Professional HR. Evidence-Based People Management & Development

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Paul Kearns

Evidence-Based HR is now incorporated into my latest book “Professional HR. Evidence-Based People Management & Development” and you can now join IHRM, the new Professional Institute of HR Maturity.

BUY THE BOOK NOW

“That’s the state of play in human resources today mindless imitation of what others are doing, little to no systematic evaluation of the effectiveness of management practices and programs, infrequent data-driven diagnoses of the problems HR is expected to address, in short, little of the professionalism now almost taken for granted in medicine, to take just one example.”

From the Foreword to the book by Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer, Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, co-author of ‘Hard Facts‘ and a leading advocate of evidence-based management.

Reviews

‘This is an important book that provides a positive road map for the future of the H.R. profession. Its importance lies in its willingness to address the big questions: why has Human Resources been at the crossroads for over a decade? What does it mean to operate as an H.R. professional? How can H.R. apply evidence based practice to be more systematic in its priorities and evaluate the business impact of its activities?

The book, a combination of analysis, argument and anecdote, check-lists and case studies, ranges far and wide in exploring the debate about the role of Human Resources, the nature of professionalism and the utilisation of evidence based practice.

Professional HR is also a refreshingly authentic book that provides a candid insight into the connections between academic research, consultancy activity and H.R. practice. Paul Kearns takes on with insight and courage: snake-oil consultancies selling solutions of dubious value; the academics that gave their blessing to any number of flawed research wheezes; those H.R. practitioners who valued prize winning more than the implementation of processes that “worked”; and the various professional bodies that stood on the side-lines rather than a take a lead in raising and reinforcing standards.

For some, this book – with its willingness to “name and shame” several of the players who contributed to H.R.’s current reputation – will be an awkward reminder of a past that missed opportunities to establish Human Resources as a critical component of organisational success. For the emerging H.R. practitioner who wants to make a positive impact through a combination of a professional ethos and evidence based practice, Professional HR will be indispensable reading.’

Andrew Munro, Director of AM Azure Consulting

‘Kearns’ book is a timely reminder that neither precise, legally enforceable regulations nor reliance on human moral points of failure can address the paucity of moral courage and deliberate systemic myopia of our political and corporate leaders, or of academic experts. What he is seeking is a widening of the purpose of management to include value to society, humanity and stewardship and to resist the corrosive effects of relying on narrow performance measures like profit. Kearns is advocating that his brand of professionalism be central to organisational life. He asks the right questions, itself doubtless a process of testing hypotheses and paying attention to the quality and relevance of data, blending critique of methodology with topical examples and practical checklists. Kearns’ Professional HR, to be sure, is worthy of a wide managerial readership.’

Dr Wilson Wong, Academic Fellow CIPD

‘Professional HR is every bit as ground breaking as his previous book HR Strategy: Creating Business Strategy with Human Capital. Kearns’ new work points out clearly that the lack of professionalism and standards are destroying the public’s faith in business, and in many cases, businesses themselves. He makes it clear that evidence-based professional HR management is the way to stem the tide. This book is a blueprint for training a new generation of true HR professionals.’

Patricia Turnham, Kaplan University, USA

‘Amidst the fallout of a deep economic depression, the malaise organisations find themselves operating within affords a very real opportunity for HR professionals. HR has the chance to become what it has failed to do since its strategic aspirations were first voiced in the 1990′s; the chance to become a value proposition for organisations. This value proposition is about demonstrating that the very best people management is a route to healthy, vibrant and sustainable organisations that produce real value for all stakeholders. Paul Kearns’ book shows how and why HR professionals should take this opportunity and reposition both themselves and their own organisations to succeed in the 21st Century.’

Stuart Woollard, Kings College London, UK

‘In this book Paul Kearns provides a compelling vision for the future of the HR professional and the HR profession. This vision challenges the HR professional to approach their role in a far more reflective and evidence based way. Kearns provides a convincing prescription for how a more professional and mature HR practitioner can deliver on the potential and value of human capital which remains untapped in many organisations.’

