know all that and we would do it but....". That shows how much you really care.

The next five years will see dramatic changes in HR. The introduction of technologies is making a massive impact and allows internal customers to take control of their own HR administration. This will become the norm and will allow HR to oversee the process and offer strategic advice rather than processing the paperwork. The focus of HR becomes setting strategy, making sure it is implemented, monitoring the results and acting on the information. As long as the advice is well-founded and the processes are followed, risk management procedures are in place and the data can be turned into information that creates knowledge for you, why waste your resources on doing that, especially when it distracts you from the things that matter?

Given that many HR teams' focus seems to exactly the opposite of this, it is going to be really interesting to see how the different approaches will impact the success of their businesses. Surely as a minimum it is incumbent on all HR professionals to open their eyes to different approaches and start to do the real hard analysis of what will work best for your business. Because if you do not do it, someone else will.

So will HR end up like the dinosaurs? Or will it remain a victim and say "We know the ideas but we can't really do anything"? Or will it be the hero takes control and is seen as being the driving force behind ensuring that their organisation has the resources it needs to deliver on it's dream? Your choice....

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MANAGING FOR DIVERSITY WORKSHOP

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New and improved version of this workshop for supervisors & managers now available! Comprehensive facilitator's guide and participant workbook is now available as a download. Train as many groups as you like for the price of 1 download! http://www.workinfo.com/mall/diversity.htm 

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7. Case Law & Legislation Review: Substantive Fairness In Dismissal - Dishonesty

By Gary Watkins who can be contacted at

www.caselaw.co.za  or www.workinfo.com 

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Rustenburg Platinum Mines Ltd v CCMA & others (LAC)

Case No. JA28/02

Judgment Date 20 November 2003

Issue: Employee dismissed after negligence. On arbitration found that final warning would have been correct sanction. Application for review of the arbitration refused. Appeal against that decision.

Summary of facts: The employer carries on business in platinum mining in Rustenburg. The employee was employed by the employer as a patrol man grade II in its Protection Services Department. The employer has a section called the Waterval Redressing Section. That section provides benefaction services for the employer in respect of the separation of high-grade precious metals from the lower grade concentrate. The employer stated that in essence the metallics are extracted from the ore concentrate at the Waterval Redressing Section. He said that the high grade metals contain metals such as platinum, gold, rhodium and others, which are extremely valuable and that these precious metals are the employer's "livelihood and core business". He further states that the Waterval Redressing Section is a high security facility. Despite various security measures taken the employer continued to suffer theft of its precious group metals in its various premises including Waterval Redressing Section. The employer has a search procedure, which must be followed by its security staff on duty at Waterval Redressing Section. To monitor, security surveillance was conducted over the period of 27 February 2000 to 27 May 2000. Over a period of three days it was established from the video surveillance that in 24 searches the employee only conducted one search properly and in accordance with the search procedure. In all the other instances he either did not search the persons concerned or conducted searches incompletely or improperly. He was suspended on 9 June 2000 with full pay and charged with various counts relating to his negligence in following the prescribed procedure. He was found guilty and dismissed and then referred to matter to the CCMA after an internal appeal failed. The Commissioner found that the dismissal was procedurally fair but substantively unfair. The Commissioner further found that the employee had breached the search procedures of the employer but that the sanction of dismissal was too harsh in the circumstances. His view was that a final warning was the appropriate sanction. Accordingly, he ordered the employer to reinstate the employee with effect from 1 January 2001 subject to a written warning valid for 6 months and to pay him compensation equal to 3 months' pay.

Judgement: The court found that the statement that no losses were suffered by the employer as a result of the employee's failure to search according to the employer's search procedure is indeed wholly unjustifiable and that the potential loss as opposed to actual loss would be highly relevant and that the other two factors (mistake and honesty) on which the commissioner based his finding was irrelevant.

In addition to the above, the commissioner based his finding on the Code of Good Practice which provides that it is not appropriate to dismiss an employee for a first offence except if the misconduct is serious and is of such gravity that it makes a continued employment relationship intolerable. He further relied on the fact that the third respondent had a clean record of service for the previous 14 years.

As to the employer's challenge during argument of the Commissioner's award on the basis that the employee's service of 14 years and that during that period he had kept a clean record and on the Code of Good Practice was not foreshadowed in the founding affidavit the court found that it was not open to the employer to seek to have the Commissioner's award set aside on this basis when this had not been foreshadowed in the founding affidavit. A commissioner is entitled to know each finding of his that will be attacked on review to show the existence of a reviewable irregularity for the purpose of having his award set aside.

