Organizational Development

With all the DISC assessments, which one do you choose?

The original of course! Capital D, little “i”, capital S and C.

10997194_10153195037719309_5396767266025743694_o“Increased precision through adaptive testing makes this the best DiSC on the market. Don’t settle for imitations!”

The original DiSC assessment (now called Everything DiSC) developed by Dr. William Marston, a physiological psychologist with a Ph.D. from Harvard, studied how an individual perceived him or herself in a situation, the resulting emotions of the perception, and the likely subsequent behavior.

His work focused on directly observable and measurable psychological phenomena. He was interested in using practical explanations to help people understand and manage their experiences and relationships.

His 1928 book, Emotions of Normal People, Marston explains his theory on how normal human emotions lead to behavioral differences among groups of people and how a person’s behavior might change over time.

Marston’s model has two critical dimensions:

  1. the situation is perceived as either favorable or unfavorable
  2. the individual perceives him or herself as more or less powerful than the situation

Marston theorized that the behavioral expression of emotions could be categorized into four primary types, stemming from the person’s perceptions of self in relationship to his or her situation. These four types were labeled by Marston as Dominance (D), Inducement (I), Submission (S), and Compliance (C).

It wasn’t until Walter V. Clarke, an industrial psychologist, used Marston’s Theory to be the first person to build an assessment instrument. In 1956 he published the Activity Vector Analysis, a checklist of adjectives which asked people to mark descriptors they identified as true of themselves. The tool, used by Clarke since 1948, was intended for personnel selection by businesses. The four factors in his data (aggressive, sociable, stable and avoidant) were based on Marston’s model.

About 10 years later, Walter Clarke Associates developed a new version of this instrument for John Cleaver. It was cleverly called Self Discription. Instead of using a checklist, this test forced respondents to choose between two or more terms. Factor analysis of this assessment added to the support of a DISC-based instrument.

Since then is has gone through several updates and modifications, while remaining true to its original founder. In the 1970’s it was called Personal Profile System® (PPS), then in the 1990s the PPS 2800, which became known as DiSC Classic. In 2003, Inscape Publishing pushed the envelope further and developed an online version, DiSC Classic 2.0, which provided a richer feedback report and has been the standard bearer until 2007.

The Everything DiSC® product family, launched by Inscape Publishing in 2007, and now a brand of Wiley since 2013, was created to make the DiSC assessment even more valuable to its users. They did this by including the improved measurement technology of adaptive testing, making the tool more precise than ever. The increased precision and higher level of personalization result in a better experience for Everything DiSC users.

Everything DiSC harnesses the power of the third generation of the DiSC® model—one of the most widely used, scientifically-based approaches to assessing personality and developing critical interpersonal business skills. With programs for leadership, sales, management, and workplace development, Everything DiSC programs are in-depth, specialized, and easily customizable to fit clients’ needs.

EDGE Business Management Consulting, LLC an Authorized Partner for Everything DiSC, is a Human Capital Consulting firm, focusing on three primary areas to help you achieve exponential growth. We can serve you in many ways, however our focus is in the areas of Talent Management, Organizational Development, and Leadership Development.

DiSC vs. MBTI – Fill out the form and you’ll be given immediate access to information.

For more information, visit our website www.edgebmc.com or contact us at 414-301-3343.

HR’s Business Case for Talent Management

Today’s global economy is forcing a shift in the role human resources plays in organizations, moving from a transactional-administrative role to a strategic partner and facilitator of an organization’s most important asset – its people. However, projects in human resources and their functions may find it particularly difficult to obtain funding, and are typically one of the first things to be cut when budgets are tight. This unfortunate reality is principally due to human resource’s inability to align a credible business case followed by positioning it with key executives as having a quantifiable, direct impact on the bottom-line of the organization. Breitfelder and Dowling (2008) suggest human resources sits in the middle of some of the most compelling and competitive battlegrounds in business, where organizations deploy and fight over that most valuable of resources, their talent. Therefore, building a business case for talent management has become a strategic imperative for human resources professionals that will buttress an organizations ability to achieve its goals and objectives and in due course improve the performance of the bottom-line.