Prof. David Collings, Professor of HRM, Dublin City University, Editor, Human Resource Management Journal.

Measuring the organisational fear factor

Posted on June 6, 2012 by Paul Kearns

If you want to read a detailed case study on how not to run a company, especially a very large bank, I can firmly recommend a 450-page report entitled “The failure of the Royal Bank of Scotland” by the UK’s FSA (Financial Services Authority). No one comes out of this story with any credit – literally – hahaha.

RBS has already had several mentions on this site because it was once held up as a great example of HR by many less-discerning HR publications. Its HR team still persists with failed HR practices today, despite one revealing statistic from the FSA report which showed that in 2007, the year before RBS collapsed -

“66% of employees were recorded as agreeing with the statement – the ‘Group Executive Management Committee (GEMC) provides good leadership’”

This neatly disproves the latest theory in leadership development that says great leaders are defined by their followers. What really comes across in the report though, loudly and clearly, is the opposite of employee engagement. There was an insidious, underlying fear culture that completely contradicted RBS’s ‘Lemming Survey’ produced by its HR team. The report is particularly damning of CEO Fred Goodwin’s management style and devoted a whole section to something HR strategists should know all about -

“The importance of management, governance and culture”

remarking that

“During 2003 and 2004, …. the FSA had identified a risk created by the perceived dominance of RBS’s CEO. While it was recognised that the CEOs of large firms tended to be assertive, robust individuals, the FSA’s view was that, in the case of RBS, the ‘challenging management culture led by the CEO raised particular risks that had to be addressed. ….‘Most of the members of GEMC we met with criticised the way the Committee operates. …. GEMC members also described dysfunctional working in relation to:

GEMC are not operating as a team.
Conversations are typically bilateral.
Performance targets consume too much of the agenda.
Discussions often seem bullying in nature.
The atmosphere is often negative and is at a low point currently.”

Fred Goodwin has undoubted talents but his management style is not one of them and it was the culture he created, above everything else, that ultimately condemned RBS to its inevitable fate. This is the best possible argument for having an independent and effective HR director (rather than the one they had) reporting directly to the Board, with a specific remit to develop the right organisational culture whilst balancing the drive of “assertive, robust” executives with the need to maintain continuity and consistency; especially when your average FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 CEO lasts less than 5 years.

Another practical suggestion I would like to offer in response to the FSA report is to counterbalance the Q12 nonsense, that has prevailed in HR circles for far too long, with a Fear Factor Quotient (pat. pending). I’m thinking along the lines of a questionnaire where the highest Fear Factor (i.e. the worst case) would be linked to statements such as: -

‘I am a complete nervous wreck, having lived in fear of my life every waking second that I am at work’

using the usual Likert-type response options ranging from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’ with an additional box for those on medication to provide details.

At the other (best) end of the scale a typical statement might be –

‘I am encouraged to say exactly what I think to who the hell I like. I could walk into the CEO’s office tomorrow, call him a complete tosser, not bother to dress it up as constructive criticism and he would thank me for it. Hey, I would even be offered a coffee!’

I was thinking we could also invent a new unit of measurement – the ‘Goodwin’ – although you could adapt this to your own organization by just inserting the name of your most feared executive. The ‘Goodwin Scale’, as with the logarithmic Richter Scale, would range from 1 to 10 with the difference between say a 5 Goodwin and a 6 Goodwin being the equivalent, in order of business disaster magnitude, of an increase from say $10 million to $300 million.

Alongside this I think we would also need to design in a specific ‘Whistleblower Propensity Rating’ where all employees were asked to state what would have to happen for them to blow the whistle. These could be on a separate, sensitivity scale ranging from “I would blow the whistle on my own mother if she so much as borrowed my company pen” to “I would have to witness my boss murdering someone with their bare hands, in front of my very own eyes, before I would feel inclined to blow the whistle on them.” (we might also have to insert a witness protection scheme clause in there somewhere).

