Time-Driven Performance

Positional authority is usually equated with leadership.  This core belief comes from the traditional Pyramid Leadership Model that views business leadership as primarily the command & control of costs and resources.  This Leadership Model fit the demands of business for nearly a century, but it is not an effective system for today’s dynamic, fast-paced, global marketplace.

The Matrix Leadership Model has helped to break down the rigid hierarchy of the Pyramid Model, but it has not de-linked leadership from positional authority.  Adaptive Leadership™ talks about separating the functions of leadership and authority, but it does so for the purpose of change management — “mobilizing individuals and companies to build their adaptive capacity to handle changing environments.”  To date, there has not been a leadership model that is decoupled from positional authority and focuses on the full range of organizational capabilities required today.

Four forces currently operating in the workplace are demanding a new broad-based model of leadership.  These are the: 

• Always-On World of Global Business
• Rise of Mobile & Remote Work
• Demands of the Millennial Generation
• Social Networking & the Emerging Power of People

All of these forces are interacting to push power away from the few, and into the hands of the many.  That’s not a bad thing, though, especially if your company is trying to build a high level of employee engagement.

Engagement is sustained through opportunities to make decisions and make a contribution, both manifestations of applied power.  And, given that engaged employees are 20% to 43% more productive, 5 times less likely to have a safety incident, and are correlated with higher customer satisfaction scores, a 19% higher operating income and a 10% higher share price, employee engagement should be every company’s core aim. 

Asynchronous Leadership powers employee engagement.  Asynchronous Leadership—a model I developed from my 28 years of consulting with Global 50 to Fortune 1000 companies—is anchored in the belief that leadership is a capacity this is not necessarily aligned with positional authority.  Rather, it is a potentiality inherent in all human beings, not just a select few.  Leadership capabilities have to be awakened and nurtured within the entire workforce, though, for them to manifest fully and be aligned for positive, mission-focused outcomes. 

Unlike centralized-power Leadership Models, the distributed-power Model of Asynchronous Leadership has four explicit goals: 

• Generate Total Employee Engagement;
• Foster Ethical, Empowered Responsibility across the Organization;
• Ensure Speed of Action; and
• Enable Organizational Agility & Innovation. 

Such critical organizational capabilities don’t just happen by accident or even by applying extrinsic rewards to drive desired behaviors.  And you don’t automatically have Asynchronous Leadership just because you have front-line work teams.  You have to implement an Asynchronous Leadership System that has the express purpose of powering these four essential 21^st-century capabilities. 

If you’re interested in learning more about the Asynchronous Leadership Model, sign up for the publication announcement of my eBook, Asynchronous Leadership: How to Power Engagement, Speed, Innovation and Organizational Agility. 

You also can go to my company’s eLearning portal and View an archived copy of a recent webinar I presented for HR.com, entitled Fostering Engagement and Leadership: Two Sides of the Same Coin.  This complimentary webcast focuses on the direct fit between Asynchronous Leadership and Total Employee Engagement. 

© 2012, Susan L. Koen, Ph.D. – All Rights Reserved.

The safety equipment industry is a multi-billion dollar industry world-wide.  Companies also spend billions of dollars a year on employee safety meetings and training on workplace hazards.

This safety focus has produced significantly lower injury rates in the total recordable cases of non-fatal occupational injuries.  The latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows a decline in annual incidence rates for recordable injuries in 2010 to the lowest level since 2003.  Across the private sector as a whole, the annual number of lost-time cases also decreased 3% in 2010 compared to 2009.

But what about severe occupational injuries and catastrophic accidents, like fatalities and explosions in the workplace?

Well, despite the billions spent, these safety rates have not gotten better.  The BLS has reported the following statistics for 2010, the most recent year for aggregate data:

• In oil and gas extraction, fatal work injuries increased 56% from 2009 to 2010 and 25% from 2003 to 2010.
• Fatal work injuries increased 112% in all other private industries in 2010 vs. 2009 and are up 18% compared to 2003.
• Across private industry, work-related fatalities resulting from fires doubled in 2010 from 2009, reaching the highest count since 2003.
• For the private sector as a whole, the number of fatal work injuries resulting from explosions rose 65% in 2010 compared to 2009.
• Mining machine operators, industrial machinery maintenance workers, and airline pilots and flight engineers were among the top 10 occupations for fatal work.