What is Talent Management?
The term talent management was conceived many years ago and initially referred to the programs used to manage and develop the top talent in an organization. Today, it has transformed into a key strategic and sustainable competitive advantage for organizations who are looking to recruit and retain talented employees throughout an organization. Where it was once for only the hand-picked few is now for many employees throughout an organization. Talent management today can be viewed from a holistic and strategic view and may be defined as a method to optimizing human capital through integrated organizational processes designed to attract, retain, develop, motivate and deploy employees, with the goal to create strong culture, engagement, capability, and capacity that meets current and future organizational objectives. Avedon and Scholes (2010) suggest talent are employees with strategic importance to the purpose and objectives of the organization. However, in today’s workplace it has expanded beyond the strategic few at the top to the strategic many deep and wide in the organization.

Building the Business Case
When building the business case, human resource leaders must structure it in a way that business leaders can understand the need. Building the business case for talent management begins by defining a strategy in the context of the business strategy. In other words, the strategy should help the organization to achieve its business goals through focusing on its talent. Business leaders understand the need to make money and talent management, when done well, makes money (Bersin, 2012). Therefore talent management needs to move away from just being a human resources project or program and forward towards being a true sustainable business strategy.

Strategy is about change and should not stand alone as a management process (Kaplan and Nadler, 2001). A talent management strategy needs to describe what the changes will be and how the changes will happen. Strategy maps can help by describing the changes an organization would like to bring about and, just as importantly, the systems and processes that ensure those changes happen. Kaplan and Nadler (2001) see strategy maps explaining what will be different and how organizations change in a cohesive, integrated and systematic way. In that same vein, human resource leaders will face a nearly impossible challenge to persuade executives to fund a business case for a talent management strategy if it fails to reflect a genuine understanding of the business. Consequently, strategy is also about a series of choices to do things differently than competitors so to provide a unique and attractive value proposition to attract, manage, develop, motivate and retain key people. (Kaplan and Nadler, 2001). Mapping a talent management strategy will be integral in demonstrating how an investment in talent management processes and programs can deliver value to the organizations customers and the bottom-line.

Organizational Benefits
Organizational benefits of a talent management strategy will vary depending on the industry and mission, vision, and goals of the organization. Bersin (2011) adds that talent management is not something to copy from a book and that the strategy will be unique to the organization as well as the benefits. However, a structured talent management strategy will systematically close the gap between the current human resources in an organization and the talent it will ultimately need in order to respond to business challenges in the future (Smith, Wellins, and Paese, 2011). Closing this gap will mean the organization will be able to remain competitive and retain key talent, attract new talent, and assemble plans for key roles and people in the organization in order to allow for proper development experiences. According to a study by The Hackett Group, Inc. (2010), they found that organizations with strong talent management strategies were like to see an increase in their bottom-line earnings by 18 percent. Additionally a Bersin study from 2010-2011 showed that organizations deployed strategic talent management saw twice the revenue of other organizations, 40% less employee turnover, along with 38% higher levels of engagement (Bersin, 2011). So, the evidence is clear, organizations that spend money and time on strategic talent management efforts will see their investment essentially pay for itself.

Conclusion
Organizations that deploy effective strategic talent management practices truly understand that talent is a key competitive advantage. Building the business case will be the hardest part for human resources professionals, however, they can help themselves by genuinely understanding the business and seek and give guidance to the executives who generally do not want to invest their time in these processes. Building the business case and coupling it with a strategy map will provide for a simple and powerful way for the human resources professional to demonstrate value and communicate visually how the strategy can be executed. Additionally, it will be critical for the human resources professional to decouple the strategy from being just a human resources initiative but instead a whole organization or business initiative. Doing this will allow for human resources to be viewed as a true strategic business partner. When organizations leverage strategic talent management practices they can project confidence to their market and remain nimble and flexible regardless of the market conditions.

References
Avedon, M. J., & Scholes, G. (2010). Building Competitive Advantage through Integrated Talent Management. In Silzer, R. F., & Dowell, B. E. (Eds.), Strategy-driven talent management: A leadership imperative (73-116). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Bersin, J. (2012, January 22). The Business Case for Talent Management: Steve Ballmer Agrees. Retrieved from http://www.bersin.com/blog/post/2012/01/The-Business-Case-for-Talent-Management--Steve-Ballmer-Agrees.aspx
Breitfelder, M.D., & Dowling, D.W. (2008, July-August). Why Did We Ever Go Into HR? Harvard Business Review, 86, 39-43.
Kaplan, R.S. & Nadler, D.P. (2001). Building Strategy Maps. In Kaplan, R.S. & Nadler, D.P. The Strategy- focused organization: How balanced scorecard companies thrive in the new business environment (pp. 69-105). Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation.
Smith, A.B., Wellins, R.S. & Paese, M. (2011). The CEO’s Guide To: Talent Management A Practical Approach. Pittsburgh, PA. Development Dimensions International. Retrieved from http://www.ddiworld.com/ddiworld/media/booklets/ceoguidetotalentmanagement_bk_ddi.pdf?ext=.pdf
Study Finds Experienced Talent Management Brings Higher Earnings & Other Benefits. (2010). HR Focus, 87(3), 8-9.