I believe there is already a ‘Group Executive Management Committee Members’ Courage’ seismometer gathering dust somewhere in the bowels of RBS but it was never used because the bank was already registering an 8 on the Goodwin Scale and this meant there was nothing in the boardroom to be measured on it .

Those bloody “Meetings Bloody Meetings” videos

Posted on March 28, 2012 by Paul Kearns

The whole point of EBM is the facilitation of learning – both individually and organisationally. It requires a culture of learning from evidence of both success and failure, in equal measure. Yet many learning and development professionals are the worst culprits for ignoring evidence of training failure. They persist in putting people on courses where training is not the problem or where the ‘trainees’ just do not want to learn. It does not matter as long as they get paid for delivery, not outcome. This phenomenon is best exemplified by one of the oldest video training products on the market – ‘Meetings Bloody Meetings’.

I still remember, when I was a very young and naive training manager, watching the original John Cleese video for the first time. Cleese was better known as an actor who had a silly walk, complained about dead parrots and offered a dire customer experience to the unfortunate residents of a third-rate hotel in Torquay. Nevertheless, I thought his video was humorous and made some telling points about how meetings go wrong. So I hired it – once. Never again: not because it had solved my problem, but because it hadn’t.

So I cannot believe that the producers have the nerve to issue a 2012 version; when the evidence is so plain that meetings have not improved. They are more prevalent, more time wasting, more ill-conceived, more hastily convened and managed just as badly today as they were over 30 years ago. So if you were just about to run this video on a management course I thought I might suggest a few evidence-based questions before you inflict it on yet another, unsuspecting generation?

Question 1. Why do you think there is a need for this video?

Answer. Probably because you still hear the same refrain that I heard – ‘there’s too many bloody meetings in this place!’ or ‘when is anyone expected to get any bloody work done around here?!’ If you took that to mean your organisation has a problem with ‘meetings’ then I’m afraid your analysis and diagnosis might be inaccurate.

Question 2. Have you measured this apparent problem?

Answer. That was my mistake when I did not know any better. I reacted to an apparent problem rather than a real one. An evidence-based management problem is one that has been accurately identified and measured. So has anyone ever measured how many meetings take place in your organisation? If they have, did they also distinguish between the good meetings and the bad ones? I guess not; because that would mean you have to tell some very senior people they could not run a third-rate hotel – I mean meeting.

In fact, your job might be on the line if you so much as hint that maybe, just maybe, it might be a good idea to start assessing the performance of the people who run meetings? It is a lot easier for those in authority to presume they are skilled in managing meetings and not give a second thought to those whose time they waste or even consider whether they might be dragging others away from more relevant, pressing matters.

Question 3. Even if you identify and solve the problem – what could it be worth?

Answer. Obviously the first benefits would be fewer meetings, less wasted time, more efficiency and lower costs. Meetings should also be managed better with clear objectives and a minimum of unexpected AOB. They should only take as long as necessary and ensure the right actions are agreed and responsibilities allocated. They will also check progress.

Probably much more valuable though would be a different culture altogether. Really great meetings are those where you are allowed to voice your most honest thoughts without fear of retribution: where expertise is respected and evidence-based recommendations given much more weight than rank or gut feel. One of my own favourite indicators of effective meetings is simply to ask how many attendees would just walk out if given the freedom to choose?

You know what? Those bloody training videos are not solving problems they are bloody well perpetuating them.

