Mike Russell

A recent post on LinkedIn (https://lnkd.in/ecrcJRWM) commented on how job postings seem to leave out critical aspects of a leader’s success:

While a number of organizations chase after leaders with the right position title or number of years sitting in a particular role, very few seem to appropriately acknowledge and reward leaders with a proven track record of rehabilitating, building, and nurturing healthy, high-performing teams. Not only do the engineers/individual contributors on the team appreciate those skills, but the decrease in attrition, increased technical performance, and accelerated growth of the team as a result of these highly-effective leaders directly contributes to critical business outcomes.
So, why aren’t these leaders recognized?

Some initial thoughts:

• This will likely get worse with indiscriminate AI searches and screening for specific titles, industries, and other demographics … worsening tunnel vision in recruiting.
• Focusing on demographics is easier than looking at substance, even before AI.
• While many trumpet “culture eats strategy for breakfast” or similar memes, not many companies hire that way nor do leaders lead that way.
• Internal turnarounds and team building can be huge endeavors, but since the starting point is often in the negative zone/hole, the huge results may not look as big compared to moving from a positive position to a higher positive one.

Questions to consider:

❓ Will AI make finding the right leaders better? Worse?

❓With the huge number of applicants and resumes floating around, how can HR folks and recruiters efficiently find the gold needle in the dross haystack?

❓ What’s the best way to express/make visible the value of rehabilitating, building, and nurturing high performing teams?

Communication problems can frustrate your customers … and your employees … and eventually your results.

Getting business “right” depends on a key foundation: communication.

That is a business problem – not a person’s problem – at root.

Effective, efficient communication can’t happen when there are differences in language and understanding.

One would think in the age of automatic translation capabilities, emphasis on assimilating new hires into organizational culture along with training and development, etc. that communication issues would be mostly gone.

Not so.

Here’s an example:

We recently had a credit card stolen and notified the issuer – one of the BIG ones.

We went online and flagged fraudulent transactions that began showing up immediately. We then had two calls with the card fraud department to sort out the valid charges from fraudulent ones.

Then, more than a week later, I got a call from the fraud department wanting more information.

I had different language options (good for customers) and chose English for the call.

The resulting conversation was, in a word, difficult … I should also add irritating.

The card representative could not communicate well enough in English to get the call done, much less well.

A call that should have been 5 or less minutes in duration, took about 25. I still wasn’t sure everything is correct.

This was NOT a specific person problem from a root cause view.

This WAS a company problem.

A problem someone not matching the person to the task. A problem with hiring and selection … with training and development … with performance evaluation … and the rest of the “people cycle.”

There are at least 3 takeaways for your business illustrated by this situation:

First, make sure the language skills are adequate for the task.

Different tasks require different levels of language comprehension.

On this call, the representative couldn’t handle a basic conversation in the selected language.

For instance, even dates were hard to get right. The representative could not understand dates in a format like “March fifth.” I switched to saying with a number like “March five” … and that only sort of worked. Took multiple times to get ONE date right. And there were many to go through.

Add in the representative had a very strong accent difficult for me to understand … as probably mine was to her.

It would have been comical if it wasn’t about lots of money.

Same thing happened with numbers like charge amounts.

I resorted to “spelling” out the numbers like “one two three” rather than “one hundred and twenty three.” Decimal points were almost impossible to get across. Changing to using the terms “dollars” and “cents” didn’t help much.
It took much trial and error with lots of different phrasing to get basic facts sort of straight.

This representative’s language skill was inadequate for even basic bank teller transactions … much less fraud investigations.

Second, make sure thinking skills are adequate for the task.

Thinking skills underlie communication skills.

In the case example, I was working with one of the big credit card issuers about a stolen card.

One of representatives couldn’t converse in the language offered by the business, so even dates and numbers were a challenge.

It got worse.

The representative apparently was focused on one task … find a date after which all transactions were fraudulent.