Need to Communicate Better? Focus on Synergy

The time we spend communicating is immense, whether it’s face-to-face, email, video, phone, social media, an individual or a networking group, a formal or an impromptu discussion, every interaction must produce results and accomplish its purposes efficiently, effectively and generate as much action as possible. The key to generating maximum action is to focus on generating synergy when we communicate.

Synergy is the interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects.

Simply put synergy means the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The relationship which the parts have to each other is a part in and of itself – the most empowering, unifying and exciting parts.

synergy chalkThe essence of synergy about valuing the mental, emotional, and psychological differences between people. The key to valuing these differences is to realize that all people see the world, not as it is, but as they are, commonly known as perception.

When focused on synergistic communication you are able to develop creative possibilities, including better solutions and services. If synergy isn’t achieved, even the effort will usually result in a better compromise.

Focusing on synergy enables us to be more participative rather than suppressive in our communication. Especially so when making decisions about how to achieve a goal or complete work, make it a habit to ask for others ideas. Be genuine and open to others ideas and their possibilities, build on them and use them.

Dr. Steven Covey in his book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People shares that in Habit 6:

Synergy lets us discover jointly things we are much less likely to discover by ourselves.

When we focus on synergy in our communication we generate trust. High trust leads to high cooperation and communication. Leading to better results in many aspects including our business and personal relationships and balance sheets.

Let us show you how we develop synergy with our Syn-EDGE-y Communication Model.  Visit our website at www.edgebmc.com today.
synergy comm model.2

Impact of Culture on Global Businesses

Like a personality is to an individual, is culture to organizations. Culture impacts every aspect of an organization from its top executives to its newest employee to its latest office environment in India. Organizational Behavior author and Management Professor John Schermerhorn asserts organizational culture is the collective values, beliefs and norms that develop over time and guide the behaviors of those who are part of the organization. Another way to make concrete an abstract concept is to think of culture as the glue that binds and shapes how employees execute the organization’s vision and mission and how customers and communities perceive the organizations value. With the explosion of the global business environment the impact of culture is even greater than before. Therefore organizations that are conducting business in global locations must work to become a local company and integrate the local culture into their business practices. When they succeed they can reap huge rewards, but when they fail they may leave a mark that may be unrepairable to the members of that culture and their own business.

In order for organizations to reap rewards and potentially increase their value, leaders of the organization must focus on becoming a localized organization. When leaders adapt their business practices to match the culture and exert effort to avoid any potential misinterpretations of cultural customs, they are demonstrating a level of respect to the culture and building a foundation of trust. When organizations make the decision to go global, the impact on organizational development (OD) is just as imperative as sales or logistics. In a training capacity, OD should take into consideration language barriers and cultural differences in the context of how content is delivered. Change management also becomes a major element for OD, they must taking into consideration how the culture deals with and delivers change. According to Dr. Dan Denison, Chairman & Founding Partner, Denison Consulting, organizations that value culture and respect members’ participation may generate a return on their investment almost twice as high as those organizations that fail to consider culture.

Organizations that recognize and value culture, especially in a global business environment tend to have exponentially better performance in their respective markets. Organizational culture directly affects performance management in large part due to the climate the culture creates. Dr. Benjamin Schneider, professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, shares that climate focuses around two critical areas 1) how the organization behaves on a daily basis and 2) what the goals are of the organization, these then reveal and make visible how employees understand policies, practices, and rewards. Blake Ashforth of Wayne State University, reinforces that culture, a collective idea of values, beliefs and norms, determines the climate’s policies, practices, and rewards that are considered relevant by its members. An example of this would be if an organizational culture supports a climate of providing a reward, such as a bonus, for a high level of performance. However, in the global business environment, organizations must ‘customize to the culture’ their performance management and rewards, for instance employees in many European countries prefer to receive time off from work, where in Asia employees may prefer additional monies.