Why are serious accidents and injuries still rampant in modern workplaces when billions are spent on safety every year?

From my 28 years in the field, I can pinpoint two reasons:

1. Insufficient attention has been given to the underlying root cause of workforce errors and resulting severe injuries and accidents in today’ Always-On World — sleep deprivation (also called cognitive fatigue).
2. The systemic root causes of sleep deprivation have not been addressed in the design of operational defenses for high-risk workplaces and occupations.

To understand the benefits of personal fatigue management training for your whole workforce, contact RoundTheClock Resources for a free two-week review of the interactive SAFR Individuals™ Course, Managing Workplace Fatigue.

Also, to learn more about the costly business risks caused by human fatigue in the workplace, take the Self-Directed Course, Understanding Workplace Fatigue Risks, available at RoundTheClock eLearning™.

 © 2012, Susan L. Koen, Ph.D. – All Rights Reserved

Work has become more brain-centered than brawn-centered in the vast majority of jobs across the developed world.  Knowledge workers—people who create, produce, handle, communicate or otherwise distribute information and/or knowledge, including “peer-to-peer” knowledge sharing—now outnumber all other workers in North America by at least a four to one margin. 

Even within industrial plants in developed countries, most workers spend their days monitoring and applying data from statistical process control systems or automated logistics systems, rather than performing physical labor.  Planes fly themselves while pilots monitor gauges, and nurses rely more and more on patient monitoring systems to tell them when to take action.

These changes in the nature of work, from active, physical tasks to more passive mental and cognitive tasks, place greater demands on our brains and minds than at any other time in human history. 

So, it is vital to ask:

Are we well-positioned to sustain high levels of performance in cognitive and mental tasks? 

Are our brains firing on all cylinders, interpreting sensory input accurately and processing thoughts quickly? 

Are our minds able to exercise our perceptive powers and memories, and reason effectively?

Data on the state of our brains and minds today is not encouraging. 

• A 2011 survey conducted for the National Sleep Foundation found that 48% of adults in the U. S. report having high anxiety levels, resulting in elevated mental fatigue. 
• Nearly two-thirds (61%) experience a sleep problem every night and wake up feeling un-refreshed. 
• Additionally, 52% have driven in a drowsy state between once per week to once per month. 
• And, it’s no wonder that our brains and minds are foggy.  A plurality (41%) of Americans report they sleep less per weeknight than the 7-8 hours recommended for optimal brain and mind functionality.

The primary reason for the poor quantity and quality of daily sleep and rest is “active communications technology use in the hour before trying to sleep”, especially among Generation Y’ers (42%). 

In other words, the cell phones and laptops that dominate life in the global, mobile, Always-On World are the primary sources of our sleepless nights.  And, our short sleep durations result in a decreased ability to pay attention, consolidate and apply stored knowledge, and remember new information—all of which are essential capabilities for knowledge-centered work.

Watch this complimentary Webcast

Workplace Fatigue: The Science and Solutions Framework

In this presentation, I answer these three key questions that organizational leaders must consider as the impact of human fatigue continues to escalate, challenging productivity and employee engagement:

1. Why is there a prevalence of fatigue in workplaces today?
2. Are workplace fatigue risks a serious barrier to Sustainable Performance?
3. Is fatigue risk mitigation a Best Practice for businesses today?

 To learn more about the business risks created by mental fatigue and sleep deprivation—also called cognitive fatigue—you also will benefit by taking the self-directed course, Understanding Workplace Fatigue Risks, available at RoundTheClock eLearning™.    

 © 2012, Susan L. Koen, Ph.D. – All Rights Reserved.

The time pressures of an Always-On World make poor reliability and long waiting times the primary sources of customer dissatisfaction. Consequently, “Do It Right the First Time” and “Deliver On Time, Every Time” have become essential strategic mantras for every type of business today. A new technology start-up is taking a Time Strategy focus to the restaurant industry where waiting has always been part of a customer’s expectations.

