News, Advice & Insight About Executive & Organizational Development
From WJM Associates, Inc.
March - April  2007 - Vol. 6 Issue 2

Welcome to WJManagement Advisor, a bi-monthly newsletter exploring issues and trends around the successful development of organizational talent, as well as strategies for executive career growth.  WJManagement Advisor is published by WJM Associates, Inc., a recognized leader in assisting Fortune 500 and mid-sized companies in achieving continuous and measurable improvement in their people’s performance through highly focused executive coaching, executive assessment and other organizational effectiveness programs.  This newsletter is delivered via email and archived on our website www.wjmassoc.com. 

We hope you find WJManagement Advisor useful and welcome your comments. Please send your thoughts to our editor Tim Morin at tmorin@wjmassoc.com.
The Competency Model Controversy
 By Edmund B. Piccolino, Ph.D.
“Leaders are formed in the fire of experience."
– Carlos Ghosn, CEO, Nissan Motor Company   


Few quarrel with the compelling need to develop leadership bench strength – but there is widespread dissatisfaction with the effectiveness of traditional and often bureaucratic (i.e., form over substance) approaches taken by many organizations. A typical Talent Assessment process begins with the inevitable and often costly identification of what a successful leader looks like, in other words a “competency model” is designed.  Some experts have even declared success in coming up with the one “true list” or “universe” of competencies most associated with executive success at any organization.     
However, an active debate has begun (see Hollenbeck et. al), essentially attacking the competency model as a fallacy.  Why?  Because selection and promotional decisions in the real world are rarely made around such competencies, even if they can be accurately defined and measured.  Placement decisions are usually made ad hoc by line managers as the result of unplanned job vacancies.  It is in this context that Human Resources has been accused of being divorced from the line organization and the realities of actual business decision making.  

Some professionals argue that the fundamental problem with many leadership development models, and therefore, a contributing factor to HR’s reputation for not living up to its strategic mandate or mission, is that we focus obsessively on building competency models, instead of focusing on business competency directly!    

An alternative is to endeavor to identify the actual leadership experiences or challenges that are associated with success at the organization and devise ways to “share” these experiences through developmental coaching and assignments.  This becomes a process of building the actual competence of the organization’s high potential executives, not just more competency models.  Further, there is a growing point of view that, by re-defining “high-potential” to mean essentially “high learning agile” (vs. promotable 2+ levels) – and then using modified succession planning processes to drive well-conceived assignments of these hi-po’s to those experiences (instead of driving abstract color code schemes and replacement charts, which few follow anyway) would go a long way towards HR achieving real business impact, rather than inspiring more talent development bureaucracy!   

Traditionally, leadership development programs were essentially based on an engineering model or a “great man” theory of leadership, built upon additive competencies.  Perhaps most misleading are illusions around progress achieved by developing a  “common vocabulary” or “truly integrated HR systems”.  Then, when these efforts fall short, we surrender to the old model – “leaders are born, not made.”  The new model stresses the use of executive coaching as a way to encourage reflective action learning from the appropriate developmental assignments/experiences.  And, the focus of coaching is to drive those behaviors that have been found to be most relevant to achieving the organization’s bottom line goals, both at an individual and team level.  This new model is more aligned with John Kotter’s idea that it takes 10+ years to make a great general manager.     

The good news is that the emerging new archetype also acknowledges that many required abilities are learnable (and mostly through experience) and that successful job performance can be achieved many different ways – and not by satisfying additively a list of defined attributes or competencies.   Research by Jim Collins and Robert Hogan have reinforced the multifarious nature of effective leadership and the potential folly of developing executives around standard lists of skill sets or competencies.  One only has to consider the diverse styles of such successful leaders as Richard Branson, Lou Gerstner, Jack Welch, Herb Kelleher or Fugio Cho to see this.   

In summary, the name of the game seems to be shifting toward more frequent feedback, more intrusive assignment management, more reflective learning, and – most importantly, a more direct linkage to compelling business goals, a linkage that cuts through traditional solutions like competency models.   

