My last two posts have been about managing performance through The Accountability Principle. It would be helpful - but not absolutely necessary - to read them before this post: Accountability - The Key to Performance Management posted April 29th and The Accountability Principle and Engagement posted April 30th.The antithesis of The Accountability Principle is The No-Nonsense School of Accountability. No-Nonsenseers have advocated performance management as it has been practiced at least since the 1960s. Managers give clear expectations up front, a thorough performance appraisal at the end, and regular feedback, maybe even some coaching, in between. If someone’s really off track, managers confront that right away. For top performers, there are rewards and recognition along the way. For poor performers, there is progressive discipline. For the rest, well, they have their pay checks and get to keep their jobs. What could be clearer and fairer and more motivating? The reality is that performance management is a fiction for the vast majority of people in the vast majority of businesses.

The beginning of the process - clear expectations or objectives and measures - often never happens except in general terms. When it does, it is seldom sustained because it is too difficult and time consuming to resolve all the questions that more systematic approaches call for:

Are these the right things to do to make the strategy successful? What’s actually being measured? Is that the right thing to measure? How accurate are the measures? How timely are the measures? Is the goal even achievable? What if unexpected forces make the goal either too easy or unattainable? What about all the things people do that are not measured but are critical to keeping everything running, how are these accounted for?

The middle of the process - performance feedback, and maybe coaching - seldom gets done because of the complexities of the business and the environment in which it operates.

Ambiguity delays judgment. Communication struggles with interpretation, completeness, and timeliness. Collaboration falters under the pressure of adversarial motives and contending views. New knowledge emerges that changes the playing field. Priorities change frequently and occasionally radically. Resources are reduced or diverted to meet new objectives. The measures chosen turn out not to achieve the real goal. Important aspects of the business are neglected to the detriment of the business in order to “make the numbers”.

The one piece of the process that eventually does get done is the performance review. But, this is usually viewed by both parties as an administrative requirement. There is very little accountability in this annual event because the beginning and middle parts of the process either have never happened or were pro forma or occasional at best.

Often expectations or objectives are written down for the first time when the performance review is due, and the past year is recollected from whatever reports or memory is available. Some organizations have feedback collected from people affected by an individual’s performance. But the biases of memory and the power of emotion and personal perspective make useful, accurate evaluation rare. Managers regularly pick the “rating” they “feel” is right and write the narrative to support the rating. In any case, the best that this process produces is a point-in-time judgement that usually has some marginal effect on the expected rewards.

The reality of managing a business is that there are no clear beginnings or endings. We estimate various measures and the forces that will impact them; but none of this is science, and all of it is affected by new knowledge that regularly is discovered about the past, present, and future. Priorities change, resources are redirected. We arbitrarily evaluate results quarterly and annually. But the goals we project, the measures we set, and the data we collect are very often not in one-to-one alignment and have only an approximate relationship to one another. While goals are essential to frame expectations, develop plans, and calibrate the actions we need to take, few, if any, bear a readily assessable relationship to the clear meting out of rewards and punishments the No-Nonsense School of accountability advocates as the driver of performance.

No-Nonsense performance management is a relic of industrial organization and a command-and-control system of management. No-Nonsense performance management should be replaced by The Accountability Principle.

What do we mean by “accountability?” Today, when you hear people talk about accountability, you know that they’re talking about who’s going to pay the price of failure. They say, “I’m holding you accountable”; or “You better make sure someone’s accountable”; or “Make them accountable by tying those results to their incentive compensation.”

“Holding people accountable” has a hard-nosed, no-nonsense tone that lets people know that a real executive is in the room. It projects strength and a willingness to take action. It asserts that a clear threat of dire consequences is what will get people focused and performing. It calls for bottom-line measures and makes it clear that there will be no excuses for not achieving them. After all, what would accountability mean if people could avoid paying the price of poor performance by explaining it away?

