Building a Diverse Team-A Tipsheet

Today I'll concentrate on "above the water line"issues when building a diverse team.  I've got five things I consider.  First, where's the business?  By that I mean physical geography.  You need members of your leadership team from your business "centers of gravity".  Second, what is the business?  You need leaders who are deeply proficient in the business....competent and knowledgeable.  Staff will follow leaders who demonstrate they know what they are doing..  Third, get a wide range of work experiences among those you select.  If everyone on the team has had similar work experiences they are more likely to approach problems in a similar way.  Fourth, select both men and women.  My experience is not exactly "Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars" but I do believe men and women often think differently about the same challenge. The variety of thinking is what I'm after when I pick a team.  Last, pick complementary personalities.  I'm not suggesting you use Meyers-Briggs or any other instrument as a screening technique...just use your background, experience and intuition to pick a mix of personalities.  Great teams are not characterized by a lack of conflict.
It's relatively rare to be able to pick a new team from scratch, so often  you will be making individual selections to replace departing team members.  It's also rare that you can satisfy all five dimensions I've outlined when picking a team; you'll need to make trade offs.  If in the in final analysis, you end up with a gap...a geography not covered, a single gender team, a shortfall in business expertise...it's important to make that gap visible to the team.  Then the group can be conscious of their vulnerability to risks inherent to their team's thinking....and develop means to pause, reflect and adjust if necessary.

Cultural Awareness tipsheet

There are a number of things to consider when thinking about your global team and how to lead.  Just this past week Tom Doctoroff wrote about the emergence of "American style individualism" in China.....or not.  Yesterday I mentioned Hofstede and Trompenaars work and won't repeat it here.  My own list of things to consider goes something like this:

1. Respect for authority
2. Expectations about decision making- Leader, Majority or Consensus
3. Personal Freedom
4. Self Interest
5. Tolerance for Open Debate and free expression 
6. Ethics, codes of conduct

There can be huge differences in national culture among Americans, Europeans, Africans, Asians, South Americans....really any nationality.  The obvious lesson is the importance of a leader developing behaviors that take these cultural differences into account.  There are also a couple of traps here.  First, although there are national cultural attitudes about these things, it's also a mistake to assume everyone from that culture all hold common beliefs.  Its seems self evident but there will always be differences among individuals.   Stereotyping all people of a national culture can be just as
de-motivating to a team as treating them all as if they were from a single culture.  Second, company culture can trump national culture among long serving employees of some companies.  Understanding the way we do things here can be just as important as understanding national culture.
So, yes a leader must be very aware of the influences different national cultural tendencies can have on their team AND the skilled leader has to understand the degree to which their team members reflect those differences.  Appreciating those differences and being inclusive of them when leading  will result in more effective team performance..

Tips on Leading a Diverse team-Deepen your Cultural Awareness

There are many types of diverse teams.  The kinds I'm referring to in this blog are globally diverse teams...at least three different countries, multi-gender, multi-cultural, multi-racial teams.  The first team I led like this in Shell had a Danish expat male based in London,  a French male expat based in The Hague, an Australian woman  based in The Hague, an Australian woman based in Melbourne and an American woman based in Houston.  Later we added a Malaysian male based in Singapore.
First, a leader has to develop their cultural awareness.  Many will be familiar with the iceberg model, an example of which I've posted.  Those things above the waterline are those that are visible but actually represent a small percentage of the things that drive behavior that are represented below the water line.  I also believe there is some self study required.  Geert Hofstede's work and Fons Trompenaars work are both examples of research that can help leaders understand those things "under the water line" that are critical to successful leadership of a global team.   So tip #1 is Deepen your Cultural Awareness.  How?  Study, Reflect, Travel outside your home country.

Diversity and Inclusion-The Business Case

Let me state up front, I am an advocate for diversity and inclusiveness in the workplace. Over and above the basic issue of human dignity, I think there is a strong business case that has three elements to it. First, global companies need access to the best talent in the world. In the war for talent, no company can afford to exclude talented people for any reason. That also means that you have to create a meritocracy...a work environment where success is based on performance. Second, diverse teams can work better...reduce the risk of "group think" and increase opportunities for innovation . A key point is that diverse teams don't automatically work better just because they are diverse. It takes skilled leadership to realize that potential. The third element of the business case is that customers and key stakeholders want to "see themselves" in companies they deal with. It's important to be able to put a local face on a global business. Since the subject of this blog is leadership, I'm going to spend the next few days exploring the second point. What's it take for a leader to realize the potential of a diverse team?
 