For business leaders to continue to be successful in a global environment there are many strategies they can use to develop and manage their organizations. On such strategy this must include the recognition of not just one corporate culture, but their host country culture and that there are many subcultures. Author Guy Saffold suggests that when recognizing the many subcultures, business leaders recognize the varying cultural features spread throughout the organization and their cross-sections of interactions. Saffold adds, it is critical for leaders to understand that culture creates the climate of the organization and climate also acts in a way to modify culture. Claremont Graduate University Professor of Management, Vijay Sathe, shares that with a better understanding of an organization’s culture, management can appropriately enter, deviate from, and change the culture needed to continue their success in the global business environment. While organizational culture remains an abstract concept to many, it’s important for business leaders and employees alike to embrace the culture or find one that is best suited to meet and challenge their professional and personal goals.

Mistakes, Errors, and Humility

If you’ve made a mistake in your life, raise your hand…great.  If you’ve learned something from your mistakes, leave your hand up…great!  If you’ve used what you’ve learned from your mistakes to prevent it from happening again, keep your hand up…great!  If you’ve used what you’ve learned from your mistakes and applied it to a whole different situation, great, that’s learning agility.  The Society for Industrial & Organizational Psychology uses the following to define learning agility:

Learning agility refers to a person’s desire and ability to learn from experience, and to then apply their learning to other situations
Generally speaking, people who have a greater ability for learning agility take more control over their own learning by finding opportunities to grow, requesting feedback about their work, and consistently engage in self-reflection and evaluation regarding their work and careers.
So where is this leading you might ask?  Let’s look at mistakes and errors as a starting point.  Mistakes imply a misconception or inadvertence and usually expresses less criticism than an error.  An error suggests a standard or guide exists and not making effective use of this, instead straying from the right course resulting in failure.  Regarding the error, the standard or guide may be written, verbally agreed to, or perhaps an unwritten, unspoken cultural norm that exists.  The key to mistakes and errors is that we learn from them and leverage that experience for other situations.  This requires that we have the courage to take risks, be creative and innovative and know that we might fail.
Which leads me to humility.
Humility by definition is the quality or state of not thinking you are better than other people : the quality or state of being humble.  If one believes that they are better than other people, they also are inclined to believe that they do not make mistakes or errors.  We all know someone who has never backed down for fear of being perceived as weak or dismissing others ideas just because the it’s not aligned with their ideas for fear of being wrong or dismissing valid performance feedback for fear of actual self-reflection.  To overcome fear Bill Treasurer, author of Courage Goes to Work, proposes a bold antidote: courage.  Courage is not fearlessness, in fact it is being fearful and being able to overcome that fear.  When someone says “that was a humbling experience” they are saying “before that situation I felt I was better than the other people involved and now I don’t.”  They overcame their fears of self-reflection.  When practiced often this can lead to higher learning agility.  So, those people that we know, who fear making mistakes and errors, who lack humility, must learn to have courage first to overcome whatever it is they fear.
Whether we make a mistake, commit an error, or even fail at something, it’s imperative that we recognize we have a choice to learn from the situation.  To actually learn and apply it to a new situation, we must overcome our fears by demonstrating humility and courage.
Nothing happens until something moves.

Motivation & Culture on Strategy Execution

Imagine an organization that offered more opportunities for delegation, empowerment and motivation as more authority is given to front-line associates by increasing a manager’s span of control.  Imagine an organization that improved communication from within as messages pass efficiently through fewer levels of hierarchy.  Imagine an organization that could remove departmental rivalry and silos if managers truly understood their roles.  Moreover, imagine an organization where both the importance of financial incentives and the selection of performance indicators clearly aligned managers’ reasons to motivate employees to make decisions that boost growth.  Organizations have a myriad of strategy-supportive motivational practices and reward systems to increase employee commitment in achieving strategy execution and make these imaginations a reality. Many researches and topics in text books share that financial incentives commonly top the list of management tools leveraged to increase passionate employee commitment to executing strategy and operational excellence.  However, financial incentives alone are not the most effective.  Managers should leverage a combination of tools to increase employee commitment to strategy execution.