This is, however, not the way accountability gets results. In the day-to-day activities of business, where all the work gets done, “hold them accountable” is useless as a management practice. It offers no guidance on how to use accountability to build a successful path from point A to point B. It just prescribes what to do with rewards and punishments when the clock runs out. It offers no process for reconciling competing objectives, for making sure bad decisions are not made just to make “the numbers” look good. It makes no provision for adapting to changing business conditions, taking advantage of opportunities, or responding to unforeseen threats. “Hold them accountable” hopes that fear of loss will make people perform. But “hope is not a method” (Gordon R. Sullivan and Michael V. Harper, Hope is Not a Method (New York: Broadway Books, 1997). The Accountability Principle is!

The Accountability Principle

“For any job, no matter how simple or complex, effectiveness will be proportional to the ability of people doing that job to explain what they are seeking to achieve, why that’s important to the business, how well they are doing and what’s causing their current level of accomplishment, and what needs to be different to fully achieve their purpose.”

Accountability fuels the engine of performance. It puts a fine edge on execution. It replaces the administrative rituals of performance management with engagement in the business and commitment to results. It fills the void of performance-focused communication with precise and continuing conversations about accomplishments and opportunities as well as about shortfalls and what needs to be done to overcome them. Accountability puts talent in the spotlight and exposes and corrects talent gaps early on.

The practice of “accountability” means that every person - either as an individual contributor or as a manager - is expected to “provide a periodic accounting” to someone - team leader, manager, board of directors, owner - about the results of what she is doing. The key questions to account for are:

• Are the business activities for which she is responsible achieving planned results or not?
• If they are, then what is driving that success and what needs to be done to sustain performance? Are there opportunities emerging and how can we take advantage of them?
• If they are not, then what are the root causes of the shortfall and what is she doing to remedy them? Are there threats emerging and how can we defend against them?

This use of The Accountability Principle moves the moment of truth way forward. By asking people to be accountable first for a well constructed plan and then regularly for accomplishing planned activities and producing planned results. The Accountability Principle improves the quality of business thinking and sharpens the focus on results from everybody beginning day one. Accountability establishes a regular dialogue so the person to whom the accounting is provided should be expected to

• ask questions to see if something has been overlooked
• provide information that will help solve a problem
• share a perspective that will shape more accurate thinking about a situation
• give encouragement where courage is needed
• stop a direction that will impede success
• obtain needed resources
• secure the support of others

Simply put, accountability is about two things: collaboration and engagement. Your thoughts?

More about this tomorrow.

In a big-picture view, human capital management is the process of making sure you have the right people, with the right competencies, in the right roles now and in the future. To be effective at human capital management, leaders at every level of the organization need to treat talent as an asset that produces value for the organization today and which can produce more or different value in the future. Unlike other organizational assets, talent belongs to the people in the business and not to the owners of the business. So, leaders have to embrace the challenge of engaging people in ways that cause them to invest their best abilities in the business, to improve the productivity of their talents over time, and to acquire new competencies that they enjoy and that the business needs. When recruiting and hiring, leaders need to assess candidates not only for the job that is open but for the broader role they could play and the more valuable contributions they could make over time.Much of our future leadership training and leader development will have to revolve around a full appreciation of the fact that talent is an asset that belongs to someone else yet accounts for a substantial portion of the current and future market value of the business. What percentage of your business’s market value is attributable to physical assets? What are your talent assets worth? What do you need to do about that?

A big part of human capital management will be:

• providing the networks, job assignments, project assignments, and coaching that develop the conceptual thinking skills, problem solving skills, and interpersonal skills leaders need to engage people
• implementing practices and processes that cascade through the organization to make a “talent as an asset” mindset part of the organization’s DNA
• expecting leaders at every level to provide a regular accounting of the increased productivity of the talent assets for which they have leadership responsibility

Although it has always been true, it is even moreso today: the future is invading the present at an accelerating rate. There is no such thing as a sustainable competitive advantage. So, we need to shake up and speed up the present to be able to sustain our ability to find new advantages with which to compete in the future.

Even today, HR roles and functions tend to operate in relative isolation from one another. HR generalists tend to handle the day-to-day people issues, and HR specialists tend to the day-to-day of running their functions - recruiting, training, leadership development, compensation, and benefits. Sometimes one or the other “rolls out” a program intended to plug a gap or improve a process. But mostly HR generalists provide general guidance to business leaders and, from time to time, ask for some service from a specialist function. All this despite a decade or more of concepts like “strategic HR”!

I think a major reason why this is so is because few senior HR leaders know how to lead and organize people to produce holistic, integrated talent strategies tightly connected to business strategies through a holistic, integrated talent assessment and workforce planning process.

Yet, right in the middle of all of the issues about “talent” and “human capital” is the person in charge of learning & development whether titled as CLO or not. The people in this role are in a unique position to pull together their HR colleagues and fashion a holistic, integrated process with which they can engage business leaders to attend to their current and future talent. Why should the L&D people take on this challenge? The reason is that it is likely the most significant learning challenge their organizations face, learning how to operationalize talent strategies robust enough to execute business strategies, year-on-year.

A place I like to go for fresh thinking on this topic is http://www.newlearningplaybook.com/ hosted by Jeanne Meister.

Presentations

Click on the link below to download a presentation.

Workforce Planning in the Real World - Presented at the KnowlegeAdvisors 6th Annual Analytics Symposium, March 2008
(requires Microsoft Powerpoint - 1 MB)

A Comprehensive Approach to Talent at CNA - Presented at the Linkage Best of OD Summit, May 2007 (194 KB)

Strategic Value Creation in L&D - Presented at the KnowledgeAdvisors 4th Annual Analytics Symposium, March 2006 (527 KB)

White Papers

I invite you to participate in what I hope will be an ongoing series of lively conversations about mangaging talent and investing in human capital. There are a myriad of topics related to all of the aspects of acquiring, developing, and retaining the talent your business needs now and in the future, and we would like to address them all as our thinking and your thinking evolves through dialogue, research, and experimentation. So, where to begin?

The bottom line is a good place to start. At the KnowledgeAdvisors’ 6th Annual Analytics Symposium early in March, I particularly enjoyed being exposed to the work of two organizations doing great work in this area. The first was McBassi & Company. Laurie Bassi and Daniel McMurrer http://www.mcbassi.com/ have developed methods for measuring human capital capabilities and then connecting them to a company’s bottom line outcomes - see “Maximizing Your Return on People” (by Bassi and McMurrer) in the March 2007 Harvard Business Review. The second is the Institute for Intellectual Capital Research and its Director, Dr. Nick Bontis http://www.nickbontis.com/main.swf who has developed methods to causally connect human capital investments to specific financial outcomes. You can see his papers and books at http://www.nickbontis.com/Research.htm.

So, the challenge to business leaders is to be more transformational than transactional. That means recognizing that the overarching and constantly repeated question for HR has to be how to make human capital more productive. The place to start always has to be with the human capital performance the business needs today and in the future to execute on its strategy, run its operations, and achieve specific measures of success. The art and science of human capital management is then to work backwards to identify the leverage points that will produce the performance needed. I’m anxious to hear your thoughts and examples!

Read all about State Parkway Partners in the media and various industry publications.

KnowledgeAdvisor’s 2008 Analytics Symposium: Measuring Learning & Maximizing Human Capital –

Tom was invited to present a keynote presentation “Workforce Planning in the Real World”.

Elliott Masie’s Learning 2007 –

Tom was asked to facilitate a session on “Dividing Your Learning Time: Implementation, Evaluation, Innovation or Benchmarking.” The discussion was about how successful learning leaders:

1. identify and invest in the know-how their companies need to succeed;
2. hire, develop, and retain the best talent;
3. manage their cost structure well;
4. validate that their L&D group is among the best at what they do; and
5. innovate to deliver improved business advantage.

The Best of OD 2007 Summit –

Tom presented “A Comprehensive Approach to Talent at CNA” in which he described the approach being taken at CNA to reviewing and planning to address talent needs in an integrated fashion across the HR silos of recruiting, workforce planning, performance management, leadership development, compensation, benefits, and learning.

