We have reviewed a wide variety of research concerning
management, training, and leadership, and used this research as a foundation
upon which to build our Organizational Performance Management System
(sm). The following is a brief overview of some of
these studies.
In addition, you might want to also check out our
suggested Reading List.
ASTD
& ICPM Supervisor Research
Back in the early 1970's, ASTD commissioned Dr.
Lester Bittle, professor emeritus at James Madison University, to conduct a
study about the major competencies that all managers shared. In addition
to publishing the study with ASTD, Dr. Bittle also published a book called
"What Every Manager Should Know" in 1974. The research and the
book that followed was the foundation for many training programs, including DDI
and AchieveGlobal (formerly Zinger-Miller). Dr. Bittle also worked with
McGraw-Hill Training Systems to create his own form of training programs based
upon this work. These programs were transferred to Vital
Learning when McGraw-Hill sold off it's training division.
Also in the mid-1970's, James Madison University set
up the Institute of Certified
Professional Managers. This program established a certification
examination based upon Dr. Bittle's work. Later in 2000, they updated the
Job Task Analysis for Mangers. The goals of this project were:
±
To develop an accurate picture of the practice of management and
the needs of managers,
±
To evaluate the Certified Manager examination in terms of validity
of content, organization and weighting.
The following is a brief summary of their findings.
Skills and Tasks Required of Managers
People-centered tasks:
±
Managers spend the most time leading.
±
Managers spend a great deal of time communicating and building
relationships.
±
Managers are active in employee development.
±
Managing teams is extremely important.
Administrative tasks:
±
Managers spend a great deal of time developing and implementing
plans, goals and objectives.
±
Managers spend a great deal of time using computers.
Most important areas of knowledge:
±
Planning and decision making processes
±
Communication
±
Employee development and behavior
±
Operations Management
±
Leadership (principles, styles, etc.)
±
Motivation
±
Group development
±
Employment law
±
Performance evaluation
±
Cultural diversity
Least important areas of
knowledge:
±
International laws (NAFTA, GATT)
±
Type of economic systems (capitalism, socialism, etc.)
±
Contract negotiations with labor organizations, labor law
±
Business types (corporation, partnership, etc.)
±
Principles of economics
±
Financing options
±
International production/performance standards
±
Business law
Most important skills:
±
Written communication skills
±
Computer skills
±
Multi-tasking skills
±
Time management skills
While this information gives us some clear indications
about what current managers are required to do and the skills that are required
of them to become proficient in their jobs, we think the findings about the
future skills that will be needed are even more interesting.
They are as follows:
Most important skills in the next 10 years:
±
Communication skills
±
Managing diversity
±
Interpersonal skills
±
Technological skills
±
Team building skills
±
Flexibility
±
Motivation skills
±
Leadership skills
±
Time management
Implications for Management
The research from the ICPM clearly revealed the following
implications for current management practices, and for preparing future
managers:
1.
The basic, underlying principles of management remain the
same.
2. These principles are relatively consistent
across industries.
3.
Knowledge and skills appear to be generalizable across industries,
experience, organizational level, and level of supervisory responsibility.
You can Click
Here to download a copy of the above in PDF format.
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University
of Chicago & Lebow Research Group's Research
Over a period of many years the University of
Chicago was conducting research attempting to find what workers needed to be
successful at work. They gathered information from over 17 million people
at all levels in the organization. These people lived in 40 countries on 6
different continents. They also represented a vast amount of different
industries.
While the original researchers had some specific
questions that they wished answered, they also allowed for the respondents to
also offer comments. When analyzing the questions, the University of
Chicago failed to find any conclusions. Later on, however, the Lebow
Research Group, with the approval of the UC, conducted an analysis of the
comments of the workers. There were significant findings in these comments
--- The 8 Shared Values below.
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The
8 Shared Values
![[images] Banner2.gif](images/Shared%20Values.gif)
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Treat
others with uncompromising Truth
-
Lavish
Trust on your associates
-
Mentor
unselfishly
-
Be
receptive to new ideas, regardless of their origin
-
Take
personal risks for the organization’s sake
-
Give
credit where credit is due
-
Be
honest in all things; don’t touch dishonest money
-
Put
the interest of others before your own
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The
Gallup Organization's Research
Gallup
has conducted a series of very large scale studies involving more than one
million employees and almost 100,000 managers, and thousands of organizational
business units. They have disclosed
a variety of findings:
v
Employee
“satisfaction” levels are a leading indicator of future financial success
for the organization.
v Managers have a tremendous
impact upon employee satisfaction levels. They
create the environment in which employees work. Their ability to show interest
in their employees impacts upon the engagement levels of employees, which
impacts upon their performance.
v Employees who are highly
engaged perform significantly better than those employees that are not engaged
in their work. Those units that had
the highest engagement levels outperformed units with lower engagement levels.
They were more productive, had higher customer service levels, and
performed financially.
v “Fixing” employees
doesn’t work. Training to overcome
weaknesses is usually a waste of time and money.
Instead, focus on strengths and attempt to enhance them.
Learn
more about Employee Engagement by clicking HERE.
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Good
to Great by Jim Collins, et al.
After researching a set of organizations that were
at one time good organizations and then made a leap to become Great organizations,
Collins and his staff found that in each of the organizations that there were 5
key issues that occurred. As a result, these companies out performed
their comparison companies, good companies in their own right, by 6.9 times, and
the general stock market by 1500%. The key elements were:
Level 5 Leadership: Compared with high-profile leaders with big
personalities who make headlines and become celebrities, the good-to-great
leaders seem to have come from Mars. Self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy
– these leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and
professional will. Ultimately, leadership is about character, as well as skill
and tenacity.
First Who…Then What: Good-to-great leaders first got the right
people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the
right seats – and then they figured out where to drive it. The right people
are our greatest assets.
Confront the Brutal Facts (Yet Never Lose Faith): The Stockdale
Paradox – you must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail
in the end, regardless of the difficulties and at the same time have the
discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever
they might be. The greatest fear we face is ourselves: our lack of
self-confidence, and our lack of honesty about ourselves to ourselves.
Hedgehog Concept: This concept is the intersection of the answers to
three key questions: What can you be the best in the world (how ever you
define your world) at doing; What can you make money at; and What are you
passionate about? It took the Great companies an average of 4 years to
figure this out.
A Culture of Discipline: When you have disciplined people, you
don’t need hierarchy. When you have disciplined thought, you don’t need
bureaucracy. When you have disciplined action, you don’t need excessive
controls. When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of
entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great performance. Discipline
+ risk + opportunity = success.
Technology Accelerators:
Technology is never the primary means of igniting transformation. Technology
is never the root cause of greatness or failure. Good to great leaders are
pioneers in the application of carefully selected technologies. Technology
does nothing; it only enables us to do what we should be doing anyway.
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Built to Last by Jim Collins, et al.
This is a very long-term and in-depth study looking
at what makes the best long-term financially performing organizations different
from all of the rest. Each of the 18
“Visionary” companies were directly compared to a similar company in their
industry that was also a “good” company in their own right.
This research is some of the more far reaching recent research available.
The results included:
v
Having a
core purpose (which was more than just making money) and a strong set of values
for the organization, coupled with a strong desire to continuously strive to be
innovative and move the organization forward.
Instead of focusing on long-term “strategic planning” these
organizations had a strong sense of “self” which allowed them to react to
opportunities and threats more easily than their counterparts.
v
The “Visionary” companies
focused on long-term results. They
were interested in building companies that would last for a long time, and
therefore focused their decisions based upon this long-term view.
Along with this, there was a belief that no matter how good they were,
they were always striving to be better.
v
The Visionary companies created
“Big Harry Audacious Goals;” a goal that everyone in the organization could
buy in to and aspire to help the organization achieve.
This allowed each person to link their job to the overall purpose of the
organization.
v
Each employee in the
organization was clear about what was expected of them and did their jobs with
little supervision. Employees
“fit” with the culture of the organization, and strived to help the
organization succeed.
Business
School Research
²
Harvard
Business
School
– a series of studies on
leadership and organizational culture, including one that looked at
organizational performance over an eleven year time frame.
They found that strong cultures were not the defining edge for
performance, but rather the most successful cultures were those that were
“adaptive.” Culture change must
start at the top, and that any efforts to drive the change from the bottom
always failed. “Adaptive”
cultures were characterized by leadership that focused on a core set of values
that included a focus on all three key constituents: shareholders, customers,
and employees. Long-term strategic
planning was not something that these organizations engaged in, as they tended
to focus more on their core purpose and values.
“Adaptive” Organizations clearly outperformed non-adaptable
organizations, and experienced exceptional profits.
²
Stanford
Business
School
–a series of case studies that reviewed why some “promising”
organizations begun in the last half of the 20th century succeeded
tremendously while other “promising” organizations seemed to not perform so
well. The analysis found that all of
the successful organizations had a focus of achieving great things through their
people. These organizations took
very good care of their employees and had a strong sense of values.
They made decisions about issues involving customers and employees based
upon these values. As a result, the
successful organizations did not need to engage in typical long-term strategic
planning. Risk was encouraged, and
no one was penalized for failure because they took a risk.
Customer service was a constant concern, and service levels were
maintained at very high levels. As a
result, customers were highly dedicated and loyal to them.
²
Cornell
Business
School
– a series of studies looking at the importance of trust and its
impact on organizational success. The
studies found that those organizations that had higher trust levels had a higher
return on profits. In one study
concerning full-service hotels, just by raising the trust level by 1/8th
of a point on a scale of 1 to 5 increased profits
by a quarter of a million dollars.
²
Fortune 100 Best – an annual ranking of the best organizations to
work for in the
USA
. One of the criteria for inclusion in the 100 best is achieving certain scores
on a survey that measures trust levels in the organization on three levels:
credibility, fairness, and respect). In
2001, Fortune reviewed long-term performance for their “100 Best” and found
that they outperformed the S&P 500 by a margin of 2 to 1 over the past 10
years. In addition, these
organizations experienced the following:
v
Receive more qualified
job applications for open positions.
v
Experience a lower
level of turnover.
v
Experience reductions
in health care costs.
v
Enjoy higher
levels of customer satisfaction and
customer loyalty.
v
Foster greater
innovation, creativity and risk taking.
v
Benefit from higher
productivity and profitability.
