1. RightPlacing
Vince Kellen
Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium
CIO, University of Kentucky
© Vince Kellen

2. Agenda
g
 Knowledge worker productivity
 I d
Inadequacies of the dominant regime
i f th d i t i
 An alternate approach
 Transformational leadership
 Impediments
 Summary
© Vince Kellen 2

3. Problem
 Knowledge worker productivity varies wildly
• Programmer A p
g produced clean code 3X faster than p gprogrammer B
• Architect A engineers similar solutions at half the cost as Architect B
• Project manager A requires 1/10 of your time as Project manager B
• Call center agent A completes calls in 3/5 the time as agent B
• IT team A completes projects in 1/3 the time as Team B
• IT division X consumes twice the budget as division B for half the
output
 Why is this?
• Business culture business context the history of the firm
culture, context,
• Influence of management
• Individual differences in mental abilities, motivation
© Vince Kellen 3

4. Observation
 A few employees are ON FIRE and progressing rapidly
 Why is this?
• Cognitive development?
• Training?
• Practice and experience?
• Role or organizational alignment?
 Or are they simply madly in love with what they are doing?
© Vince Kellen 4

5. How Do You Know…
 If you are MADLY IN LOVE with your work?
• Your spouse, family tells y
p y you
• Your friends tell you
• Your co-workers tell you
 Maybe. But perhaps a good guide for this answer is
• Your body tells you
 Addicted to work? Is this a good thing or bad thing?
• Depends on the outcome
• Good stress versus bad stress
• Growth in skills and expertise versus stagnation
© Vince Kellen 5

6. How We Learn Things…
g
Long-term memory
L t
Working memory
Information
Information
© Vince Kellen 6

7. Implications
p
 Relative to long-term memory, working memory is tiny
 The font of deep expertise (and hence great knowledge worker
knowledge-worker
productivity) lies in highly structured and interlinked long-term memory
 Some of IQ is a function of working memory capacity, which can vary
g y p y, y
significantly between individuals. IQ is part innate, part developed in
childhood
 S
Some very high IQ people will h
hi h l ill have t ibl j b expertise
terrible job ti
 Some not-so-high IQ people will have darned good job expertise
 The rate at which information gets stored and codified in long-term
memory is a function of time, difficulty of the task, and effort
 D t
Determined, not-so-high IQ people can d
i d t hi h l develop great j b expertise
l t job ti
© Vince Kellen 7

8. Effort
 Passion precedes effort
 Wh t is passion?
What i i ?
• It is more than engagement, job-fit, organization-fit
• A strong desire, an emotional bond
• An identification of the self in the task
• It can transcend the organization and the role
• It can be cultivated
• It can look obsessive
• Is it another word for an addiction?
 How can we cultivate and channel motivation, determination and
passion in knowledge workers?
© Vince Kellen 8

9. Do We Have the Wrong Approach?
g pp
 To effectively manage knowledge workers in the 21st century, we
may have the wrong regime of practices in place
 Dominant regime
• Identify strategy, tactics
• Design the org structure
• Identify units, then roles
• Hire people to fit the role
 Problems
• Activities are often arbitrarily packaged and defined (look at EA
methodologies, TQM frameworks, industry job descriptions)
• Designers have very imperfect knowledge of the breadth and depth of
activities in IT work
© Vince Kellen 9

10. The Dominant Regime
g
Organizational
Strategy
St t
Business Unit
Strategy
Objectives,
Tactics, Capabilities
Functions/Units/Structure
Roles
Skills, Knowledge, Ability
Recruit
Activities
Responsibilities
© Vince Kellen 10

11. Question
While this approach simplifies life for executives who must
quickly design and implement organizational structures
structures,
does it materially affect the productivity of knowledge
workers?
© Vince Kellen 11

12. Another Approach
pp
Roles
Life mission
Passion Roles
Tailor
Personality, traits, values Roles
Skills, abilities, experience
Roles
Functions/Units/Structure
Objectives,
Tactics, Capabilities
Business Unit
Strategy
Organizational
Strategy
© Vince Kellen 12