Yet, how many of you have experienced the creeping anxiety and irritation of waiting too long to be served, or even to have your order taken at a restaurant? Are you becoming more impatient about waiting time in a restaurant? Isn’t that part of the reason that fast food sales have been increasing for years? Well, the company E la Carte is banking on your desire for a more time-driven restaurant experience. Their business model puts computer tablets in restaurants so patrons can order for themselves, and then play computer games while they wait. Through tablet technology, they are addressing customers’ desire for speed, convenience and control. They also are borrowing a page from Disney, a company that learned at their theme parks to keep customers in motion, making progress, in order to tamp down their waiting anxiety while in long lines.

And, according to E la Carte’s website, their Time Strategy concept for restaurants is working. Service is faster, by 7 minutes, yielding more table turns for the restaurant and less lost time for customers. But it’s actually the other performance metrics that are the most impressive—a 10% increase in sales, 85% customer return, and 9x more customer loyalty sign-ups than restaurants without their tablet technology. These results prove that delivering time to people in an Always-On World—an asset whose value keeps rising, even if it’s just 7 more minutes—is a sound business strategy.

© 2012, Susan L. Koen, Ph.D. – All Rights Reserved.

Winning in the globally-competitive marketplace requires employees with the highest engagement levels, the best technical mastery, the strongest resilience and the most effective innovation and problem-solving capabilities. Yet too few companies structure learning, involvement and innovation time, what we collectively call engagement time, into their work system designs.

Does your enterprise provide the workforce, or managers for that matter, sufficient time for learning, intelligence-gathering and analysis, and innovation design? From my experience in the field, most companies still rely solely on their engineers, scientists or other technical classes to be their innovators. Additionally, far too many companies in the U.S. still train on the fly and devote too little time to developing the future-centered technical and behavioral capabilities of their employees. They look to front-line workers mostly for immediate productivity, with little real appreciation for the future value-added, innovative potential of this core workforce.

The primary reason seems to be an accounting mindset, which pervades business, rather than an investment mindset. Unlike hard assets, most financial ledgers place all front-line workers’ [direct labor] time costs, including training and continuous improvement time, in the expense column. There is no opportunity for long-term amortization of employee time spent in capability building or innovation generation, like there is for new equipment. And, little real ROI data are collected to prove that training dollars or process improvement team involvement are investments in business success. Consequently, few companies ever structure regular learning and engagement time into their front-line employees’ work schedules, adopting instead an ad hoc approach to capability building. And then they wonder why the workforce is largely disengaged!

The two exceptions to this ad hoc practice that I have witnessed directly in my long career have been Hewlett-Packard and P&G, two of the most successful companies in the U.S. To illustrate the power of valuing employee learning and innovation enough to design it into work time, let’s review the case of HP’s Vancouver Division in the early 1990s. Hewlett-Packard first started manufacturing the ink-jet printer on a large scale in its Vancouver, Washington plant. When they ramped up production, I helped the Plant implement a 5-crew shift system for 1,200 workers that enabled every crew to have off-line time in their weekly work schedule. This time was used for a combination of skills training, team development, continuous process improvement activities and wellness and safety training, like fatigue management classes.

During the time period that HP Vancouver deployed structured off-line time for all production workers, the climate survey results for their wage workforce were the most positive of any group in the company, including its engineers. The Plant produced 250,000 more printers per year than planned volumes, which meant that employee productivity more than paid for the structured off-line time in their work schedule. Moreover, the Division captured early market dominance over its fierce rival, Canon, and had growing profitability despite rapidly-dropping product prices. While highly-successful for five years, unfortunately, the rush to off-shoring and outsourcing eventually defeated this effective work system design.

Still, the lessons learned are clear: enterprises today need structured learning and engagement time for their front-line workers now more than ever. U.S. companies are competing with enterprises in places like Singapore, Finland and Germany who have devoted time and resources to building their workforces’ ongoing technical mastery, critical-thinking capability and resilience capacity. These countries, and their enterprises are making long-term investments in learning and engagement time to maximize the future productivity and innovativeness of their workforces. In Singapore, for example, both political and business leaders continuously ask themselves, “What do we need to do to thrive in this world today and tomorrow” [from That Used To Be Us], and one of their core findings is increased learning time at every level of society—from school children to workers to executives.

Structured learning and engagement time can be achieved in a number of ways. Before the right structure can be selected, though, business leaders must operationally embrace the fact that sustained peak performance is predicated on more than current productivity levels. Operational excellence in general and sustained peak performance in particular depend on continuous workforce learning, development, involvement, and innovation. When enterprise leaders adopt this strategic mindset, they will make the investment in structured engagement time for front-line employees so they can add future value while also ensuring current performance success.

© 2011, Susan L. Koen, Ph.D. – All Rights Reserved.

The workforce as a strategic asset is a view that has been evolving over the past few decades. But, what does it really mean to operate with people as a key strategic asset?

Unlike the traditional concept of labor as an expense to be controlled, this forward-leaning approach means that our workforce is prized, protected, maintained and grown as much as possible. Rather than paying minimally and slashing quickly, operating with people as a business asset means investing in and nurturing them so they continuously add value to the enterprise.

To really begin walking our talk about people as our most important asset, we need to start applying the principles of asset management to our management of people. Asset management is a systematic process of operating, monitoring, maintaining and upgrading assets so the greatest return is achieved. This asset approach starts from the premise that there is value present, and that such value can be (and should be) optimized. Success in extracting that value over time requires disciplined, principles-based management.

The five specific principles of asset management that I strongly believe are applicable to workforce assets as well are:
   Select Best Quality for Price  
   Protect, not Exhaust
   Grow, not Stagnate
   Manage for Maximum Life Cycle
   Measure Performance and Make Adjustment When Needed
These five principles easily could serve as an enterprise HR strategy framework.

With this framework in place we would actually, not just rhetorically, operate our enterprises with people as our greatest asset. And, we would begin to assiduously document the value that people are adding to brand value, pricing potential, customer loyalty and other direct contributors to top-line and bottom-line success. If we truly treat people as a strategic asset—mindfully checking our policies, processes and behavior towards the workforce against the five principles of asset management—then, we will achieve the reality of people being the intangible long-term asset of the enterprise—the very definition of capital assets in Webster’s Dictionary!

© 2011, Susan L. Koen, Ph.D. – All Rights Reserved.

         We cannot predict the future. But we can create it… Life is uncertain, the future unknown. This is neither good nor bad. It just is, like gravity.

That’s how Jim Collins opens his latest book (with Morten Hansen), Great By Choice. His new treatise is focused on the question: “Why do some companies thrive in uncertainty, even chaos, and others do not?”  It’s a question that I also find compelling, given the enormous degree of uncertainty facing companies across the globe.

For their research subjects, these management gurus selected companies whose stock returns beat their industry index by at least 10 times over the 30-year period from 1972 to 2002. Their final set of “10X” companies, as they called them, included companies from the biotech, high-tech, medical supply, insurance and airline industries. What they discovered from their historical comparative analysis was that different behaviors separated these “10X” companies from their direct counterparts.

Take the results of a comparative analysis that Collins and Hansen’s team performed on time-based risk. These researchers defined time-based risk as “when the degree of risk is tied to the pace of events, and the speed of decision and action” (p. 100). Their analysis looked at four areas of speed: speed of recognition, speed of deliberation, speed of decision and speed of execution. Of the events they studied, 70% were fast-moving and 79% were threats, not opportunities. The findings from this Speed Analysis are highly instructive for all leaders determining what time behaviors to foster in their organization.

Time to recognition is the most critical speed factor for building sustained business success. Of the 115 time-sensitive events studied, including events affecting both “10Xers” and their comparative companies, 68% had good outcomes. What most clearly differentiated events with good outcomes from those with poor outcomes was speed of risk recognition. The risk moments were recognized early in 71% of the cases with good outcomes versus 28% of the cases with bad outcomes.

Speed of deliberation and decision making are not strongly correlated with good outcomes in the Great By Choice research. As the authors reported [emphasis theirs], “…in good-outcome cases, decisions were not always made quickly; a fair number were made at a slow pace when the events allowed” (p. 238). The quality of decision making proved to be more critical than the speed. These organizational researchers found that reactive decisions—ones that lacked empirical evidence and rigorous deliberation—were associated with 97% of the poor-outcome cases.

Lastly, fast execution is crucial in the vast majority of good-outcome cases. In fact, 81% of the good-outcome cases that involved fast-moving events involved fast execution of risk mitigation solutions.

Great By Choice is worth your time. You can learn a great deal by understanding how the high-performing “10X” companies featured in this book used time assets to spur their business growth and generate peak results. Here’s how I would summarize the lessons learned:

– Great companies are fast in recognizing emergent opportunities and threats;

– Right-pacing is the most effective time strategy for decision making, with sufficient time spent gathering empirical evidence and deliberating about the choices involved before making a final decision. One word of caution, though: deliberative does not equate to slow; it means thoughtful.

– Execution speed has to match the pace of events in the business environment. Given the ever-greater- accelerating pace of business ten years following this 2002 study, great companies of the future will have to be capable of fast execution or risk failure.

Let me know what lessons you learn, and what you think about the research findings in Great By Choice.

© 2011, Susan L. Koen, Ph.D. – All Rights Reserved.

The human mind contains a two-speed processor, one automatic and one deliberative. Our automatic processor—called our System 1 mind—does our initial processing. This mental processor operates quickly, with virtually no effort and no sense of voluntary control.  This automatic part of our mind is intuitive and impulsive, making fast impressions and handling easy mental tasks effortlessly.

If we confront a processing task that we can’t handle automatically or intuitively, our second processor has to kick into action.  This deliberative part of our mind, commonly referred to as System 2, allocates attention to demanding, effortful mental activities, including ones requiring concentration and choice making.  Researchers have found that this type of mind work is enervating, requiring the expenditure of great amounts of energy.

Moreover, when time pressures or multi-tasking are involved, our System 2 processor has to hasten its pace of action from its preferred strolling pace to a jog or even a sprint. It takes even more energy to get our slower, reflective System 2 processor to operate at a faster pace or concentrate on multiple stimuli.  Under these types of high-pressure mental-processing conditions, which are common in most workplaces and most occupations today, fatigue accumulates quickly.  When such mental fatigue sets in, errors are commonplace.

The Nobel-winning psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, also explains in his new book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, that the human response to mental overload “is selective and precise: System 2 protects the most important activity.” And, the most important activity we are engaged in at a given point in time is the activity that the mind perceives to be the greatest threat to us.  But how the mind makes that determination can be tricky—and downright costly at times!

Take a recent case we encountered in a Distribution Center. An experienced Material Handler named John was working Day shift on a Wednesday, running a new automated-pick system that wasn’t quite working as promised and required extensive, concentrated monitoring. A new hire also had been assigned to John that day for on-the-job training. So, John also had to concentrate on what this novice was doing at all times and coach him as they worked. His Supervisor and his co-workers were expecting him to get this new Material Handler certified to work on his own no later than the end of the week. In fact, his Supervisor had said to him at the start of the shift, “John, I’m counting on you to get James up to speed by Friday. Also, if you do a good job with this, I can recommend you for the Training Coordinator position that just came open.” Knowing that meant permanent Day shifts, John was highly motivated to do his OJT assignment well.

Everything went fairly well for John and James during the first eight hours of their workday, with only a few equipment challenges occurring in the first few hours of the shift. Confident that the equipment would continue functioning well, in the 9th hour of their shift, John turned away from the auto-pick system to show James how to use the shrink-wrap machine at the end of the line. During the time that his eyes were off the auto-picking process, this new equipment jammed at a transfer point around the corner from John and James, and partially-filled baskets of products started running into each other and eventually falling off the moving conveyor system onto the warehouse floor. Because the moving conveyor wasn’t turned off in a timely way, that equipment jam cost the company tens of thousands of dollars in damaged products.

The Company’s Loss Manager wanted to know how an experienced Material Handler could have caused such a rookie error. After investigating the incident, we determined that the answer was mental overload. The combined stressors of new equipment, on-the-job training responsibilities and a performance review by his Supervisor caused John’s System 2 mind to become fatigued. And, in that state of mental fatigue, his System 2 mind prioritized the Peer Training responsibilities over his regular Operations task. This mental prioritization occurred primarily as a result of the reward opportunity and reinforcing instructions given by his Supervisor at the start of his workday. John was told that training James was the “most important activity” to his future success, so that’s what his deliberative mind focused on when it went into mental overload.