Elliott Masie’s Learning 2006 –

Tom was invited to co-facilitate the Financial Services & Learning Industry group discussion.

KnowledgeAdvisor’s 2006 Learning Analytics Symposium –

Tom was invited to give a presentation titled “Strategic Value Creation: Mapping Learning to Organizational Strategy”. Tom described the approach he developed and used at CNA, beginning in 2000, to manage learning expenses as a portfolio of investments that are directly mapped to strategic and operating objectives.

Elliott Masie’s Learning 2005 –

Tom was invited to participate on an industry panel discussing trends in learning and how companies were adopting new practices to meet the demands of improved business performance.

Bersin & Associates 2005 Research –

Bersin’s research report “High Impact Learning Organizations” named CNA as a “best practice” company for both the centralized/decentralized, insourced/outsourced balance in the governance structure Tom developed and for the method of aligning learning investments to business strategy.

CLO Magazine February 2005 –

CLO Magazine, in an article titled “CNA Insurance: Supporting an Effective Workforce”, highlighted the unique approach Tom and his colleagues took to training all of CNA’s management in all five aspects of performance management (performance planning, performance assessment, development planning, coaching and feedback, and rewards and recognition) in five 60 day increments over one year. This approach combined e-learning courses, synchronous webinars, an online collaboration platform where participants would post their assignments and receive feedback from peers and a coach, and in face-to-face classroom settings.

Click HERE to read the article.

Corporate Executive Board: Learning & Development Roundtable –

Research conducted and published by the L&D Roundtable for its members highlighted Tom’s work at CNA as a benchmark for aligning learning investments to business strategy.

Training Magazine January 2004 –

Training magazine, in an article called “Managing Projects”, noted the holistic approach to learning Tom instituted at CNA. It is an approach that leads people not only to learn technical knowledge but also to learn how to apply and make decisions with that knowledge in a team setting as they would have to on the job.

Click HERE to read the article.

Elliott Masie’s TechLearn 2003 –

Tom presented “Focusing on What Matters: A Novel Approach to Curriculum Design and Blended Learning” with Chip Cleary, VP Advisory Services, NIIT Cognitive Arts and Bill Bruck, Founder and General Manager, Q2 Learning. The presentation described how Tom implemented at CNA the use of NIIT Cognitive Arts critical mistake analysis process to develop content for e- learning programs and how those e-learning programs were integrated into Q2 Learning’s collaborative eCampus where participants not only completed the e-learning courses but then practiced application and received feedback and coaching via the eCampus.

Tom Hilgart and Shirley Kitzmann have had the unique opportunity of working alongside some of the most esteemed executives in the nation.

Here’s what a few of them have to say:

“Tom is the smartest learning executive I have had the pleasure to work with. He is scrupulously honest and fair, and equally capable of devising innovative learning solutions, charting the political waters to get them funded, and carefully managing the process to ensure they are implemented.”

–Bill Bruck, Principal, Q2Learning, LLC (was a consultant or contractor to Tom at State Parkway Partners) January 31, 2008

“Tom is a recognized thought leader in the learning and talent management arena. He combines strategic vision, leadership skills, and deep business acumen to deliver world-class talent development and management solutions that drive results. His integrity, humor and intellect make him easy to work with and fun to be around. I recommended him highly in any capacity and would work with him again without question, reservation or hesitation.”

–Brian Richardson, PMP, President, Richardson Consulting Group (reported to Tom at State Parkway Partners) January 28, 2008

“Tom is an outstanding leader and business professional. He possesses a rich knowledge of the learning and development industry, the insurance industry and general business.”

–Jay Kostrzewa, Assistant Vice President - Knowledge and Learning Group, CNA Financial (reported to Tom at CNA) VP, Knowledge & Learning Group CNA, May 25, 2007

“Tom is one of the most highly respected senior executives I have worked with in the learning industry. He is creative, experienced, and knows how to combine the strategic with the tactical.”