NHS – A terminal case of management cancer – Part 3

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Paul Kearns

Click here for Part 1 and Part 2

Andrew Lansley was interviewed by the BBC’s Nick Robinson just 2 days ago about changing the NHS. Lansley says that introducing competition into the state-run, taxpayer-funded NHS is about “competition for quality not competition for price”. What Lansley should be saying is competition for value, which is an indivisible combination of price and quality. If anything, the NHS should determine quality standards and allow competition on price. This would be entirely consistent and coherent with what they already do with drugs companies and any other organisation wanting to supply health services; who cannot compromise on quality and so have to compete on price,

Lansley further declares that the NHS is “driven by evidence” and that it “establishes an NHS price”. Economists, competitive capitalists and even the ordinary ‘man’ in the street know that when price is determined by a politicised bureaucracy, rather than a free market, poor societal value is likely to be the outcome.

There is still, of course, a serious question here about the most appropriate economic philosophy, organisational entity and HR strategy for running the NHS but Lansley has obviously not come up with the answer yet. So, rather than resuscitating the NHS, when a Health Secretary utters such nonsense we are more likely witnessing its final death throes.

“We’re alright as long as we’re all wrong.”

Posted on February 28, 2012 by Paul Kearns

The Emperor’s new clothes by Thorarinn Leifsson www.totil.com

Time and time again this silent mantra, this fatal assumption that there is safety in numbers, has been HR and Learning’s undoing. While you are all comparing management competence models no one will be stupid enough to break ranks and admit that they don’t work.

If you all talk about ROI and profess to use the same 4-level model of evaluation you can just about maintain the pretence that your training is a good investment.

Using 360° feedback might mean you all end up disappearing up your own orifices but hey, while you are all up there together, you can pretend that there is some illumination in the darkness.

You can all keep your bosses happy by sending them on expensive leadership programmes that help them to feel good about themselves while masking their inadequacies.

You dare anyone to challenge your diversity policies and ignore the very obvious evidence that there can be a serious and problematic downside.

Well, maybe your dirty little secrets were OK once, while everyone kept their mouths shut, but you were bound to be outed by evidence in the end weren’t you? Now what do you do?

You could plead ignorance perhaps; although that is no defence in the eyes of the law. Be a bit difficult to now say you did not realise that training without identified business needs is nonsense. You could throw yourself on the mercy of your ‘customers’ when they realise you have made a fool out of them as well? I don’t fancy your chances though, do you?

I suppose you could use the same tactic again of jumping on any passing bandwagon (HR analytics?) in the forlorn hope that it might either bamboozle people further or at least buy you a bit of time? You haven’t learned have you? That new fad is bound to suffer the same fate as all the others eventually.

Old HR habits die hard don’t they? If you are only comfortable being part of the crowd then at least recognise that the numbers game is going in the opposite direction now. The façade of HR convention has finally crumbled and no one will be rushing to join your shrinking minority. Also, you are up against much more powerful competition than ever before. The evidence-based can prick every one of your non-evidence-based bubbles with absolute ease and impunity; one at a time. That can be a very painful process.

There is only one way out. Come clean. Get it off your chest. Start working from evidence. It’s a lot simpler and much less painful than what you are doing now. The real beauty is that you don’t even have to explain yourself to your customers after all – they are no more evidence-based than you are – why do you think it’s called evidence-based management? – and you will be one page ahead.

Whatever criticism they might want to hurl at you is really just self-criticism. They always knew your competence dictionary was unadulterated gibberish so why did they pretend to support it? They know they still have serious problems with managing performance (that’s their dirty little secret) so they will welcome anything that makes their lives easier: evidence-based performance management will certainly do that.

Go on – you know you don’t like feeling naked – go and get some clothes on. Get some evidence.

Did Jack Welch ever square the people-profit circle?

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Paul Kearns

The perennial debate about whether to put profit before people, or vice versa, has been reinvigorated in the aftermath of the financial collapse of 2008 amidst growing anxiety as to how Western capitalism might evolve in the light of emerging alternatives. Yet at the very heart of this debate is the very obvious point that profit and people are always in danger of being diametrically opposed. Profit often appears to come at the expense of people when jobs are cut. Shareholders may think their investments are not best served by putting people first.

Equally obvious to most rational employees is that they are multiple-stakeholders themselves by virtue of simultaneously being citizens and customers as well; dependent on each other for wealth and welfare. This is not that complicated a formula is it? So why do so many CEOs seem to struggle to convince both their employees and their shareholders that this formula can work in everyone’s interest? Maybe it’s because they have not convinced themselves yet: they have not managed to square this particular circle in their own minds, never mind those of their shareholders.

Jack Welch, who became infamous for being ‘neutron Jack’ and ‘forced ranking Jack’, certainly looked after his GE shareholders very well for many years so how did he eventually come to the conclusion in a Financial Times interview in 2009 that

“On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world”?

Was this really a Damascene conversion at the end of his career or just a very obvious and natural conclusion that anyone as logical and business focused as Jack was bound to reach at some point? Of course pursuing shareholder value, to the exclusion of everyone else’s value and values*, is a dumb-ass idea. Why the hell would rational employees want to give their all to shareholders? What is in it for them? How many of us jump out of bed every morning fired up by shareholders’ selfish interests?

There is no doubting that Jack Welch has to be regarded as one of the most talented managers of the 20^th Century but what of his legacy? His views are expressed in a 2010 You Tube interview (9 years after he left GE) along with those of his successor, and current Chairman of the Board, Jeff Immelt. Does their reasoning convince us that Welch and Immelt have revolutionised management thinking from a human capital perspective? Welch’s management methods became standard fare on most MBA classes so students should be asked what lessons can be drawn for the future? To what extent was GE’s business strategy (and therefore its HR strategy) focused just on narrow shareholder interests? Have Jack Welch and Jeff Immelt really unearthed any new management secrets (apparently not if we read the comments posted on the You Tube clip)? If Jack Welch were to run GE again today how would he do it any differently? He is further quoted by the FT as realising that

“Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy …. Your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products.”

So would he convince today’s shareholders that a different HR strategy would actually result in even better returns? Would this necessitate a GE strategy that treats its people as both employees and citizens, thereby truly reflecting the society it serves? After all, what form of capitalism can ultimately prevail that does not satisfy society at large? Society can only be expected to wholeheartedly support organisations that have society’s best interests at heart. This is surely the only virtuous circle that can possibly be fashioned from the one-cornered square currently occupied by those shareholders with a narrow field of vision?

The greatest lesson that may yet arise from the present malaise is the realisation that many of our erstwhile ‘leaders’ actually have no idea how to help produce a more enlightened form of capitalism; one that can continue to compete successfully against any variant on the horizon. Perhaps that is Leadership Secret number 30 that will eventually rise to the surface on MBA and leadership programmes?

Kill the ‘Leadership Team’!

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Paul Kearns

No, of course I am not inciting anyone to literally go out and kill their ‘leadership team’ – I mean let’s kill off the notion that any group of executives or managers should ever be allowed to call themselves the Leadership Team. What arrogance! What brass neck!* The sheer, barefaced cheek of it! There is so much wrong with this ridiculous title it is difficult to know where to start? Perhaps a bit of humility would not go amiss?

After the hubris before the crash of 2008, and the body of evidence exposing the mismatch between executive reward and performance, surely we need to herald in an era of leadership humility. ‘Leadership team’ should be legally banned; just as one might ban CEO’s ever referring to themselves as king, emperor or tsar. Oh no, I’ve said it now, and probably made it worse by giving the madder ones an idea.

Look guys (and gals) – get this into your heads once and for all (they are certainly big enough) -

Great leaders don’t need to call themselves leaders.

Leadership is one of those words that can never be self-referential; like integrity, honesty, professional, trustworthy. It has to be earned; it can never be conferred. It is in the eye of the beholder – these things are for us to decide - we who have to suffer you. The trendy academics might like to refer to us as ‘followers’ – an awful term that suggests we are mindless – but we are not. In fact leaders with mindless followers is the last thing we want – you know what sort of behaviour that leads to, don’t you?

We will probably never reveal whether we are being led by you, or whether we trust you. In fact we may well change our minds on a daily basis: leadership and ‘followership’ are not constant. Even if we do your bidding it is just as likely to be an accurate indicator of how much we really fear you. You will probably only find out what we really think of you when you are dead – if you know what I mean. Oh no, I’ve done it again, I can just see the narcissistic, ultra-egotists employing their PR experts to plant false rumours of their demise to find out what the reaction might be. That way lies madness.

Great leaders just lead, by definition. Pretenders might have executive accountability (if we are lucky) or just management responsibilities but that does not automatically infer leadership. It is an imprecise and over-used term. If you mean ‘executive group’ or ‘senior team’ then fine, just say so. But ‘top team’ is not acceptable. Top of what? Top dog? Top in what sense? Oh yes, of course, top of the pyramid, like some ancient pharaoh. The bigger the pyramid the better the leader? Mine’s bigger than yours? The very antithesis of leadership – if you’re on the top then we must all be at the bottom – that’s just what we all want to hear and feel – very motivational, very inspiring.

Maybe top profits? Well if leadership = profit be careful whose company you keep and make sure you get your timing right. If the ‘top people’ are such great leaders why did only 16 out of the FTSE 100 CEOs survive the first decade of the 21^st Century? Hardly long enough to lay the first foundation stone is it? Of the ones that did survive there is at least one self-proclaimed micro-managing, detail obsessive, control freak among them. Take my word for it, hyper-management is not a pretty sight, nor is it leadership. Enough already – just kill the ‘leadership team’ bit.

If anyone would like to start a drive to remove ‘Leadership Team’ from their organisation charts here’s my blessing and a random sample to start. Please write to the chairs of these organisations either to express ridicule (the perfect antidote to false gods) or just pass on this suggestion.

*no sense of shame

Time for National HR Strategies?

Posted on November 28, 2011 by Paul Kearns

Any student of HR strategy will usually only read about strategies at the level of the individual organisation, even though there should at least be a nod to the geographical or cultural context in which they have to operate. So, famously, Nike and many other global brands realised they had to be very careful how they were perceived to be treating their workers in developing countries. What is rarely discussed though is the notion of HR strategy for a whole nation. Now, with so many developed countries in financial and economic turmoil it is time to put it on the agenda. Let us first look at my own nation – the UK – as a case in point.

This week, on Wednesday 30th November, there will be a national, public sector strike involving an estimated 2 million workers which is likely to cause significant disruption and damage parts of the economy (don’t try flying through London Heathrow). The primary (apparent) reason for the strike? Pensions. Public sector workers have pension entitlements that the UK can no longer afford and many other citizens regard as unfair. Of course, these entitlements were negotiated many years ago by previous governments who were always afraid to tackle the most difficult HR issues in the public sector – unionisation and poor performance. In particular, the teaching unions have helped to ensure that, out of approximately 500,000 teachers employed, literally only a handful are ever dismissed for poor performance, which defies the basic laws of probability.

These are just symptoms though of some serious, underlying, long-term and intractable conditions that can only be addressed by a coordinated, national strategy for the whole of the UK, not just the public sector. Public sector workers can rightly point to excessive pay deals for CEO’s and other executives that bear no relation to their performance either. There is no such thing as a special interest group when we are discussing national HR strategy – we are all in this together, whether we like it or not. Now let’s take a look elsewhere.

The next most obvious candidate in need of a national HR strategy is probably Greece; another case of a highly unionised and bloated public sector but also against a background of few people paying sufficient taxes. When Greece joined the Eurozone did any EU politicians include national HR strategy in the membership conditions that Greece would have to satisfy? Did no one see this coming? If they were to favour a particular HR strategy for EU members would it be based on the German model?