13. What is Different in This Approach?
pp
 Rather than recruiting a person to a position, recruit a position to
the person
• Assemble a role fit for the qualities of the person
• Look at the set of people/roles and derive an organizational structure
• Determine the right way to match people to the structure
– Manager assessment
– Let the employee pick the team he/she wants!
 One must decompose the human spirit
• Our ability to discuss the structure of human motivation and expertise
development does not advance much past 7th grade
• Our penchant as managers is to discuss things other than sociology,
psychology and emotion
• Natural leaders have skills in these areas that usually developed
y p
unknowingly
© Vince Kellen 13

14. Features of the Approach
pp
1. Person first, role second
2. Passion i
P i inventories, l
t i learning plans
i l
3. Flexible position descriptions
4. Modular, changeable organizational design
5.
5 Lateral moves
6. Multiple assessments and assessors
7. Improved self assessment
8. Planned exits
© Vince Kellen 14

15. Person First, Role Second
,
 Why are you here on this earth?
• Just sucking up oxygen? Or are you doing something meaningful?
• Cows alongside a barn…
 Get deeper
• Recruit the right people based on level of motivation, capacity to learn
quickly, demonstrated high expertise or capacity for high expertise
development
• Over time, understand the person’s passion and life mission. Provide
coaches who can help shape their life mission
 A person who knows why they are here on this earth and placed
rightly in an organization behaves differently than a person
confused as to why they are here on this earth and placed wrongly
in an organization
© Vince Kellen 15

16. Why are y
y you here?
What What
you are you can
passion be the
about best at
What
the world How does
Good spot to be? needs now one find their
place?
16
© Vince Kellen

17. Passion Inventories, Learning Plans
, g
 See last year’s presentation
 S t the passionate person
Spot th i t
• Watch what they do with their free time
• Watch their level of work activity. More hours may indicate more
passion
• See what they proudly display
• Hear what the commonly talk about
y
• Check their education history, current activity
• Look for level of attainment and commitment
• See if they engage in long term skill development activities
long-term
 Passion can change over time. Lifestage and lifestyle changes can
affect passion
© Vince Kellen 17

18. Positions and Organizational Structure
g
 Flexible positions
• Need job descriptions that are less specific
j p p
• Need to consider how to handle pay grades and more generic job
descriptions
• Need to work closely with HR
 Flexible organizational structure
• Need a structure than can change not j
g just to dynamic market
y
conditions, but also to dynamic passion and skill development
conditions
• Be prepared to alter the structure to fit the p p , versus trying to fit
p p people, y g
the people into the structure
• Change the structure for the right people!
© Vince Kellen 18

19. Lateral Moves
 Premature upward promotion can kill the careers of promising
leaders
 IT is complex. Rotations across different aspects of IT and
business helps new leaders deal with greater complexity
 Most IT people’s passions lead them to more lateral moves than
upward moves. New toys, new technologies, new challenges…
 Can the organizational structure accommodate lateral moves when
the employee’s skill development calls for it? Or do capable people
sit waiting and waiting and waiting?
© Vince Kellen 19

20. Multiple Assessments, Multiple Assessors
p , p
 Assessing and shaping people’s passion, life mission and deep expertise
is difficult and prone to error
• Plan for multiple assessments a few a year perhaps
assessments,
• Use multiple people to assess. We all have our biases in viewing other people.
Have the assessors talk about their biases with each other.
 Plan for difficult conversations
• Miswanting (Gilbert & Wilson)
• Inaccurate self assessments
– What if they aren’t good at what they want to do? Is it hard to tell them this?
• Inaccurate assessor assessments
 Help people improve their self assessment
• Develop cycles of self data collection, self assessment, detection of gaps
between data and assessment. Over time, some individuals will get better at
detecting their own gaps
 The story of the “bad” boss about to get fired and how he got ON FIRE…
© Vince Kellen 20

21. Planned Exits
 If you want a good fireplace, you need a good chimney
 If passion and skill will t k someone outside th organization,
i d kill ill take t id the i ti
don’t fear it, celebrate it
 The next great passionate person will look forward to this person’s
exit. It may represent an opportunity
 Develop a plan for how the person will exit
 Failure to do this results in
• Hidden agendas, angry departures, decreased motivation for many
agendas departures many,
disruption, etc.
• Some day you may work for this person?
© Vince Kellen 21

22. RightPlacing Requires a Certain Type of Leadership
g g q yp p
 Transformational leadership…
James MacGregor Burns, Bernard Bass, and others
© Vince Kellen 22

