Rightplacing Puts Trust in the Right Place

by Vince Kellen, Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium

As it was two millennia ago, today a decimation of sorts remains a distressing part of our cultural experience.

The word "decimate" comes from the Roman practice of punishing one in 10 of a mutinied army or one showing cowardice in battle. Leaders in the army would draw lots in which the unlucky one was clubbed to death by the remaining nine. While not terribly common, decimation had the intended effect.

Decimation had to be rare. It reduced the size of the army by one-tenth. Today's decimations share a similar law of diminishing returns. Repeating layoffs can cause distress inside the organization that may undermine the very goal of improved corporate performance. Many who remain in the firm predictably stop taking risks and desperately avoid rocking the boat. Trust throughout the organization decreases, and everyone watches to see how the inevitable restructuring that follows will affect their lives.

Rightplacing (which I discussed in "Rightplacing: Situating an Employee to Push Productivity," 26 November 2008, a prior Business-IT Strategies Advisor) is a management approach that can help focus that energy. It continually positions each IT employee at the place of most promise. It connects each employee's passion with the organization's mission and objectives.

To focus this emotion, IT leaders need to pay particular attention to trust. Trust between leaders and followers needs to be established early, and it needs continual reaffirmation to be maintained, even in the face of corporate retrenchments. To help maintain that trust, leaders should be doing the following:

• Showing individualized concern and consideration for employees. Leaders should not only exhibit this individualization behavior; they should deeply believe in individualized consideration. Frequently, younger leaders need coaching about how to exhibit individualizing behavior and how to examine their own value systems. Do they really believe in the primacy of others' concerns ahead of their own? One cannot easily fake individualized consideration.

• Reinforcing the importance of bottom-up involvement in decision making and control over tasks. When trust decreases, it is not just leaders who rely on top-down direction. Followers do, too. Why? Because they do not wish to take risks and instead defer to leaders who might not have the relevant information or knowledge to make proper decisions. Leaders need to be aware that diminished trust due to staff decimations can undermine collaborative and bottom-up involvement in complex, knowledge-intensive activities and decisions.

• Identifying sources of inspiration to motivate teams. Often, leaders fall into a predictable pattern by saying, "This firm is sound and is still going places." In these times, this won't do. Few are fooled. Instead, IT leaders need to help employees identify their personal and career passions and then, leveraging the trust in their relationship, provide a meaningful career plan that can get employees working on their passions. Passionate employees learn quicker and more deeply. Passionate employees are more likely to become experts. Passionate employees are ones companies desperately need in this day of decimation. IT leaders have to make sure that in these times they don't throw cold water on employees' passions. Instead, they should ignite them.

• Rethinking employee roles. While companies are not in a position to reward employees with increased pay, promotion, or other perks, they are always in control of a more powerful source of incentives: the tasks the employee performs. Instead of defining a perfect role and then fitting an employee into the role, IT leaders can tailor roles to fit individual employee passions.

I draw my source for these ideas from the research done in the area of transformational leadership. Such leadership is different from the normal hire, pay, monitor, reward, promote flavor of leadership. Transformational leadership involves four skills (two of which I have touched on here):

• Individual consideration. 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 potential. Individual consideration is practiced when new learning opportunities are created. Leaders' behavior demonstrates acceptance of individual differences in followers.

• Inspirational motivation. Leaders behave in ways that motivate and inspire those around them. Leaders arouse team spirit. Leaders get followers involved in envisioning attractive future states. Leaders demonstrate commitment to goals.

• Idealized influence. Leaders behave as role models that followers wish to emulate. Leaders are admired, respected, trusted with high moral/ethical conduct, and are consistent rather than arbitrary. Followers believe leaders to have persistence, determination, and extraordinary abilities. Leaders are willing to take risks.

• Intellectual stimulation. 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.

These skills are critical for difficult times. When in the midst of corporate downsizing, IT leaders are usually knee-deep in budget waters, finding ways to cut, reduce, or outsource. They may have little time to address these basic motivational aspects of managing the IT workforce. This could be a big mistake. IT leaders can align these staff emotions and passions and turn all the real and perceived negatives of a retrenchment into personal and group positives and improved team outcomes.

I welcome your comments about this Advisor and encourage you to send your insights to vkellen@cutter.com.

-- Vince Kellen, Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium