I just read the below article in Fast Company, thought you might like it. It talks about how the things we need to do as leaders today has not changed in 20 years, despite the change in environment.

What it illustrates is that we don't have an information problem we have an implementation problem. We know what we should do to lead better we are just not doing it. It shows that we need to help our leaders more with changing their behaviour.

My research supports this. In the last five years I have seen over 250 climate surveys from different companies. They all say the same thing no matter what industry. People want their leaders to do the following:
Treat me with respect
Listen and consider my ideas
Care about me as a human being
Coach me and develop my skills
Map out a career plan for me
Show me how what I do each day makes a difference.


This article supports this argument perfectly.

By Robert Sutton

http://www.fastcompany.com/1825035/good-bosses-are-the-same-today-as-they-were-in-1992

 

Lately I have seen the claim that management or leadership needs to be reinvented. Many reasons given for this need seem sensible: Gen X and Gen Y require different management techniques; outsourcing, globalization, and information technology means working with people we rarely if ever meet in person; the pressure to think and move ever faster is unprecedented; so many employees are disengaged that they need to be managed so they feel appreciated.

Yet, no matter how hard I look at studies by academics and consulting firms, or at contrasts between successful and unsuccessful leaders, I can’t find persuasive evidence of substantial change in the kinds of bosses people want to become or work for, or that enable human groups and organizations to thrive. Changes such as the computer revolution, globalization, and distributed teams mean that if you are a boss, staying in tune with followers is more challenging than ever. And, certainly, bosses need to be more culturally aware because many workplaces are composed of more diverse people.

But every new generation of bosses faces hurdles that seem to make the job tougher than it ever was. The introduction of the telephone and air travel created many of the same challenges as the computer revolution--as did the introduction of the telegraph and trains. Just as every new generation of teenagers believes they have discovered sex and their parents can’t possibly understand what it feels like to be them, believing that that no prior generation of bosses ever faced anything like this and these crazy times require entirely new ways of thinking and acting are likely soothing to modern managers. These beliefs also help socalled experts like me sell our wares. Yet there is little evidence to support the claim that organizations—let alone the humans in them—have changed so drastically that we need to invent a whole new kind of boss.

This isn’t a new idea, either. In 1992, two Harvard Business School professors, Robert Eccles and Nitin Nohria (now the dean of HBS), wrote Beyond the Hype. This book showed that while management thinkers (notably the much worshipped Peter Drucker) have repeatedly claimed it is a whole new world out there for managers and employees--that everything needs to be reinvented because the old ways are obsolete--the fundamentals of what it takes to lead, organize, and inspire followers were pretty much “the same as it ever was.”

Eccles and Norhia’s argument applies as well in 2012 as in 1992--at least when it comes to bosses. Just like the leaders people wanted before the industrial revolution, we humans still yearn to follow others who are competent enough to bring in resources, teach us new skills, and generate attention and prestige from key outsiders--who drive  performance. We also want fair leaders who protect us, and who make us feel cared for and respected--who inject  humanity. Although the ways bosses accomplish these things is and has always been constrained by technologies, culture, different kinds of  work, and on and on, the fundamentals remain unchanged. Yet the hype keeps flying about how we need to reinvent management. In particular, we often hear calls for the end of hierarchy, the virtues of empowerment, and how knowledge workers need to be treated in new and different ways.

The notion that people who do creative or complex work need more autonomy than others is quite old. Thomas Edison’s lab in Menlo Park, New Jersey,  was decentralized; workers there were encouraged to develop their own ideas, and there were fewer and less obvious status differences between people at different hierarchical levels compared to traditional organizations of the time.

Yet, at Edison’s lab--as at today’s Apple, Google, Facebook, and Pixar and every other creative organization I know—there was a clear pecking order. Indeed, a careful review of research by my Stanford colleagues Debra Gruenfeld and Larissa Tiedens shows that we humans prefer hierarchical relationships, are happier when we work in clear hierarchies than where power differences are absent or unclear, and we experience less distress and work more effectively.

Gruenfeld and Tiedens suggest that we prefer hierarchies because they are effective for sorting people based on different skills and reduce ambiguity. The upshot is that although good bosses--especially in creative places--do encourage input and delegate decisions, little evidence suggests that the need or desire for bosses--and bosses of bosses--will disappear anytime soon.

So the challenge is not to reinvent management. Rather it is to find ways to dampen the known drawbacks of pecking orders and amplify the positive elements. That is what great bosses do and have always done.

The Google experience is instructive. In 2009, Lazlo Block, vice president of People Operations, launched a study called Project Oxygen to figure out the differences between the best and the worst bosses at Google. Since Google was first founded about fifteen years ago, its leaders believed that technical expertise was the most crucial quality of a great boss and that since such smart people worked there, a boss’s job was pretty much to leave people alone unless they asked for technical help. Project Oxygen revealed insights that surprised Google’s leaders, but it fit with thousands of studies.


Technical expertise ranked dead last among the predictors of a boss’s effectiveness. Instead, as The New York Times reported, “What employees valued most were even-keeled bosses who made time for one-on-one meetings, who helped people puzzle through problems by asking questions, not dictating answers, and who took an interest in employees’ lives and careers.”

Google is an evidence-based place. So they boiled down their list of what good bosses do into just a few key factors, and they now work intensely with underperforming bosses to change their behavior. If you are a boss, you can save yourself a lot of trouble by considering Google’s journey.


Don’t believe the hype about reinventing management. As over fifty years of research shows, treating employees with respect, encouraging them to participate and to make suggestions, and listening to them are as important as ever. The same is true about setting a clear direction, making decisions, and taking charge.



Kind regards,

Dr Adam Fraser


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"Dr Adam Fraser's latest book - The Third Space - out in July 2012!"












 

We all want it but it appears that most of us don’t have nearly enough of it. What am I talking about? Happiness!
Happiness research is now big business. Where once the secret of happiness was left to the philosophers to ponder, the world of science has since joined the party. Scientists want to know what makes us happy, psychologists want to know why, and marketers want to know how to make money out of our desperate need to be happy.
Why has research is this area exploded? Despite rises in the standard of living and greater and fancier possessions, depression rates have risen to 1 in 4 people. While our external world is getting more luxurious, our internal world is struggling.
Why isn’t our happiness scale climbing in parallel with our quality of life? I set about answering this question. Having spent the last three months analysing the research, I’ve found that everything we thought we knew about happiness is wrong.
It’s time to debunk some common myths about happiness.

1.    Don’t the big things make us happy?
Major positive events such a promotion, a new relationship or house or even winning the lottery may provide a boost of happiness but they do not always promote long-term happiness – we eventually return to our previous level of happiness. Research shows that few positive experiences affect our happiness for more than three months.
The frequency of our positive experiences rather than the intensity of our positive experiences is a better indicator of happiness.  A person who experiences a number of good things in one day is likely to be happier than another who has one great thing happen. It really is the little things in life that matter.

2.    Aren’t I happiest when things are easy and I am cruising along?
We mistakenly tend to think that relaxing and not working hard or cruising in life with no pressure will make us happy but the truth is boredom equals discontent. Communities with high youth crime rates often cite the root cause of crime as boredom in kids who then look for trouble to overcome the boredom.

Matthew Killingsworth from Harvard university has created an iPhone web app called Track Your Happiness, tracking more than 15,000 people in 83 countries. The app queries users at random intervals on their mood and what they are doing at the time, as well as their level of productivity and their social interactions.
His findings show that for 50 percent of our day our mind wanders away from what we are doing during which time we are incredibly unproductive. When our mind wanders and we are no longer ‘present’ we experience our greatest level of unhappiness. Why? Because our mind tends to wander to unpleasant thoughts or personal concerns.
Most importantly he showed that when our attention is completely absorbed in a task we experience our greatest level of happiness.
So how does this relate in the business world?
We are happiest when we are challenged and engaged – working to achieve difficult goals, yet those within our reach. Most employees do not want to be bored at work. Bored employers are neither content or productive.
If you are a manager and want more engagement from your team give them challenging work, keep track of their progress and debrief it with them.

3. Surely you can’t be happy at work?
In terms of overall wellbeing, career wellbeing has been shown to be more important than physical, financial, social or community wellbeing. In other words, whether we are happy at work or not is more important than the other aspects of our lives. Why? Because work makes up so much of our time and we often relate work to your self image and identity. Also, it is vital for employers to ensure their staff are happy as the research linking happy employees to greater productivity and performance is so strong that it is no longer up for debate.

4. Don’t I have to focus on myself to be happy?
A study was conducted where people were given a sum of money and asked to either go buy something for themselves or for someone else. Afterwards, the group that bought a gift for someone else had much higher levels of happiness than the group that bought something for themselves. When we do things for others we get a much bigger happiness bump than doing something for ourself. Same goes for the workplace, when we help others improve and develop their skills, our happiness is far greater than if we just focus on getting ahead.

5. That’s just me I am not a happy person!
Researchers have since discovered that happiness is not solely linked to genetics. While genes and heritage determine about 50 percent, the rest depends on lifestyle decisions and daily habits. While there is no magic pill for happiness and wellbeing, we can make daily habitual changes to make a difference.

6. When I have nice things then I will be happy!
While we certainly get a bump in pleasure after we buy something beautiful for ourselves, the effect is short lived. What gives us a bigger and longer lasting impact on happiness is when we spend money on great experiences. A holiday, a concert, hot air ballooning. If you want to use money to get you happiness, spend it on experiences rather than possessions.

7. Don’t I have to be a tortured soul to be creative and successful!
Is happiness really desirable since it is often thought that to write a best selling book or song you need to have pain or heartache? There is no solid evidence to support this theory. These people are the exception, not the rule. It’s like saying my grandfather smoked every day until he died at 99 years of age, therefore cigarettes must make you live longer. Happier people are generally more creative and successful than tortured souls.

Hints for greater happiness
•    Regular exercise
•    Practicing meditation
•    Daily reflection on what you are grateful for
•    Striving to experience happiness in each moment
•    Do things for others
•    Get absorbed in each task you do
•    Invest in your personal relationships
•    Focus on experiences not possessions

Looking at that list it is a list that would make the people around you happy too and the world a better place. Looks like personal happiness is a win for everyone.