Theory versus Practice?…Or, Is “theory” a dirty word?

Posted on June 15, 2009 by mkizilos

Last week we held the final preview session for our Minnesota Executive Program (MEP), and something that one of our faculty said stuck with me.  It was in response to a question about how past participants had applied what they learned in the program to their jobs.  The question was initially fielded by two past participants who attended the preview–one from Lund Foods, and one from Hormel.  They each explained how the program has been valuable to them, and provided examples. But then, Norm Chervaney, one of our faculty who has been teaching in the MEP program for over 20 years made an interesting point.  He suggested that people sometimes approach university-based executive education assuming what turns out to be a false dichotomy: “theory” versus “practice.” 

His point was simply this:  “Would you want to have a surgeon operate on you who did not have a deep understanding of physiology?”  I know I would want my surgeon to have both a theoretical or conceptual understanding of body systems, and a lot of experience actually doing the surgery. 

So, why is it that so often “theory” is used as a dirty word.  As in, “that is just a bunch of theory,”  or “that is too theoretical.”  Yet, one never hears anyone saying, “that’s just based on experience,” or “that is just too practical.” 

But, perhaps they should. 

In the best sense of the word, “theories” simply help you to make sense of complex situations by helping you to understand the pricniples or elements that are in play.  We create and test theories–though we don’t call them that–all the time. Any time you use your prior experience to guide your actions in a new situation you are doing so because you have created an implicit theory about how things work and you believe that your theory will apply to the new situation.  Of course, the only evidence to support your theory is your own experience. 

In contrast, well done research leverages the experience of others in similar situations and distills down the essential lessons. In addition, since theories in the academic world are more formal, they must stand up to intense scrutiny, and can be tested with enormous amounts of data and well-designed experiments.  I don’t actually know any reputable academic who deals in the type of theory that some think of when they think of academic theory–the armchair theorizing that is disconnected from the real world. I think the last great armchair theorist was William James, and he died in 1910. However, I do know of plenty of consultants who sell themselves as experts based on their experience, yet lack even a basic theoretical foundation for their work.  For example, many executive coaches operating today do coaching that crosses the line into therapy…and don’t even realize it because they lack sufficient knowledge of psychology.

Good executive education recognizes the importance of practical experience and theoretical knowledge and presents a blend of ”theory” and “practice.”

Filed under: Defining Executive Education, Executive Education, Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

MBA Alternatives?

Posted on May 18, 2009 by mkizilos

 If you missed the May edition of Twin Cities Business Magazine, you also missed the special focus section on Executive Education.  In addition to discussion about various MBA options, local universities also highlighted their non-degree MBA alternatives (see pages 90-91). 

I highlighted the Minnesota Executive Program (MEP) and the Minnesota Management Institute (MMI), our two robust general management programs.  While some view these programs as “MBA alternatives,” many who attend these programs are actually looking to refresh skills acquired during an MBA some 5-7+ years ago. 

The Carlson School has been offering these general management programs for well over 30 years.  The programs have evolved over the years, but the impact that they have on participants has not changed.  The clear message from every person I have spoken with about these programs is very clear: their lives have been changed–new perspectives on how organizations run, new career opportunities, advancement, and new levels of success.

Sorry for my blatant advertising here.  I generally don’t like to take your time to push brochure-speak at you, but these are some pretty powerful programs!

Filed under: Executive Education, Press coverage | Leave a Comment »

Leaders as Coaches

Posted on May 11, 2009 by mkizilos

One of the most striking trends in the learning and development field over the past 10 years is the increasing use of coaching as a development method. Why is that?

Increasing pace of change is making effective leadership more crucial
The pace of change has picked up so dramatically in recent years that most organizations are struggling to keep up with the competition, let alone stay ahead of the pack.  A hard fought competitive edge that might have set you up for 5 years while the competition scrambled to react may today yield you a  six-month headstart. 

While the pace of change is impacting all dimensions of organizational life in diverse ways,  the underlying implication of all the change we face is that it is increasingly important to have highly capable leaders.  While we still acknowledge the importance of creating robust organizations –as systems–there is an increasing awareness that even the best systems may not be flexible enough to respond to rapid changes in the environment without extraordinary leadership.  The extraordinary leader can anticipate, learn, shift, and help ensure that the system is adapting. 

So, the talent development system needs to be great at identifying those with leadership potential and helping them to develop as rapidly as possible.

So, what has this got to do with leaders as coaches? 

Coaching has some interesting advantages over more structured approaches to learning.  In traditional learning settings, there are well established means of mediating the relationship between a learner and a body of knowledge.  If you want to learn what you need to know about corporate finance, there is a well established process to follow–learning certain concepts, in a certain sequence, with clear means to confirm your learning along the way.  Moreover, the content and the process is all well articulated–there are books, instructors, videos, practice problems, and all manner of techniques.  Some refer to the traditional learning model, typified by the classroom experience, as having “the sage on the stage.”  As Assistant Dean of executive education, I am intimately familiar with the traditional model, and can attest to the fact that it has an important place in the arsenal of development approaches.

However, in order to develop leaders quickly, we cannot rely completely or solely on the traditional learning model.  To be effective in the rapidly evolving real world of organizations, leaders need to be constantly learning and adapting.  The body of knowldge to be learned is evolving with the context, and lessons need to be teased out of a swirling complex of interpersonal and organizational dynamics.  However, unlike the traditional learning context, there is no one there to mediate the learning.  There is no one to make sure that you are learning what you need to learn. 

Enter the coach. In contrast to the traditional learning model, the learning model based on coaching is typified by some as having ”a guide on the side.”

Coaches as learning facilitators

 A good executive coach can play many roles, but the role of learning facilitator is critical.  In this capacity, the coach helps the individual to process their own experiences, and ensure that the right lessons are being drawn from them. Rather than working from a predetermined curriculum that a “teacher” wants a “student” to learn, the coach starts with the individual’s own experiences, and helps the individual to learn from a process that involves dynamically processing experience in an iterative loop–>individual action–>result/impact–>facilitated reflection.   

I have written here and elsewhere about my strong belief in the power of learning from experience, and the coach is essentially an aid who helps the individual to learn from their own experience.  Given that external executive coaches are pretty pricey, and can’t be easily scaled beyond a small pool of the most critical talent, we are starting to hear more and more about helping leaders within the organization to get better at this critical skill. 

In fact, I decided to write on this topic because today is day one of a new program on The Art and Practice of Leaders Coaching Leaders offered by Carlson Executive Education.   While it is too late to enroll in this class, you may be interested in checking out some of the new half-day programs we are offering in the Momentum Series.

Filed under: Executive Education | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

Telling high potentials they are high potential…Can you keep a secret?

Posted on April 15, 2009 by mkizilos

Many of the most successful large organizations have been spending a lot of time honing their talent management practices in recent years.  A great deal of energy is being spent on identifying talent.  The idea being, identify the talent, and channel your development development resources into those who have it, since that will give you the biggest payoff. 

Once you have a process to identify top talent, you face a key question:  “should we tell high potentials that we see them as high potentials?”  This question is raised all the time by line executives (both those asking for their ratings and by those doing the ratings), and by talent management practitioners.  The question is frequently accompanied by one of several basic rationales (usually revealing the questioner’s intent): 

1) Transparency.  We need to be transparent with our development efforts, so that people understand the process is fair and don’t feel that we are keeping secrets about them.   This rationale carries with it the most intuitive, gut-level appeal.  Who wants to advocate for secretive HR practices…smoke-filled rooms, etc…?

2) Tell them or lose them.  If we keep it a secret and don’t tell high potentials that we think they are great, don’t we risk losing great people? 

3) If we don’t tell them, what’s the point of doing the assessment in the first place?  If we are aren’t telling high potentials that they are high potential, then we also can’t tell all those other people that they are not high potential.  So, how can we help them to develop?

There is validity in each of these views, and many other arguments are usually brought up in the course of  exploring this topic.

My view? 

I am all for transparency, but about the right things.  If the organization is caught up in the debate about the ratings, I see it as a potential danger sign.  The ratings are made in order to help the organization to have a robust dialogue about talent, reach common understanding about each person’s strengths and weaknesses, and, most importantly, to guide the organization’s development effort–espcially for certain top talent individuals. 

Given that actions speak louder than words, the question that we should be debating instead is, “what happens when someone in this organization is named high potential?”  Are certain development experiences cued up? Does the designation trigger a developmental assignment reserved for high potenials?  Is participation in certain learning programs reserved for high potentials? 