Reference: Hollenbeck, et. al, The Leadership Quarterly Vol 17 (2006), pp 398-413   

Next issue of WJManagement Advisor:  Putting this new paradigm to work through effective Assignment Management - and other emerging trends in Assessment and Development    

Ed Piccolino is a member of WJM Associates' executive coaching and organizational effectiveness faculty, and was formerly senior HR officer at Pepsi International, EMI Music and Kodak Polychrome Graphics; and Executive Vice President of The Empower Group, Manpower Inc’s foray into human resources consulting. Dr. Piccolino will be facilitating a conversation regarding this topic on March 14th (see below).   

  
WJM Hosts a Discussion Exploring Talent Assessment on March 14th

Competency Models:  What the “Bleep” Are We Assessing??

  • How do we identify and build real executive competence, rather than just more “models”?
  • How do we make a direct link between Talent Assessment programs and compelling business goals?
  • How can we best use Talent Assessment to support more dynamic and ultimately more meaningful selection, development and succession processes?
  • What are the key drivers that help companies build strong reputations as talent developers?
  • What are the emerging trends in Talent Assessment?

 
We are looking forward to a lively discussion regarding “real world” Talent Assessment – bring your experiences and opinions!


Panelists: 

Connie Wayne, Director of Leadership, Eaton Corporation
Susanne P. Reilly, Ph.D, Executive Director Talent Management, PDI, Inc.
Ben Dattner, Ph.D., WJM Faculty Member and Adjunct Professor of Industrial & Organizational Psychology, New York University


Facilitator: 
Edmund B. Piccolino, Ph.D., WJM Faculty Member and former Executive Vice President of The Empower Group

Wednesday, March 14, 2007 9:30 – 12:00 pm
(8:30 am continental breakfast)
The University Club, One West 54th Street, New York


Please Note:  Business attire (jacket & tie, and equivalent for women) required by the Club
 

WJM provides this event as a service to our clients and colleagues.  Space is limited. 
Please RSVP to invite@wjmassoc.com by March 9, 2007.
Case Study - Achieving Superior Results Through M&A Integration 

Integrating two organizations after a merger or acquisition is never an easy task.  Many studies have shown that upwards of 40% of all business combinations fail to attain their intended goals.

While technological problems and market forces drive some of these failures, one of the biggest reasons that business combinations often fall short is the lack of attention and support that organizations provide to employees during and after the transaction. 

With M&A activity at an all-time high, companies today need to put people first when planning and executing business combinations.  Otherwise, they risk losing the “glue” that can keep their combined organization from falling apart.


Challenges for Employees  

Recently, WJM Associates had the opportunity to provide M&A Integration services to the combined legal department of two major communications companies that had merged. 

The general counsel of the larger company took advantage of a business opportunity and left the combined entity at the time of the merger.  So the general counsel of the smaller company was named general counsel of the combined organization.  He, in turn, chose his direct reports from the staff of both legal departments, which continued to function from two geographic locations.  This presented a number of challenges: 

  • Employees of the larger company had to learn to work with a new boss.
  • Employees of the smaller company -- including the general counsel -- had to adapt to the larger company’s more formal corporate culture, which prevailed in the combined organization.
  • Employees from both entities had to establish effective working relationships with new internal clients, whose responsibilities in their own departments had similarly shifted.

In addition, the new general counsel wanted his department to have a more prominent and more strategic role in the combined organization.  He wanted his lawyers to serve as “business partners” to their internal clients, and wanted those internal clients to regard the legal department as a business partner, not just a source of excellent advice and service.


WJM Associates’ Approach  

To help the members of the legal department adjust to their new roles and position themselves as business partners to their internal clients, WJM Associates created a customized developmental plan comprising the following elements: 

  • 360-degree interviews for the general counsel and his direct reports to gain feedback from supervisors, internal clients, colleagues, and subordinates.
  • Individual interviews with the general counsel and his direct reports to identify the issues that the team needed to address.
  • A series of off-site meetings for the legal department’s leadership team where the issues that arose during the 360-degree interviews and the individual interviews could be discussed freely.

The off-site meetings were critical to the group’s development.  At these meetings, the general counsel and his team discuss a wide range of subjects, including: 

  • What do they want to become as a business?
  • What is their role as Legal to support business partners and support that business initiative?
  • What is their role as leaders within the department to help people be ready for that future?

