Written for EO by Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, disaster avoidance expert, speaker and author. It’s tragically common for people in organizations to be promoted up the hierarchy to their “level of incompetence,” a concept in management known as the Peter Principle. They are promoted because they did well in their previous job, not based on their potential to meet the needs of the new position into which they are placed, even when the new role requires a wholly different set of skills. Moreover, there’s often no training for the new skills they need to learn to succeed in their new position. This combination of poor promotion practices and lack of training stem largely from a dangerous judgment error known as the curse of knowledge, referring to the fact that when we learn something, we face great difficulty in relating to someone who doesn’t know it. In other words, once we gain a set of skills, such as in managing others, we tend to forget what it feels like to lack these abilities; once we acquire relevant knowledge, such as the jargon of our profession, we tend to use it to speak to those who don’t know this jargon, and then wonder why they fail to understand. As a result, we have difficulties communicating with others about our professional activities, teaching them the skills they need to learn, and collaborating with them in professional settings. The curse of knowledge error comes from how our brains are wired. It represents one of the many dangerous judgment errors that scholars in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics call cognitive biases. Fortunately, recent research in these fields shows how you can use pragmatic strategies to address these dangerous judgment errors, whether in your professional life, your relationships, or other areas in life. You need to evaluate where cognitive biases are hurting you and others in your team and organization. Then, you can use structured decision-making methods to make “good enough” daily decisions quickly or more thorough ones for important choices. How Does the Curse of Knowledge Harm a Growing Company?What about the curse of knowledge? A case in point: a quickly-growing manufacturing company faced a serious Peter Principle and curse of knowledge challenge. Staff got promoted into supervisory roles based on a combination of seniority and prior performance. Then, newly promoted supervisors were expected to pick up the skills on the job, without training in leadership. The problem stemmed from the curse of knowledge, with most of the leaders in the department of transportation forgetting the difficulties they had in developing their own leadership skills. A newly-hired HR director, coming in with an outside perspective, recognized this long-standing practice as a serious issue. She convinced the department’s leadership to develop a leadership development training program for newly promoted supervisors. The HR director brought in Disaster Avoidance Experts to consult on creating the leadership development program. We started with an opt-in pilot training program for supervisors who were recently promoted from the ranks. Through focus groups and assessments of current supervisors, we identified eight core skills required for this role as compared to their previous positions, along with some relevant knowledge. We then created a training curriculum that conveyed these skills and knowledge, along with a mentor program teaming a new supervisor with one who had more than five years of experience. We also created a method of evaluating success, namely seeing whether the newly promoted supervisors received a rating of “meeting or exceeding expectations” on their six-month performance assessment. Leadership Development TrainingIn the past, an average 63 percent of those promoted met this requirement, providing a clear baseline by which to measure our intervention. Out of 48 recently promoted supervisors, 21 chose to join the pilot training program. Of these 21, a total of 17—83 percent—received a rating of “meeting or exceeding expectations,” much higher than the baseline. Out of the 27 supervisors who chose not to join the program, only 16 received the same rating, or 59 percent, so around the baseline. Seeing how the new training curriculum substantially boosted performance by new supervisors, the manufacturing company’s leadership endorsed the HR director’s desire to train all newly-promoted supervisors. I regret that such leadership development training didn’t address the manner in which the Peter Principle determined how supervisors were selected. Unfortunately, the leadership wasn’t willing to discuss this issue, as it would mean challenging the union contract’s promotion guidelines. Still, at least the new supervisors had a much better chance of success due to addressing the curse of knowledge. Dr. Gleb Tsipursky is on a mission to protect leaders from dangerous judgment errors known as cognitive biases by developing the most effective decision-making strategies. With over 20 years of experience as CEO of the training, coaching, and consulting firm Disaster Avoidance Experts, he also spent over 15 years in academia as a cognitive neuroscientist and behavioral economist. He’s an EO speaker, a recent EO 360° podcast guest and author of Never Go With Your Gut (2019), The Blindspots Between Us (2020) and The Truth Seeker’s Handbook (2017). The post The Curse That Causes Promotions to Fail appeared first on Octane Blog – The official blog of the Entrepreneurs' Organization. via Octane Blog – The official blog of the Entrepreneurs' Organization https://ift.tt/2RjPeab