If the high potential designation does not trigger clear development actions for individuals, then who cares what the rating is anyway? If it does trigger such actions, then people will figure it out and the rating won’t be important.

The problem is that it’s hard for the organization to walk the talk in this way. Channeling significant development resources toward high potentials also  means channeling  them away from other non-high-potentials.  The unanointed in this scenario don’t particularly care for this sort of approach.   To follow this path, you need to have a pretty high level of confidence in your talent identification processes.   Otherwise, you will lose in two ways–investing in those who don’t have what the organization needs for the future, while disenfranchising those who do, but have been incorrectly passed over by your talent identification process.

Here are a few of my favorite tests for the quality of a talent identification process:

1) Do ratings depend upon the whims and perspectives of individual managers, or is the process sufficiently institutionalized so that it is not dependent upon individual managers? 

2) Do your talent assessments emerge from rich dialogue with senior management about each individual?  If talent assessments don’t get changed as they move up the chain, then the dialogue is probably not as robust or diverse as it should be.

3) Do leaders in your organization own the potential ratings, or are they something that they know HR wants them to do?

If your talent review and identifcation process does not pass these tests, then you might be best off keeping your potential ratings a secret.

If you are interested in this and other talent management questions, you may want to check out the upcoming Talent Management Strategies course (May 19-21 at the Carlson School).  It is a great program that can help you to better frame your talent management approach.

Filed under: Executive Education, Talent identification, Talent Management | Leave a Comment »

Target Corporation: Fast, Fun, and Friendly

Posted on April 9, 2009 by mkizilos

I attended a great presentation by Jodee Kozlak, the Head of HR for Target Corporation.  She was speaking at the First Tuesday series sponsored by the Carlson School, Wells Fargo, Twin Cities Business, and Northmarq.  The speaker series, open to the public, is held the first Tuesday of each month at the University of Minnesota’s McNamara Center (my first time there–a phenomenal space, by the way!).

Fast, fun and friendly.  

Jodee spoke about the core values at Target Corporation, and how they are integral to the business.  One of the values stood out to me as particularly evident to the average guest at Target: Fast, Fun, and Friendly.  While she described several other core Target values around leadership, diversity, inclusiveness and caring for the corporate legacy, this one struck me as especially powerful.  And, nice to see “Fun” called out as a corporate value!

Can you imagine what life would be like if all of our work environments could be described this way?  Target has created an impressive organization since its founding in 1962–from $0 to over $65 Billion in 47 years.  To have done it in a way that breeds enthusiasm, fun and friendliness is an impressive feat. 

This value reminded me of my experience working with an incredible IT leader, Charlie Feld.  I worked with him at Delta Air Lines.  He was the CIO tasked with getting the air line ready for Y2K (remember that?), while simulataneously trying to transform the organization into a high performance culture.  One of Charlie’s favorite questions was, “are you having fun?”  In the midst of the challenging task, which he compared to the Apollo 13 recovery effort (failure is not an option), Charlie was always positive, optimistic, and wanted to create an environment where others were too.  This was another way of saying, are you fully engaged?  Charlie insisted that one of the core competencies for an effective IT leader was passion for the job, and what he called being “fun to be around.” 

He created an incredible culture, and went on to a senior executive role at EDS.

Filed under: corporate values, Executive Education, Talent Management | Leave a Comment »

HEADLINE: “People are our biggest liability…”

Posted on April 1, 2009 by mkizilos

You don’t hear many CEOs or other corporate leaders using this phrase.  If one did, it would probably make the headlines. 

Instead, what you hear is, “people are our biggest asset.”  In fact, if there were a hall of fame for hollow phrases, this one would occupy a prime position in the section honoring corporate-speak. 

The reason this phrase sounds so hollow is that hardly anybody means it when they say it. What they really mean to say is that talent is their biggest asset.  In a world of increasing competitiveness, talented people can make the difference between success and failure.  Anyone in the learning and development field can attest to the fact that creating a strong, high performance workforce is something that takes hard work and dedication.  The investment in the workforce can transform the raw people resource into a high-value asset.  Without that effort, however, those “people” can be a significant liability for various reasons.  

For example:

1. “People” that don’t have the skills or experience needed to deliver on the organization’s strategy. 