The group looked at the M&A integration process from the standpoint of a business partner helping the organization to identify and support its needs and establishing a roadmap to achieve those goals. 

In particular, the group created a set of behavioral expectations for how people would relate to one other, how they would collaborate.  They established their expectations of one another as colleagues, as well as expectations for the general counsel, and they created some very strong behavioral parameters.

One parameter was “Let’s always assume positive intent.”  Instead of automatically assuming that someone else has an ulterior motive behind a comment or decision, the team decided to ask, “Help me understand what’s going on.”  This helped prevent an attitude of “them and us” from taking hold.

Calibrating boundaries was another area of focus.  The general counsel and his team leaders had to decide when he needed to be involved in decisions and when he did not.  The general counsel would say, “If a decision touches these four or five areas, I don’t care what’s going on, I want to know about it.  If it is not in those four or five areas, then you’ve got this much room to run before you need to pull me in.”  With several hundred lawyers in the department, this was a critical issue to resolve early on in the M&A integration process.

The general counsel supplemented WJM Associates’ program with team-building exercises to establish closer rapport among colleagues from the two merged legal departments.  To help his team begin to think more like business partners, the general counsel also brought in a “futurist,” a consultant specializing in emerging and incipient industry trends.  That consultant helped the group focus on changes that could affect the company’s business five or more years down the road.


Metrics Say It All  

After the better part of a year, the legal department engaged in a quantitative study to evaluate its members’ effectiveness as both attorneys and business partners.

The study addressed a comprehensive range of attributes on two dimensions:  importance and effectiveness.  Both legal department employees and their internal clients participated.  They assessed such attributes as core legal services, compliance and risk management, service orientation, business partnering, and management of outside legal counsel. 

Given the fact that this study was conducted during an intensely busy period, when the entire organization was still assimilating the previous year’s merger, the legal department attained scores higher than the benchmark average in all five categories.  The legal team credits the assistance provided by WJM Associates with helping its members achieve these superior results. 

WJM Executives to Present at 2 Upcoming Conferences in Washington DC & Maryland

On Tuesday, March 13th, Bill Morin, CEO of WJM Associates and his fellow panelists will be presenting “Building Corporate Trust:  Setting the Tone at the Top” at the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) Conference in Washington, DC.    

In a post-Enron corporate world, the lack of trust has been one of the biggest issues negatively affecting the public standing of business in society. Most companies have focused primarily on addressing ethical blind spots or outright illegal activities, but an increasing number of companies are beginning to appreciate the benefits of managing so as to build trust, as opposed to simply playing defense. In this context, what role can - or should - corporate directors play in building greater trust in society for businesses and other institutions for which they have a duty of care and loyalty?    

For information and registration please click the following link:

On April 5th, Scott Litchfield, VP – Client Services of WJM Associates will be presenting “Building an Executive Coaching Program - from the Inside Out” at the Chesapeake Human Resources Association (CHRA) 2007 Spring Conference in Columbia, Maryland.  This session will focus on:  

  • Planning and developing an executive coaching infrastructure 
  • Determining coaching readiness of the organizational 
  • Ensuring that coaching supports the company’s overall Talent Management program or philosophy 
  • Interviewing and selecting the right executive coaches.  What about confidentiality issues? 
  • Utilizing external coaches versus internal coaches 
  • Dispelling the perception of “the broken wing” phenomenon

For information and registration, please click on the following link:  

http://guest.cvent.com/i.aspx?1Q,P1,BFF44586-88DD-49B8-97BE-7661CAB41017 
About WJM Associates
Headquartered in New York City, WJM Associates is a recognized leader in the fields of executive and organizational development. WJM has a Faculty of over 100 experienced executive coaches and consultants delivering coaching, assessment and other organizational effectiveness services throughout the world. To learn how we can help you, visit www.wjmassoc.com, contact one of our Account Directors toll free at 1-877-667-4647 or e- mail us at tmorin@wjmassoc.com.
 

Sincerely,

Tim Morin
WJM Associates Inc
_______________________________

Web: http://www.wjmassoc.com


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