–Kent Barnett, Owner, KnowledgeAdvisors, Inc. (was with another company when working with Tom at CNA) February 4, 2008

“I’ve worked with Tom Hilgart for many years and his vast knowledge of learning and development and human capital is among the best I know. His creative insights and years of experience would be a tremendous asset to any organization. Further, Tom is an honest and ethical business person. He is fair and objective. His character is second to none.”

–Jeffrey Berk, Chief Operating Officer, KnowledgeAdvisors_(was with another company when working with Tom at CNA) February 2, 2008

“Tom is a forward thinking executive with a fluent understanding of the learning and development and talent management needs of his organization. As a provider of Project Management services to CNA insurance Tom was instrumental in helping us to align our solutions with CNA’s larger corporate business strategies. As the organizations business strategy and needs shifted Tom and his staff were there to make sure that we remained in alignment with the organizations evolving needs.”

–John Scuras, Midwest Regional Sales Manager, PCI Global_(was a consultant or contractor to Tom at CNA) January 28, 2008

State Parkway Partners recommends the following companies to enhance services and strategies:

Q2 Learning provides speed-to-proficiency solutions for high value learning initiatives to corporations using our collaborative learning platform, the xPERT eCampus.

KnowledgeAdvisors is the global leader in Human Capital Analytics. They help organizations measure, communicate and improve the impact of their learning and development investments.

LearnShare was founded in 1996 by Fortune 500 companies who were seeking to join together to transform the way their companies research, design, purchase, package and communicate career development and skill enhancement. This visionary group, the Owners, included General Motors, 3M, Motorola, Owens Corning, Deere & Co., O-I, Eaton, Northwest Airlines, Pfizer Inc, Pilkington, UnitedHealth Group, and Chevron. Since that time, the owners have been joined by more than 30 of the largest, most diverse corporations in the world representing more than 2.5 million employees around the globe.

Bersin & Associates is an organization of senior analysts and consultants with extensive experience in corporate learning, e-learning, performance management, leadership development, talent management, and enterprise systems.  Their WhatWorks® research methodology allows them to identify unique and powerful business solutions which enable learning and HR managers to drive dramatic improvements in their organizations.

Tom Hilgart

Partner, State Parkway Partners

Tom Hilgart offers 35 years of business leadership experience as a line manager delivering operational improvement in insurance operations, as an internal consultant in process innovation and quality management, and as a nationally recognized leader in corporate learning and development.

Over the past 8 years, Tom served as Vice President of the Knowledge & Learning Group at CNA.

CNA was recognized in 2004 by Corporate Executive Board research as a benchmark company for its approach to aligning learning investments to business strategy.

In 2005, CNA was acknowledged by Bersin & Associates research as a best practice company both for its alignment of learning investments to business strategy and for the effectiveness of its balanced centralized/decentralized governance structure.

Prior to that Tom was

• an internal consultant in quality management, benchmarking, and process redesign
• director of management development
• director of insurance operations

Tom earned a BA in philosophy from St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein IL and completed extensive graduate studies in philosophy, education, and social sciences at Loyola University and Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago, IL.

Shirley Kitzmann

Partner, State Parkway Partners

Shirley Kitzmann offers a wealth of business acumen resulting from over 25 years of extensive consulting, human resources, communications, and operations management experience for entrepreneurial, professional services, mid-sized and Fortune 500 companies.

In her work as a management consultant and Human Resources executive, Ms. Kitzmann has helped organizations achieve their strategic objectives by focusing on human resources processes, investments in support of organization development, and culture change. She is skilled in designing and implementing total rewards programs, organizational and job design, organizational effectiveness processes, performance management, learning and development strategies and programs, succession planning processes, and communication strategies.

Ms. Kitzmann has lectured for Loyola University’s (Chicago) Human Resources and Industrial Relations Institute’s graduate program, and has served as an Adjunct Professor for Washington University’s (St. Louis) Human Resources graduate program. She earned a BA from the University of Wisconsin Green Bay, and an MBA from the University of Minnesota.