There were some major problems with this, common to any credit card loss or fraud:

1. Some of the charges on the old card were valid on/after the fraudulent transactions. These charges were being lumped into the fraud category only by virtue of being after the actual fraudulent charges.
2. New cards had been issued, and there are new valid charges against the new cards. These charges were also being lumped into the fraud category only by virtue of being after the actual fraudulent charges.

Based on those problems, there was no way to set an arbitrary date after which all transactions were fraudulent.

I tried multiple times and multiple ways to describe and illustrate the problems … and why just “a date” wouldn’t work.

Once we got past the basic language comprehension barriers, there was still a logic/thinking problem. The representative did not understand the issue and stuck to the “single date” task.

Only by being insistent was I was finally able to get agreement to go through charges and flag valid/fraud one by one.

The level of understanding and thinking required to deal with this situation was higher than just getting a “date” for the file.

There are several cause possibilities:

• The business provided a script that failed to account for the common situation above.
• The business did not allow deviations from the script to accommodate situations outside the basic script.
• The business did not screen for ability to go “off script” even if allowed.

It is wishful thinking that all situations can be covered by customer service scripts. Customer service (and other roles) need appropriate language and thinking skills to handle the “off script” situations successfully.

Third … and deepest/biggest on the “iceberg” of effects … there are broader aspects to address and work in a cross-cultural environment.

Things like vision, employee growth, and trust are fundamental to employee engagement. And customer satisfaction in turn.

And all depend on effective communication.

There is more than mere “word translation” at play when there are language gaps.

Translating words into another language is a starting foundation. Understanding the meaning of the word is next. Understanding words together – along with any idioms – is the next level above that. Fitting all that “translation” into a particular business context is even higher up.

These kinds of communication issues are also culture issues. They are not just due to someone being from another country. Different subcultures within a country can create similar issues.

Different educational backgrounds, different life experiences … many things can create different “languages” and understandings that are a barrier to communication.

And that’s all before we even consider the ladder of inference 😉

Don’t miss communication disconnects when trying to improve most anything in an organization.

There have been several articles in recent months about AI replacing executive jobs.

Here’s one where nearly half of CEOs believe AI could replace their jobs! https://lnkd.in/dt2C7JHh

I keep coming back to: huh?

If that’s the case, why are they in the jobs right now?

Is what they do really fully automatable? Or is this just going along with the “AI flow,” an attempt at organizational egality PR, or something else?

Also from the linked article: “During Agarwal’s tenure as CEO of edX, he spent nearly 80% of his time on “mundane” tasks like “reports and repeated presentations, or saying the same thing to a lot of people in different ways,” he says.”

First, communicating mission, values, and vision is a big part of a CEO’s job, along with ceaseless working to keep all stakeholders aligned. Yes, that may seem like “grunt work” but it’s essential to business success. Did he identify what was his unique “add” and delegate the rest, to human or AI? Doesn’t sound like it.

Second, if the tasks were truly low value, that’s a MASSIVE misuse of CEO time, unless the CEO is paid the same as an executive assistant or other roles – whether all human or human/AI combination – that could be doing “mundane” tasks where “mundane” means not central to the CEO’s value to the organization. Unless of course by “mundane” he means “I don’t like,” and it’s actually part of the role 😉 … back to the first point.

A CEO needs to focus on what a CEO should focus on …

A more likely scenario is a lot of small(er) companies with human CEOs and substantial work being carried out by AI.

How do you lead scarce (and often high salary) AI talent effectively?

Short answer: effective leadership is effective no matter the people.

Longer answer: there are some cautions and actions for more effectively leading AI talent.

Some context:

Leading people is difficult to start with. There are principles that should be applied, but application can vary by situation.

Leading knowledge workers tends to be another level up … almost never rote day-to-day.

Leading creatives is more difficult again and an advanced form of leadership. Most high end AI talent will probably be similar to the “creatives” category.

