CUT Through the Data to Empower One's Individuality of Change
January is historically a time to turn the page, begin a new chapter, or start on a targeted resolution. For many, it’s also a time of dread and angst as many organizations are in the midst, or close to concluding, everyone’s favorite (dreaded) performance review. I promise that most of you who just read that partially laughed but partially felt that pit in your stomach called angst.
Most organizations depend on hierarchy reporting mechanisms that generally review employee performance to retrieve input on an annual basis. Some negative perceptions behind performance reviews are that they are both subjective and feel like a check box process that management is “required” to perform. The inherent problem with performance reviews is that they are labeled as individual performance reviews, which within itself is not the issue, but the fact that they are limited due to their infrequency. Most performance reviews rarely include growth or career trajectory plans unless it’s for a select few top performers.
I will tweak the 10/80/10 approach, to make it resonate more. The 10/80/10 to management leadership is an excellent method to continuously be involved in a worker's productivity while giving autonomy. I will adopt these percentages to tweak the approach taken by GE's Jack Welch’s vitality curve (20/70/10) for performance reviews. Using 10/80/10 as a baseline, 10% (or 10 people) will be considered top performers because only a select amount can be identified as top performers; 80% are performing as expected, and 10% are under-performing. I’m just using law of averages, but most people can relate. I have been in this position to be reviewed and had to conduct reviews in a similar manner, but I struggled mightily. It was difficult to identify everyone on the team as not being “as expected” or better because I was invested in their performances from day 1. A few people directly helped to shape that perspective from a former great-natured manager in Ed Medina , a great executive who the first to show me trust in Mike Elsenbroek , a former colleague turned boss who results driven with a smile in Joel Gustafson (by the far most colorful critic of his own golfing abilities), and a person I would consider a mentor and confidant from which I took the most from in Michelle Fuller . While he may not thought I was paying attention, I recently observed a continuous improvement management style in person when visiting a client, but a friend first, in Andrew Ho (arguably the greatest office views in NYC overlooking Hudson Yards). Little did each of these people know the influential impact its had in creating a purpose in pursuing organizational change as a career directive for me. If organizations want performance reviews and productivity enhancements to take shape, they need to reshape the engagement process from the onset and adopt a real-time engagement model by investing more in a person’s tenure instead of once a year.
A little over a year ago, I launched a think-tank service that I apply to transformative projects concentrating on technical and/or process adoption through individual adaptability. Some organizations talk about CX (customer experience), which focuses on utilizing and adopting a specific software as intended (usually a technology service). While there is a litany of great CX professionals and utilization adoption stories out there, what I’m talking about EX (employee experience). While getting the most out of a service is a measurable KPI (key performance indicator), getting the most out of an individual is an oversight because measuring people’s utilization is hard. Or is it? This is not a fault of management or leadership because a majority of leaders get promoted into their roles, and while they are inclined to take beneficial leadership courses, most leaders and managers do not come from backgrounds studying people (e.g., Psychology).
alli (pronounced ally) came about because I believed that everyone, managers and working professionals alike, deserved a work ally. If the software is continuously improved with minor and major release updates, why not apply that to people through continuous coaching, mentorship, advisement, self-improvement, change management, or development tailored to each individual? Humans are like an iPhone. We all have a similar exterior shell and working interior parts. What makes an iPhone unique is the apps installed and how they are used, similar to the thoughts we have and how we use those thoughts to go through life. Knowledge and education are our coding and how we apply it to our software release.