Despite the findings there was doubt as to whether the court should interfere and in the case of doubt the court should not interfere, hence, the court found that there was no justification for interference by the court with the decision of the commissioner on review and dismissed the application with costs.

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8. Book Reviews

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# The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era

To buy this book click on: http://www.kalahari.net/e-trader/referral.asp?toolbar=mweb&linkid=5&partnerid=293&sku=27632397 

By Jeremy Rifkin, Tarcher/Penguin, 2004

This is an updated version of a 1995 publication by Jeremy Rifkin, Wharton Fellow and president of the Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington, D.C. In the first book, Rifkin proposed the idea that the end of work was coming: The "decline of the global labor force," he said, was not a reference to the unavailability of potential employees, but rather to the reduced need for human labor.

For this edition, Rifkin suggests that the problems he wrote about nine years ago have worsened. He draws parallels between current trends and the period of high consumer debt that preceded the stock market crash of 1929. The traditional economic theory of increased productivity eventually leading to reduced unemployment and economic growth is failing, he states. Economic indicators are up, but unemployment remains high.

Rifkin discusses historical events and their effects on the economy as well as theories such as "trickle-down technology." This theory asserts that technological advances will lead to more workers getting better jobs. The reduced cost of products increases demand, creating new markets and the need for more high-tech workers. However, in practice this theory may not hold weight, as evidenced by the abundance of silicon telephone operators and silicon postal mail sorters, amid rising unemployment.

Is it just simple math? Rifkin cites France as an example of a country that combated unemployment by reducing the work week. Increased productivity means less human labor, leaving two choices: Reduce the number of hours worked, or reduce the number of employees-the latter having the more drastic effect of fewer people being able to maintain current standards of living.

Rising unemployment is a global phenomenon that can spiral to despair and is connected with increased crime, violence, and social upheaval. According to Rifkin, we must find ways to improve our social economy and prepare for a post-market era that values human relationships, community life, and stewardship more than productivity.

Rifkin quotes the prediction of philosopher and psychologist Herbert Marcuse, who said, "Automation threatens to render possible the reversal of the relation between free time and working time: the possibility of working time becoming marginal and free time becoming full-time." Are we nearing that time?-

# The Talent Management Handbook: Creating Organizational Excellence by Identifying, Developing, and Positioning Your Best People

To buy this book click on: http://www.kalahari.net/e-trader/referral.asp?toolbar=mweb&linkid=5&partnerid=293&sku=27057897 

By Lance A. Berger and Dorothy R. Berger, McGraw Hill, 2004

Talent management is mysterious. It's easy to assume, for instance, that just paying talented people a lot of money is the best form of talent management. Now, we all know money talks. But we've also heard about people who have worked their way out of an entry-level desk job to eventually lead the company, and it wasn't only money that made them do it. As this 488-page door-stopper makes clear, it's also wise for you as a manager to put together a fair, transparent, and motivating system across the company to identify, retain, and develop the most high-potential employees.

The editors, who are management consultants, have chosen contributors who lay out ideas and best practices in a forthright and readable way, interspersing directions with simple charts and graphs. The thirty-six chapters are divided into seven major sections: Introducing a Talent Management System; Developing the Building Blocks of Talent Management; Talent Planning (mostly about investments in training and succession); Building Diversity into Your Succession Plan; Coaching, Training, and Development; Using Compensation; and Using Information Technology to Support a Talent Management System.

We like the first person, "how-I-solved-this" chapters from some of the contributors. A senior VP at QVC, the shopping network, for instance, details their trial-and-error process of finding and developing high-potential people during a period of rapid hiring at the call center, the network's main source of revenue generation. He concludes with eleven important takeaways for managers who may find themselves with the similar challenge of building a talent management program in a time of fast growth. Among these are: "The program needs to be driven with line instead of human resource accountability" and "Peer input is the most time-consuming aspect of the [performance] review but also the most constructive."

We think this book is a fine resource for all managers who are fine-tuning their "soft skills" in a smart and systematic way.

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RESOURCES FOR LINE AND HR

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# Use the 600 page electronic manual with detailed action plans and guide notes for IMPLEMENTING EMPLOYMENT EQUITY. This is a companion piece to the EQUITY-SKILL DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE TRAINING COURSE; http://www.workinfo.com/mall/eeim.htm 

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Equity-Skills News & Views is a free bi-monthly newsletter for business owners, Line Managers, and Human Resource Practitioners (who support Line Managers) with the implementation of fair and developmental people management systems and practices.

The style of this e-Newspaper fits between the traditional email newsletters and printed professional trade journals & magazines. Subscribers will be kept up to date with the latest developments in the world of people management, receive handy people management tips, and feedback about labour court rulings that relate to the implementation of the key Labour Acts.

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