Here are some ways to amplify leadership basics for AI talent:

 

⚠ Motivation. Motivation foundations of purpose, autonomy, and mastery apply to any leadership situation. Autonomy and mastery are usually high on creatives’ list of preferences. Unless those two factors are missing or weak, the main gap is “why” the AI work.
👉🏻 Action: Help them connect their creativity to business purpose. Constantly and consistently communicate the “why” of the work.

⚠ Alignment. When you need more than one person to get the job done, you must add an extra foundation – alignment. The key is achieving high alignment (focus on common goals) with high autonomy (freedom in achieving the goals). Balancing autonomy and alignment is more difficult with creatives. They may see *any* reduction in creative autonomy as micromanagement.
👉🏻 Action: help them understand 1) how the business functions and 2) why aligned work is necessary for business (and their) success.

⚠ Value. Anyone can get lost in doing work they love. Creatives can be especially prone to “creating for creation’s sake.” However, in a business the act of creation alone usually does not have value.
👉🏻 Action: help them understand and deliver business value (however defined for your business), not just interesting creation activity or AI research.

⚠ Invisible work. Work “progress” is often in the brain of the creative rather than visible. This makes it difficult to measure progress in achieving business goals. Balancing autonomy and alignment is also more difficult.
👉🏻 Action: one approach is for them to work in short periods of time and demonstrate results (value) at the end of each period. Autonomy comes from allowing freedom in reaching the period goal. Alignment comes from demonstrating progress, integration with others’ work, and contribution to end goals.

⚠ Brand. In any industry, part of a leader’s role is to design productive work environments. Also in any industry, work environments are part of brand statements. In creative industries, this needs to be even more explicit. For example, would you trust an office design firm if their own office interior did not look great? This also affects hiring and retention.
👉🏻 Action: pay attention to work environment and brand alignment.

Overall action:

👉🏻 👉🏻   Align expectations all the way through the “people lifecycle.” No one, especially a creative, likes surprises when it comes to their work.

Wherever in the people lifecycle you need assistance or advice we can help.

We also have research-based leadership development programs that actually work compared to traditional programs. Our programs can even pay for themselves.

Contact us to see possibilities …

Are your customers getting the intended experience?

\Are you sure? How do you know? When did you last check

“Mystery shoppers” used to be a bigger deal in the brick-and-mortar days. Someone – even an employee – would act as a customer and check that everything was working well.

It seems that in these times of websites and Internet marketing that isn’t done as much.

Disconnects between website information, processes, and employee actions come up all the time.

Here’s an example:

I am taking a trip on an airline in an alliance where I have achieved a frequent flyer tier. The airline’s website indicates that flyers with my level can pick any standard seat free within 48 hours of departure.

That seems simple.

Not so fast …

First, “standard” isn’t defined anywhere, and that became important later.

When I tried to check in, I couldn’t find out how to pick a standard seat other than the one assigned.

This is what I found after over an hour on the phone with at least (I lost count) 6 different representatives. And different airline departments. In more or less this order:

❓ “Regular” customer reservation agents could not answer questions about seat assignments. I was shuffled a couple of times to find someone who might. Seats on this airline can be added revenue, so this is a miss.

❓ Picking a seat for free only applies to that airline’s upper frequent flyer levels. Not alliance partners. (not indicated on website and contrary to a normal reading)

❓ All frequent fliers with status, even alliance partners, can pick seats for free. (negating prior answer)

❓ No frequent fliers, regardless of status, can pick exit row seats for free. (completely new info, and negates some of above)

❓ Only some seats in the back of the plane are “standard” seats. (There is no indication in the check in seat map, or on the website, about what are standard or not.)

I gave up and went back to the check in process.

After having my status level verified and going through everything above … all other seats on the plane required a payment, even in the supposedly “standard” section! 🤷🏻‍♂️

Check in processes that have lots of linked functions may be more involved to change in some way.

However, changing pure information on a website should be relatively quick and easy unless something is wrong. Also, having reps who can’t answer somewhat common questions is frustrating. And misleading in this case.

Mystery shop your business. Or have someone do it.

And don’t make changes in place without changing other areas that reference the same information or rule 🙂