Managerial leadership practices - How to approach the implementation of managerial practice?

Speaker A You have to start from the top. And Terry and I and Nancy have worked in organizations where we couldn't necessarily start with the senior level, more senior level most manager. And that is a difficult struggle. And so as close as you can get to the top, the better you are, because that manager will model that behavior for the entire organization. And having worked in some of our units in the bank where we did not necessarily have the senior leadership completely involved and said it's okay, go do it, but not necessarily modeling the behavior, that is a more difficult struggle. And so you're absolutely right. And the most important thing is to get, if you can get to the CEO, which we have in some cases. Nancy's success with Novus is because she started with the CEO and the CEO absolutely can I use the word mandate? Yeah, absolutely mandates that this is the system that will be done. Part of our struggle in the United States with training and development is this system is perceived as sometimes as a way of just helping managers be better managers without necessarily understanding that this is in fact, managerial work. And so it has to start from this most senior level manager. So when we go in as a consultant, we will find that senior level manager, whether it's in a department, whether it's in a division, whether it's in the entire company, the group that we're working with right now, we are starting with a vice president of an entire division. And he's having us do this as a pilot project to test for the entire organization. But we found he invited us in as the senior level leader, and he has been crystal clear with his division that this is how we're going to do this and these are the practices. And we're going to get very, very clear on accountability and authority because they are facing great change as an organization over the next five years. And he absolutely believes that this system will work to make that change. He also believes that we'll help educate some of his new growing managers at Strata Two and Strat Three. He can help his Strata Four level managers understand how you do this and how you work from the top. So thank you for the question. Because when you work inside the organization in human resources and you invite people like us in, it's very difficult to make well, it's very important let me back up and say it that way. It's important that it's not necessarily seen as a human resources system. It's seen as a managerial system. So the human resources professional can work with the senior level organization to invite people like us in or to do the instruction themselves, but be very clear that it's a managerial system from the very beginning. So do either one of you want to comment on that? Okay.

Speaker B The one supportive comment is the fact that the CEO is also a manager. So the important thing is that when we talk about managerial accountabilities, it applies to everyone that is a manager, which means the CEO is a manager. So if you understand your accountabilities, you understand the accountabilities of your boss because they're the same level. So the manager, your boss, is accountable to set clear direction to you, accountable for your personal effectiveness so that one set of managerial accountabilities cascades up or down to the organization. Therefore, if you don't have the support of your senior level management, it is going to be very difficult. It is not impossible. If you as a manager can carry out these managerial practices, you will see an impact on your staff. They will be far more effective if your boss, if your manager also is aligned. So again, it's not impossible, but it will not be as effective as if you get alignment through the organization.

Speaker A I'm going to ask Nancy to come over because she worked for so many years with Dr. Jacks about the culture beliefs and the essence of what you're speaking of, somewhat values and culture change. I teach this in a university in the States, and I teach it as part of change management. To just the point that you're making. These are deep systemic changes. And a little bit of what we're doing today is what we call preaching to the choir. You all understand this and you understand why it's very important, but it's also why it's not what we also call the flavor of the month, because in order to implement this, it's very often a culture change, which I believe takes 510 years to do. And so it's not easy. And we know that when we come in to talk with senior level managers, that the whole system itself, which is why Yan has been working for 18 years with Novus. It is a profound, indeed, culture change, and which is why, to your point, it's not just a human resource system, but it is incredibly.

Speaker C It has so.

Speaker A Much potential, I think, for changing organization. And when we were talking Legacy Day yesterday a little bit about changing society, that when I read Dr. Jack's second to last book. I thought that he had very profound meaning relating to the very important place. That a CEO and managers hold in a society with the uses of the resources of that society, which has to do with how people work and show up to work every day. Which is why we do what we do.

Speaker C Well, I just like to make the point that when we teach requisite organization, which is what we call the whole body of knowledge, we start with the values proposition of what the values of requisite organization are, which is fairness and justice and trust, because it is totally a values based system. And that's why early on, I said one of the questions I always ask managers in making any decision will it encourage more trust or a road trust. For example, the senior manager that Sandy was talking about, he is in line to be the CEO of the company. He'll be there in two years. He wanted to test, does this work in his culture, does it work in his company? So first I educated him with his head of human resources, but he understood that he had to drive it, she had to assist. But it all came down from him as the manager. And we're still in the testing phase. But I would say that it's 90% certain that this is the method he wants. Because at the same time, there are two other consulting companies in the organization. One is doing a values based consulting in terms of surveying the employees all the time. It's a survey based operation. The other one is doing a culture examination. What is the culture and how does the culture need to change? That's fine, but they don't have any methodology, any procedure for fun. You're saying the culture has to change. You have some idea of how it should change. How do you go about doing it? That's what Dr. Jacks laid out by doing research over 55 years in companies in 15 countries, Argentina being one of them, and designed this total system that's based on trust for changing a culture. Board of directors of the reservoir and the chief executive officer do not wish to make this change and drive the change. It's a management based change. And it was interesting to me. I talked to someone who was here and left, who has a company, and I said, Were these ideas interesting to you? And he said they were extremely interesting. I like to explore them further, but I know that it will take me a great deal of time to learn about it and to implement it. And no way are we saying that it's easy or quick. It isn't. But it is worthwhile for the good of society, for the profitability of the company and for the good of the people that work in the company. Does that confirm what you were saying? Because you're absolutely right. But what I have found, in order to do this work, you really have to have a CEO and his or her executive team. It has to be that whole group of people who say, we have pain here, we need to make a change. For these reasons, we will look at and consider this. So I present then the underlying principles of this way of thinking and working as a set of propositions for them to consider. Because to your point about beliefs, some of these propositions run counter to commonly accepted belief. And so I let them think about do they wish to work with the principles and concepts that are here? If they do, this is then what you do. And first you look at the structure, because most of the problems that people have come from the structure being wrong. That's the first place you find your problems. And I see a lot of shaking heads here. And the second place is once you look at the structure and get that reasonably right because you never achieve perfection, but at least you have an ideal example to constantly be working against. And you know when you must make a conscious compromise and then you know that at some point you want to try to fix it. The second thing you do is look at all of your people and get the right people in the right role. And part of this work is to see that every individual gets a value adding manager. A manager who can work at one level higher and can solve problems for them and add value to the work and carry through these managerial practices as we are providing them today. Then the third step is to have the managers, just as Sandy said, the managers from the top down. Terry and I taught these for, I don't know, two years. We taught morning and afternoon to all the managers in an area that had 5000 employees. Couldn't remember what we said yesterday or this morning, but every single manager was trained. But the plant manager of the 5000 people was there every minute. He started it off, he said, this is my system. This is the way we're going to work around here, folks. And we are going to see that you're fully educated in how to do this. I'm going to practice it. The President of novice, every time he talked, who was the previous to God, the one who's here today, he retired. His name was Joe Private. And the original novice story is in here. But every time he talked to people, he said, I am accountable for working this way and I'm holding you accountable. If I am not working this way, he'll come back and tell me and we'll talk about it and I will change because it's hard work to work on changing like that. But we have found that in many companies, they haven't gone as far as to explain in depth these management practices which are not rocket science. This is not new news, but we have to keep reinforcing it. Every year, Joe Private got up in front of his whole staff in an annual meeting and said, these are the practices we're going to do. This is the way we're going to do them. And they've been continually refined over the years.