Management Tools for Motivation

Motivation can be complex.  In some cases employee motivations are clear and predictable. In other cases, employee motivations are stirred by deeper forces.  We know motivation is the process that triggers human behavior and moves it in the direction of attaining particular goals.  Both extrinsic and intrinsic motivations are powerful resources for leaders. It is natural for employees to seek recognition and reward, just as it is natural for employees to search for meaning and connection with others.  Some of the most important management tools for increasing motivation, financial incentives aside, include providing attractive fringe benefits and perks, providing for internal promotion opportunities, valuing and respecting employee ideas through acknowledgement and implementation, creating a healthy environment of trust through sharing information, simply providing regular, balanced positive and developmental feedback, and along with a myriad of other tools.  Clearly organizations must find a healthy balance of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. The good news is that a healthy balance is also a necessary element of a company that has a competitive advantage.

According to Scott Keller and Colin Price (2011) of McKinsey & Company organizations that have strong organizational health have an above average EBITDA margin, are two times more likely to have an above average book value, and are 1.5 times more likely to have an above average net income to sales.  A great example of this can be found a Yahoo!.  As CEO Marissa Meyer took the helm she instituted several changes, one of which transformed the culture at Yahoo! and put the slowly fading internet company back on the competitive advantage street.  Marissa decided to begin offering free meals to their entire campus.  She recognized that many people got work done around meals and that those who brought their lunches were not engaging the conversations around the work and changed the reward systems to increase their organizational health.

The Strong Culture and Strategy

Edgar Schein’s seminal work on corporate culture  goes on to define corporate culture at three levels, first, a collection of artifacts (physical locations, policies, practices, company stories), second, an agreed upon set of espoused values (cultural markers in the form of a mission and values statement), and third, set of often implicit organizational assumptions. The three levels Schein describes makes up the core of how the organization operates and is seen internally and externally.  When an organization has a strong culture clearly aligned with strategy-supportive values, behavioral norms and practices, it significantly increases its competitive advantage by contributing to the influence and effectiveness of their efforts toward strategy execution. A strong culture can also impede strategy execution if not maintained and boundaryless.   This occurs because the culture is deeply rooted in its practices.  Organizations may see a new idea or a new process or a change in how things are done as a threat.  This may cause a strong organizational culture to purge people and process, which may impede strategy execution and make the culture appear change averse and not agile.

While no questions remain that a strong culture can enhance strategy execution, a strong culture that is misdirected must be improved through strong and competent leadership.  A vital component, competent leadership, is required throughout the organization and is essential to redirect culture change efforts towards a strong and balanced culture aligned with good strategy execution.  This invigorates employees, intrinsically deepening their commitment and enhancing their productivity and increases the likeliness of success.

Balance Between Rewards and Punishment

Finding a balance between rewards and punishment is not an easy task for organizations to undertake.  Research suggests organizations must consider features of both because both are necessary.  A key to successful balance will be to implement accountability mechanisms to reward employees meeting and exceeding expectations and punish those who fall outside of expectations.  The method of aligning rewards to the achievement of strategic goals and financial targets is one of the most powerful tools to gain the commitment of employees.   And, while the aforementioned method is one of the most powerful tools, if the method creates a hyper competitive environment it may cause undue stress and actually be counterproductive to strategy execution.  Generating a level of healthy competition will drive greater success in executing the strategy.  Another key to successful balance is to provide more positive than negative consequences.  When there are more positive than negative consequences employees are more motivated and less anxious, more loyal and less flighty, more creative and less protective, and more willing to execute on the strategy of set forth by the organization.

Albert Einstein once said that we cannot keep doing the something over and over again expecting different results, that this was insanity.  Rewarding behavior for one set of outcomes expecting other outcomes might be considered organizational insanity which degrades an organization from successfully executing its strategy.   While values statements are a good place to start to build strong organizational culture, they become simple platitudes unless organizations live them through behaviors.  Organizations that focus on rewarding employees who demonstrate the right behaviors and purge those who do not, will strengthen their ability to execute strategy.  This strategy will require competent managers and leaders to leverage the multitude of motivational tools at their disposal alongside financial incentives to find the right balance between rewards and punishment and align performance goals to drive accountability throughout each layer of the organization.  Employees who are properly rewarded will have little to no motivational constraints, providing the organization with discretionary effort for strategy execution and drive a competitive advantage.