2. Having too many “people”.

3. Having “people” in the wrong places.

I think you get the idea.  

When organizations lay off workers, they are essentially reacting to one of these or similar realities and, one could argue,  admitting that, for the moment, “people are our biggest liability…”  It just woudn’t be too popular for them to say that!

Clarification: In my previous post I commended companies with the strongest talent management practices in part because they have leaders that “express the belief that talent is their greatest asset…” I was choosing my words very carefully.  The leaders in these companies have moved beyond the empty phrase, and approach talent decisions with this more informed persective.

Filed under: Hollow phrases, Talent Management | Leave a Comment »

Developing Talent in a Down Economy

Posted on March 31, 2009 by mkizilos

About a year ago I participated in a panel discussion on Talent Management where the central question was, “What can we do differently to develop talent in a down economy?” It was a great topic then, and it has become an even more relevant one over the last twelve months as the economic environment has continued to deteriorate.

There was plenty of valuable discussion around the issues that you would naturally expect to be on people’s minds: How can we cut costs without reducing the value that we deliver? What is the business case for continuing to invest in learning and development in tough times? The panel responded to these and many other questions with their perspectives and generated a lively discussion. 

One response to this subject resonated particularly well with me.  It came from a panelist who essentially said, “I’m not doing anything differently now that times are tough—the business case for good talent management and development practices is the same in good times as it is in bad times.”

While the economic environment that we now face a year later is carrying all of us into uncharted waters, I still agree with the sentiment of this perspective.  Truly world class talent management systems are relatively robust in difficult times because they work, and everyone in the organization understands that they work.  I believe that at their root, organizations whose talent management systems are described as world class are described as such because they have done three things particularly well:

1.      Embedded talent management in the organization’s strategy process.  Mature talent management systems play the critical role of translating the organization’s strategic plans and priorities into concrete implications for the current and future supply of talent.  This linkage between business direction and people implications grounds the talent management system in the needs of the business in a way that makes it difficult to even raise the question, “Should we continue to invest in developing our people?”  Everyone in the organization operates with a clear understanding and awareness of how the talent development practices feed into the achievement of strategic objectives.

2.      Institutionalized senior leaders’ ownership for talent management.  The CEO and his or her senior team truly view talent as a key to success, and take personal responsibility for relentlessly developing talent.  Having senior leaders’support goes a long way toward embedding the talent management system into the culture, but it is not sufficient.  Many leaders express the belief that talent is their greatest asset, and many of those leaders are zealous about people development. The best companies have institutionalized a common talent management ethos and apply talent management practices such that the effectiveness of the people development system is not dependent upon any individual leader. 

3.      Strategically guided the expenditure of development resources and effort for maximum impact and return.  When you have created a talent management system that identifies the capabilities needed to deliver on key strategic priorities, it is relatively easy to ensure that your development dollars are being spent to develop the right capabilities in the right people at the right time.  Rather than spending more or less on development, the best companies put their investments into those people who can provide the best return to the company.  That means that they invest less in some individuals and more in others–high potentials, top talent, or whatever you call them (John Boudreau and Peter Ramstad have written a great book that covers this concept well, Beyond HR: The New Science of Human Capital).   As you can imagine, doing this effectively requires well-developed organizational processes and systems.

Sure, there are likely a raft of cost-cutting measures that you can take to manage through the downturn:  expanding virtual work arrangements, better resourcing of vendors and suppliers, leveraging e-learning, etc.  But, if you are working in an organization that is on a journey toward world class talent management, perhaps the best way to develop talent in a down economy is to work at making progress on these fundamentals.  Not an easy task, but making progress on these dimensions in a down economy will leave you that much stronger when things turn around.

Filed under: Executive Education, Talent Management | Leave a Comment »

Beating the Recession 101

Posted on March 25, 2009 by mkizilos

Our new Momentum Series short courses got a little press coverage the other day at Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal.

The article, titled “Beating the Recession 101″  mentions that Carlson Executive Education is offering 4- and 8-hour courses for $495 and $995 this spring.  Our timing for this set of offerings has turned out to be pretty good, given the economic environment.  We actually decided to do this back some time ago, when the general consensus was that the fundamentals of the economy were strong.  At that time, we wanted to provide shorter format offerings in order to connect with a broader audience from the business community.  When I reflect back on my recent experience as a corporate talent executive, I recall how difficult it was to get time out of the office for anything, especially time for my own development! So, one of the first things I wanted to do when I started at Carlson was to experiment with our program formats.   