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Most organizational charts end up taped to break room walls and forgotten. Bruce Eckfeldt shares how to make yours a valuable tool for everyone in your company. Every employee manual I’ve seen contains an org chart that shows who is in charge and who reports to whom. Usually, the names of executive employees and managers are in boxes with connectors cascading down to the front lines of the organization. Many of those charts are out of date. There may be names that have changed or reporting lines that are no longer relevant. There could even be entire departments that have been removed or added. The problem with these charts is that they are trying to capture the wrong information and are not being used correctly. Here are six things that I focus on when coaching leadership teams on creating organizational charts in order to make them a useful and productive tool for everyone in the company. 1. Focus on functions.The main purpose of an organizational chart is to show the functional divisions of a company and how they work together. Your organizational chart is a map for how to navigate your business. A good chart will tell employees who needs to be aware of specific issues and information. At a basic level, a good chart shows the vertical divisions between departmental functions and horizontal levels of reporting and management structure. An organizational chart will clarify questions like “is shipping part of operations or customer service?” and “do the software developers report to head of product or head of technology?” Done well, a chart should clearly indicate who is on the executive team, who the middle managers are, and who is handling the front line execution. 2. Ditch the names.I always suggest erasing all of the names on the chart. It is more important to see the functional roles and how they report and relate to one another. Names change quickly, but roles do not. If you prefer to use names, make a separate table listing names and contact information by role or put the name in small print under the functional role. I suggest you include a phone number or email and the date they took on the role. Pro tip: it is great to see a history of the roles a person has filled and when they began each. 3. Support the business.A well-designed organization and well-written organizational chart should show how the employees support the business operations. The departments and role names should relate to the nature of the business and operational model. For example, a manufacturer will have departments and roles in supply management, manufacturing, facilities, and shipping. A technology SAS company will have marketing, product design, software development, and dev-ops. Don’t just copy a generic organizational chart from a textbook. It is important to design one that truly supports your business model and operations. 4. Indicate performance metrics.I like to add performance metrics to each of the key roles in an organizational chart. I look at one to three of the core measures of success and suggest one leading indicator and one lagging indicator. The leading indicator measures the activities and tasks and the lagging indicator measures the outputs and outcomes. For example, for a director of sales, I will list metrics such as pitch meetings or proposals for leading indicators, and metrics such as conversion rates and closed sales dollars per week as indicators of output. 5. Align your core processes.In addition to functional divisions between departments, you can also map out your core processes across the horizontal access and indicate who is accountable and involved in each process. The goal here is to recognize that some processes cut across the functional division of the company and someone needs to be responsible for aligning and coordinating activities to ensure the process is successful. Safety is a great example of a cross-cutting process. HR must ensure people are trained properly, facilities need to make sure that the physical environment is safe, and operations must ensure that safety measures are backed into the standard operating procedures. 6. Define your terms.Your organizational chart is a map of your business. It is a tool that any employee can use to learn who to go to with questions, key information, and concerns. In order to do this well, people need to use the same language to refer to roles and departments. For example, if some people call it lead generation and others call it marketing it will get confusing. Also, you want to make sure that your titles are consistent between departments. Don’t label someone as director of product development and call them sales director in another department. These suggestions will help make your organizational chart a living, breathing tool for helping people understand and manage the company structure. Most importantly, keep your organizational chart updated frequently and make sure everyone has access to the most current version. Bruce Eckfeldt is the founder of Eckfeldt & Associates. A version of this article originally appeared on his blog. EO is a collection of like-minded entrepreneurs focused on business growth, personal development and community engagement. Learn what 14,000+ entrepreneurs are experiencing as members of EO. The post Here Are Five Ways to Make Your Organizational Chart More Useful appeared first on Octane Blog – The official blog of the Entrepreneurs' Organization. via Octane Blog – The official blog of the Entrepreneurs' Organization https://ift.tt/2DA1Phm |
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November 2020
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