Across the Atlantic there is a very similar story but on a much greater scale – with increasing public debt trying to make up for the inherent deficiencies in the capitalist model. No wonder ‘Occupy Wall Street’ (and Occupy everywhere else) was born. One of the requirements of an effective HR strategy is an effective psychological contract between workers and management; the two sides have to fully understand what mutually beneficial deal is on offer. At a national level this means if you are prepared to work hard you might have come to expect to be looked after, at least in terms of education and health. That contract is breaking down as economies weaken and with it the common understanding that has underpinned capitalism in the West over the last century. During the French Revolution of the 18^th Century this would have been what Rousseau referred to as the social contract. The social contract for the 21^st century needs to be re-drafted, as a matter of urgency.

In the meantime governments around the world are trying to convince their populations to work harder at a time when the ‘rewards’ on offer appear far from attractive. Unemployment is rising and with it social unrest. It is precisely at such times and in such circumstances that only bold, strategic moves can offer a longer term view of societal cohesion where rewards more closely match one’s efforts. Governments that try short term fixes such as job creation and training schemes (where historical evidence predicts failure) are not only missing the point they are missing a golden opportunity to pull a strategic solution out of a dire situation.

Of course, anyone labouring under the illusion that looking to the East will offer a more enlightened view will be faced with the Arab spring, Indian poverty and Chinese strikes. It appears that managing the social contract between workers and employers is as much a challenge today as it ever was. Maybe I am not thinking boldly enough – did I say national human resource strategy, perhaps that should be international?

Imagine a world without evidence

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Paul Kearns

Imagine you wake up tomorrow and your natural facility for using and sifting evidence has completely disappeared. The first thing you know is the alarm has just gone off and you ignore it – actually, that’s probably no different to a normal day so far. Your partner digs you in the ribs and says ‘look at the time!’ so you squint at the clock but the ’07:00’ you can just about see has no meaning for you. It is just a set of numbers – it does not signify that this is a time to get up. Even looking out the window and witnessing the sun coming up does not provide any impetus to get you out of bed. You have not forgotten that you have to go to work, you still have memory, experience and history of going to work every day, what you don’t have is any evidence driving you to do it again. You see no need to rise.

Fortunately, while you are lying there staring into space and scratching yourself – a pretty basic urge – another basic instinct soon kicks in as you start to feel hungry. You have no control over either of these urges so you do eventually rise and go to get some breakfast. By this stage though your partner (who has not been struck down with the same evidence-blindness) is starting to be alarmed by your weird behaviour.

After having had a cup of coffee and a bowl of your favourite cereal you are just sitting there, not sure what to do next, so he/she shouts at you – ‘are you going to work sometime today or not!?’ – which finally lifts you out of your semi-catatonic state and your habitual behaviour just about gets you through your toilet routine, dressed, into the car and on your way after a reluctant peck on the cheek from a partner who is unsure whether to let you out of sight, unaccompanied, and is considering calling for a doctor.

Unfortunately though you forgot to fill the car up with fuel the night before and, despite the fuel gauge showing on ‘red’ and the orange ‘pump’ icon flashing on your dashboard, you don’t make the connection and eventually run out of gas before you get to the office. However, just by chance, you come to a stop 20 metres from a gas station and the other motorists, stuck behind you for the 5 minutes it took you to realise you had relapsed into your state of inertia, have already come to your aid. They are concerned by your vacant stare so push you into the gas station and leave you there having carefully placed the gas pump handle into your lifeless hand.

Somehow you make it to the office and as you walk through the door you start to feel at home, more relaxed, more your normal self. You start to organise this year’s engagement survey and the monthly training days statistics are on your desk and so you get straight into gear and organise an urgent meeting with the team to discuss them. Then a priority email from the CEO’s office hits your inbox asking you what’s happened to the executive awayday you were supposed to be organising next month; so you ask your PA to follow up on all the invites and just before you rush off to your first meeting with ‘New Age NLP’, a consultancy you’ve just appointed, you manage to book an urgent session with your therapist after work, saying you want to discuss the very odd feeling you experienced earlier this morning and you particularly want to know why it always seems to just vanish as soon as you get to work?