The lessons learned from this case illustration are:

• Mental fatigue is real, driven largely by multiple task assignments and/or time pressures on mental task completion.

• Mental overload mostly affects our concentration and deliberative decision making capabilities.

• The silent messages continuously running in our heads are key determinants of our mind’s attending priorities when we encounter mental overload.

• Messaging from organizational leaders also has a strong effect on our processing priorities and associated actions when we are in a state of mental fatigue.

The messages that are the strongest and clearest in everyone’s minds and have a self-peservation dimension are the ones that will resonate and determine priority action when employees are on mental overload. So, beware of piling on too many mental-processing tasks at once, and make sure you reinforce to your workforce at all times what their real priorities need to be.

© Susan L. Koen, Ph.D. — All Rights Reserved.

The uncertainty and downright fear plaguing many Americans and Europeans these days is causing paralysis in boardrooms and work sites.  Many enterprises are just treading water, hoping to ride out this maelstrom of repositioning and realignment occurring across the global marketplace.  But what is happening in business and industry today is not a short-lived storm.  It is a fundamental restructuring of how we work, communicate, buy, play and live that will be evolving for decades to come.  

Evolving enterprises will be the ones that thrive in this fast-paced, always-on and ever-changing world.  Standing still is a recipe for failure. 

So, how do we design ourselves for future success?  That is the question that many organizational leaders are asking themselves.  Unfortunately, it is the wrong question to be asking today.  This question reveals a traditional mindset about organization design; namely, it assumes that the right enterprise structure—what we often call an Org Chart with associated reporting and communication lines—will set a company and its work sites on the right course for success.  But, the pace of work and change are too fast and too unpredictable to seek a structural solution.

The question leaders need to start asking is this:  How do we build the enterprise-wide capabilities to continuously evolve in a principled and rapid way?  In other words, all enterprises today need to be seeking a capabilities solution with structural, procedural and cultural enablers that ensure they can evolve ahead of their competition. 

The specific organizational capabilities that companies need to build in order to thrive in the future are:
      Reliable Round The Clock Performance [It’s a global, always-on world, after all]
      Flexible Flow of Work, Time & People
      Empowered & Distributed Leadership
      Creative Engagement & Collaboration
      Human Energy Generation

So, my advice to organizational leaders is stop holding your breath, stop treading water.  You have capabilities to build!  If not now, when?

© 2011, Susan L. Koen, Ph.D. – All Rights Reserved.

The speed of innovation, as well as the speed of other performance imperatives, is determined by organizational leaders. Even in work systems with Self-Directed Work Teams, leaders are gatekeepers of speed. That is because of the role that leaders play in the integration processes—the direction setting, communicating/information-sharing and decision-making—of an organization, whether a whole company or a single work site. It is these integration processes that create a context and a base of common understanding for getting an entire workforce pointed in the right direction.

In traditional hierarchical organizations, management could get away with having ineffective integration processes because they made all the decisions. In the collaborative, laterally-oriented enterprises being fostered today, which have more complex functional and disciplinary interdependencies, systems and processes for organizational integration are essential. And, it is the job of organizational leaders to design, establish and maintain integration systems and processes that are engaging, empowering and fast.

Key differentiators between team-based enterprises that win in the Time-Based Competition arena and those that fall behind are the speed as well as the quality of their decision making. Those collaborative organizations that succeed in being fast and placing decision-making as close as possible to the work being done and the customers being serviced have three common characteristics:

1) There is clarity in the organization about the locus of authority and accountability for every type of decision.

2) All interdependent parties required for effective decision making are knowledgeable about the context and issues being resolved, participate only at their designated level of decision involvement, and trust and support the decisions made.

3) Most importantly, there are systematic steps of procedure to follow that specify what data is to be considered in the decisional process.

The more ambiguity there is in an organization’s decision-making processes, the less engagement, cohesion and speed there is across the enterprise. So, leaders who want their organization to innovate faster, get to market faster and/or service customers faster would do well to begin their organization effectiveness drive by optimizing decision-making processes.

© 2011, Susan L. Koen, Ph.D. — All Rights Reserved.