An adequately aligned workforce engagement process should (a) identify how the workforce categorizes the organization through data received on their perception of the company's identity by leveraging an integrated (bought-into) cultural framework and (b) one that seeks to identify and map individual attributes (personas) to the bought-into cultural framework. While studying organizational culture, I identified seven common personality types in which mapping individual experiences help to identify where individuals are at any point in their personal growth journey comprised of:
Unlike a DISC or Myers-Briggs personality test, I don’t believe one should be stuck with the label of those test's position. They have their merits and are grounded in science, but people can change if you help them to so let’s help them in real-time. Growth doesn’t happen and is not limited to once a year like performance reviews. Growth is continuous and ongoing. Centering on internal stakeholder intrinsic and extrinsic characteristics address drivers towards satisfaction and dissatisfaction in the workplace. Identifying and projecting cultural profiles within organizations helps design new cultural dynamics that drive transparency, convergence, performance, and trust. Practical measurements of change require identifying milestone indicators. To do so, alli’s CUT engagement model aims to capture qualitative KPIs in relation to an individual decision-making by cutting through the data in order to promote one's individuality comprised of:
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Though there is no single measure of performance that every organization can fit, shared characteristics make an environment effective specific to adaptive constructs. As it relates to the current circumstances, adaptive competency observations would center around learned tasks and procedures, openness to cultural changes, demonstrating interpersonal intelligence, and effectively adjusting to fluid work situations. Acceptance of change results in high-performance collaboration that are generally motivated from of a combination of purpose, clear goals, and incentives derived from efficacy, leadership, empathy, communication, empowerment, and standardization.
I went as far as to create Information Psychology™ personality matrix which creates a behavioral engagement model that takes into consideration various uncertainty effects including things like conditional probabilities, loss aversion, and prospect theories. The premise is an engagement model on how to interact with specific personality types that create a currency of cultivation establishing a value-based system that promotes individual change while simultaneously aligning it to the success of an organization’s goals and bottom line. Let’s walk through an example centered around technology because technology is everywhere. There are people who are tech savvy (comfortable with technology) on one spectrum and others who are who are tech weary (not just uncomfortable with technology, but at times apprehensive).
On one end, tech savvy individuals are most familiar with technology and are quick to pick up technologies as illustrated in the first effort and adaptability engagement model below. This demographic may prove challenging due to the preconceived notion of technology being easy (e.g., coming naturally to them, long years of experience with it, or having grown up with it). While adaptability and adoption may come easy, the challenge may be in the form of getting them to buy in [to an inferior technology than their used to]. They may approach the new tech, change, process, or service as immature, inadequate, or altering what they believe as a better process or tool. To engage with them, a manager may consider approaches that include affirm their positions and ideas, offer encouragement in their connotations towards a specific technology (being agreeable while still working with them to adopt until you can enhance), and acknowledging their concerns by paraphrasing their positions.
Oppositely, tech weary individual will have the greatest resistance to change as illustrated in the second effort and adaptability engagement model below. This could be due to personal discomfort towards automated processes, having done things in a certain way (e.g., anchoring). While they know change is inevitable, knowledge transfer is challenging as they encounter bounded rationality. Acquiring knowledge about their work process may not be readily accessible (undocumented, workplace knowledge, unwillingness to share). Introduction of new skills, even if offering to provide knowledge and new career paths, may prove challenging (e.g., this is the only way they know to work or what to work with). To engage with them and help to de-mitigating risk to adoption and adaptability, a manager may consider approaches that include avoiding commanding positions, creating the perception of threat to an individual role, not just affirm but provide confirmation that their concerns are valid.
One of the most important elements in the occupational stress process is the perception of control. More organizations indirectly create dependencies on technology, ceding control to those technologies to run operations and productivity effectively. Technology can both be positive in the advent to work but equally negative in the stress of work that affect both individual careers and organizational culture. It is imperative that there is a consensus of a singular cultural identity throughout the organization that is communicated, publicized, and practiced upon. Examining real transformational change in the workplace requires both qualitative and qualitative insights. In the coming weeks, months, and years, there will be advancements beyond the three functional types of AI (narrow, general, and super) and the growing number of AI sub-categories under these three where people will need a work ally.
Knowing your data is one thing. Knowing your people is another. Do you really know yours?
great article
Operations | Information Technology | Culture & Inclusion at McCourt Global
3moWalead A Anwar, MBA, I always know you're paying attention! 😊 I love that you're publicly reengaging with the great work and research that you've done here. This is so applicable in many of today's workplaces.