23. Transformational Leadership Breeding Ground
p g
What values What values
do leaders do followers
profess? Gap see in use?
The gap between principles (values professed)
and practice (values in use) gives rise to
tension. Transformational leaders close the gap.
© Vince Kellen 23

24. Breaking Transformational Leadership Down
g p
 Idealized influence (II)
• Leaders behave as role models that followers wish to emulate
• Leaders are admired, respected, trusted with high moral/ethical conduct, are consistent rather than arbitrary
• Followers believe leaders to have persistence, determination, extraordinary abilities
• Leaders are willing to take risks
 Inspirational motivation (IM)
• Leaders behave in ways that motivate and inspire those around them
y p
• Leaders arouse team spirit
• Leaders get followers involved in envisioning attractive future states
• Leaders demonstrate commitment to goals
 Intellectual stimulation (IS)
• Leaders stimulate followers efforts to be innovative and creative by questioning assumptions and reframing problems
and looking at old situations in new ways
• No public criticism of individual member’s mistakes
• Leaders solicit new ideas and creative solutions from followers, who are included in the process
 Individual Consideration (IC)
• Leaders pay special attention to each individual follower’s needs for achievement and growth
• Leaders act as coaches or mentors
• Followers and peers are developed to successively higher levels of p
p p y g potential
• Individual consideration is practiced when new learning opportunities are created
• Leader’s behavior demonstrates acceptance of individual differences in followers
© Vince Kellen 24

25. Other Leadership Styles
p y
 Contingent reward (CR)
• Leader assigns or obtains follower agreement on what needs to be done with promised
or actual rewards offered in exchange
• Rewards can be transactional (e.g., bonus) or transformational (recognition, praise)
 Management by exception (MBE)
• Can be active (MBE-A) or passive (MBE-P)
• In active MBE, leader arranges to monitor potential deviances from standards, mistakes
or errors in follower assignments and takes corrective action (e.g., action in anticipation
of deviances) )
• MBE-P implies leaders waiting passively for deviances or errors first and then taking
action (e.g., only action after a complaint)
 Laissez faire
Laissez-faire (LF)
• LF is the avoidance or absence of leadership
• Necessary decisions are not made
• Leadership responsibilities are ignored
• Authority remains unused
© Vince Kellen 25

26. Full Range of Leadership Styles
g p y
Effective
The 4 I’s
(II, IM, IS, IC)
CR
Passive MBE-A Active
MBE-P
LF
Transformational Leadership, Bernard Bass, Ronald Riggio. 2005.
Ineffective
© Vince Kellen 26

27. Transformational Leadership Implications
p p
 RightPlacing frequently means personal transformation. Leaders
need to be aware of their role in effecting transformation
 For IT people, intellectual stimulation is relatively natural. Idealized
influence, inspirational motivation, and individual consideration
sometimes take work
• This requires continual feedback and review of their leadership
behavior
• Feedback is difficult at first. Be prepared for pushback
– Story of a “better assignment” taken as a “demotion”
 L d
Leadership can b i
hi be improved
d
• External programs, mentors and coaches can help
• These skills become critical for assisting in helping to place people
correctly
© Vince Kellen

28. Preconditions, Impediments
, p
 Preconditions
• A supportive enterprise culture, HR department
pp p p
• Experienced, mature management interested in helping others
• Time
 Impediments
• Lack of trust
• Insufficient time
• Overly rigid, “defensive” HR practices
• Relentless, mindless reorganizations
© Vince Kellen

29. Summarizing…
S i i
© Vince Kellen

30. Productivity
y
Team
++ Expertise Team Expertise =
Benefit
B fit
Superior ++ Passion
Solution ++ Passion/role alignment
++ Team/passion ensemble
++ Team self-assessment
Can individuals and teams
accept being average?
p g g
0 ++
Cost
© Vince Kellen 30

31. Balance
Being
B i confident th t you
fid t that
are in the right place at
the right time helps you
navigate turbulence
© Vince Kellen

32. Impact
p
Mastery lies in aligning
aspiration,
aspiration individuals and
organizations
© Vince Kellen 32

33. Questions?
Vince Kellen
vkellen@cutter.com
© Vince Kellen