Of course, the reality is that you can only cover so much ground in 4 or 8 hours.  So, these programs in the Momentum Series have a very targeted and focused set of learning objectives.  These programs also need to strike the right balance between content and application.  As a rule of thumb we figured that the 4-hour sessions would probably have about 1 hour of exposure to new ideas and content, and 3 hours of application and practice.   So, we worked with the instructors from that starting point and encouraged them to design each session to be highly interactive, provide hands-on experience with a focused subject or skill, and deliver concrete learning outcomes–new skills, frameworks, tool sets, etc.  

If you want to learn more about the Momentum Series, the  program page is here , and we have short audio interviews and flash presentations here for some of the programs.

Filed under: Executive Education, Press coverage | Leave a Comment »

Five Things to Consider When Creating a Development Plan – part 5

Posted on March 10, 2009 by mkizilos

FIVE: The more you work at it, the more you’ll improve. 

Okay, this last of my Five Things to Consider may seem like a throw-away item, but I am including it for a reason.  One of the things that I have noticed throughout my career is that some people invest themselves in their development plans, and others treat their development plans as just an exercise.  I have consistently found that if you work at your development plan, you will improve.  It’s that simple.  If you create a good plan and you dedicate time to achieving that plan, your effort will pay off.  You might not turn your weaknesses into strengths, but you will make progress at improving yourself.

On one hand, this is reassuring and comforting to hear.  Of course, you need to be clear about what you put into your development plan.  You should be certain that you really, really want to follow through on it.  We each have limited time and energy, and by focusing on a development plan that you are serious about, you are committing yourself to channeling some of your energy into achieving a specific goal.  Try it, and you will see results.

On the other hand, if you want to see the glass as half empty, this post makes the converse point that if you don’t work at it, you will not improve.  I have never seen someone spontaneously improve on any significant behavioral dimension. It always takes work!

Filed under: Creating a high-impact development plan, Self-Development | Leave a Comment »

Five Things to Consider When Creating a Development Plan – part 4

Posted on February 24, 2009 by mkizilos

Fourth Thing: Experience is the best teacher. 

The only way to learn how to ice skate is to strap on a pair of skates and get out on the ice.  You could spend a lot of time reading up on skating and the importance of balance, but it would be difficult to apply any of that theoretical knowledge to your first time wobbling out onto the rink.  However, within even a few minutes on the ice, you begin to get immediate and direct feedback about what works and what doesn’t.  You suddenly find yourself on a highly accelerated learning curve.   

Most people spend less than one tenth of one percent of their work lives in formal structured learning programs.  As the head of Carlson Executive Education, I would certainly like to see people spend more time in formal learning programs! But the reality is that, formal structured learning is just one tool for developing yourself. In fact, if you are relying solely on formal education to develop your leadership capability, you may have fallen into the trap of trying to find a quick fix.  While formal learning programs, such as those we offer in executive education,  are a valuable resource, you should not think of them as the only resource.   In addition to looking for programs on leadership, you should be looking for opportunities to do things in your job or through special assignments that will teach you leadership lessons. 

 

Many leadership lessons can only be learned through experience.  The challenge is that, while experience can be the best teacher, great learning experiences are scarce.  And, the costs of bumbling your way through some experiences (i.e., “learning on the job”) can be quite high.  I would rather not go under the knife of anything but the most experienced surgeon, thank you very much!

 

My point is simply that you should be looking for learning insights in the workplace, and, when the great development assignment comes along, you need to be prepared to get the most from it.  In my experience, talking with hundreds of managers and executives about their development paths, few people are actually good at learning from their work experience.  Those that are good at it, are often the most successful leaders who see it as second nature, and don’t even think of it as learning.  

 

The subject of experience-based development is a personal passion of mine.  If you are interested in getting into this area more deeply, I will be teaching a 4-hour course on the subject in the new Momentum Series offered by Carlson Executive Education this spring.  Send me an email (mkizilos@umn.edu) if you want to get on the mailing list for this new series of practical and accessible progams.

 

Filed under: Creating a high-impact development plan, Self-Development | Leave a Comment »

« Previous Page — Next Page »
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.