The Rise and Fall of America’s management ‘empire’.

Posted on September 5, 2011 by Paul Kearns

There are many, many things that I have come to admire about the ‘American Way’ over the years but human capital management isn’t one of them (nor the subtlety of their automotive designs).

Having experienced, at first hand, the style of people management methods amongst some of the biggest American corporations (Exxon, Ford, GE, GM, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Texaco) it always struck me that any success they achieved was in spite of, rather than because of, their people management. The evidence to support this view has been growing steadily over the years (and is presented throughout this series) but to get to the heart of what is wrong in American management one only has to look at America’s inability to learn from its own mistakes.

This is most clearly manifest within the very institution that should be promoting learning – the ASTD (American Society for Training & Development) – which always based evaluation of learning on a poorly designed model from 1959 – Kirkpatrick’s 4 levels. When the design flaws apparent in this model were exposed, during the TQM revolution of the 1980’s, what did ASTD do? Instead of admitting they had failed, and returning to the drawing board, they moved into hyper-over-engineering mode and bolted on another superfluous ‘tailfin’* (Jack Phillips’ fatuous ‘level 5’) in the hope that the new look might deceive corporations enough for them to continue employing their members.

So far, American management has fallen for it. That does not worry me unduly and should please managers from competing countries. No, what really concerns me is that the ASTD is now trying to force perfectly sensible learning and development people, from around the world, into following its asinine lead. You don’t need to be a historian to realise that all empires go through a natural, rise-and-fall cycle and there is a now a big question mark over the West’s future but is this just another tell-tale sign of it entering its descendency phase. By the way, the word ‘descendency’ does not appear in either American or English dictionaries.

It is equally well documented that the grieving process tends to follow five phases of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and, finally, acceptance. So you might think that the US is already well into the bargaining phase; as evidenced by its internal, political wrangling over its inability to tackle its huge debt, but actually America is still firmly in denial. They are still trying to convince themselves and the world that HCM is something they are actually quite good at. This is why, if you want the ASTD’s blessing, you will have to attend one of Phillips’ garage workshops on how to add an enormous and costly tailfin to your ‘Mini’ (or whatever model you drive). It might look ridiculous and not fit very well but you’re stuck with it because it only comes in one size – ROI.

You would be forgiven for thinking that, as a Brit, I am being partisan here if it were not for the fact that I am the first to admit that we are no better at HCM in the UK. We might take a less ostentatious, more thoughtful, approach but thoughts don’t amount to a hill of beans. To experience minds that are completely open to new ways of addressing the human dimension of large corporations (and Governments) you need to travel much further East; to a very different, underlying philosophy. We have been here once before, when the Japanese taught the West a few lessons about how to manufacture efficiently, but there was always so much more that we needed to learn – not least of which was some humility.

When I teach in the East** myself I know they don’t have all the answers either but their great strength is that, unlike the Americans, they don’t try to pretend that they do – and neither do I. Empires that are built on hubris crash and burn for the very same reason. When you have believed that you are the best for so long you tend to breed people who either believe their own hype or, worse still, are too frightened to challenge it – why do you think Hitler employed Goebbels? When hype trumps reality learning ceases and the problems really start.

I still think early reports of the West’s demise are, in the words of one wise American – Mark Twain – greatly exaggerated, but my own prediction would be that the next, most sustainable, management empire is likely to be founded on clear evidence that management is learning to best serve society – not some ugly tailfin.

*Many other evaluation models have emanated from the US over the last 30 years or so – all of them adding unnecessary paraphernalia and gadgets rather than focusing on super-charging the engine.

**Beyond Evaluation & ROI

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