Book Review-The Leadership Pipeline

A lot of the books I'll review in this blog aren't exactly "new".  This particular book is over 10 years old but stands the test of time.

The big day has finally arrived.  All your hard work has been recognized.  You are being promoted to the next level of management.  You call your spouse.  You make reservations at that favourite restaurant.  This is a cause for celebration.  Within a few weeks, you discover something isn’t right.  Many of the skills and techniques that worked in your last job don’t seem to be working anymore.  You keep pulling the levers that made you successful, those that got you promoted in the first place, and they don’t seem to be attached to anything anymore.   

This bewildering and slightly frightening scenario is not uncommon.  Most managers will admit to experiencing this at some point or multiple points in their career.  Ram Charan and his co-authors describe this common phenomenon and how great organizations deal with it in their book The Leadership Pipeline. 

The theory of the book is that there are what the authors refer to as six passages, or turns, in the leadership pipeline of all organizations.  The passages are from managing self to managing others, managing others to managing managers, from managing managers to functional manager, from functional manager to group manager and from group manager to enterprise manager.  Their hypothesis is that each of these passages represents “a shift in organizational positions- a different level and complexity of leadership- where a significant turn has to be made.” 

The book contains chapters on each passage and its unique characteristics, helpful hints to identify when someone is having difficulty making the passage, and coaching tips on remedies to keep the pipeline from getting clogged. 

Managers who discover themselves at one of the turns in the pipeline, leaders coaching others through a career transition and HR talent managers will all find this book extremely practical and helpful in the day to day practice of building leadership capability.     

Innovation/Standardization-Opposite sides of the same coin?

Not long ago I was watching a Travel Channel show about how US fast food franchises had adapted their menus to different cultures.  McDonald's had beer and spatzl in Berlin, the McFalafel in the Middle East, and Kosher offerings in Israel.  The show demonstrated similar adaptations for Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut.  Does this erode the standardization argument?  I think not.
The show also made the point that each restaurant offered their "classic menu" in addition to the local customized offering.  The standard classic menu was the start point for local adaptation.  I've long felt that standardization is the source of innovation.  Without a common base there is no way for an overall system to improve. 
Clearly, there are differences between fast food franchises, retail activities and other enterprises.  That said, I found the same theme true in the US Army.  In a series of progressive leader development interventions that punctuate an Army officer's career, one is taught doctrine, tactics, techniques and procedures...approved ways of accomplishing common tasks.  Of course when one gets to the field the "school solution" might not work....often because the situation is so different.  A great strength of the US Army is it's ability to adapt based on the skill and inventiveness of its officers and non-commissioned officers and not be handcuffed by rigid adherence to the "school solution"....but it all starts with the standard baseline.  In fields as varied as fast food and military operations standardization is the source of innovation.
What does this mean to the global leader?  I think it means that the leader has to relentlessly drive toward standardization....absolutely insist on the base case... AND be prepared to adapt to a local situation.  Knowing when to adapt is one of the elements that makes leadership an art and not a science.

The Trap of Customization

I started this series of blogs on standardization with a story of how a leader of a manufacturing activity standardized his maintenance management systems into one...and dealt with the "we're all for a single system..so long as it's ours"  The epilogue to the story is that a year after finally agreeing a common system, the same business leader was asked to double the investment in the system.  The reason?  Everyone wanted their own version of the standard system!  The impulse towards customization is a strong one.  At a site level, there are a number of legitimate reasons...the local leader wants data arrayed in a certain way, some countries have regulatory requirements that drive unique solutions, Joint ventures pose a particularly difficult problem when the "minority shareholder" doesn't agree. In addition, there is often a legacy of those in the center trying to design solutions that businesses request...a genuine desire to respond to an articulated business need and therefore get buy-in.  There's a trap in these impulses towards customization.  When it comes to supporting IT systems in particular...HRIT, Finance IT, Procurement, Maintenance Management, Learning Management Systems(LMS)....etc,   customization drives complexity. The complexity creates instability and unreliability in the system and the instability/unreliability erodes confidence.... reinforcing resistance.  To deal with this dilemma, I think a leader has to do a couple of things.  One, you have to be explicit up-front that everyone won't get everything they want out of a standardized system...and in fact, in many cases, won't get everything they currently have..  Second, you have to listen hard and sort out legitimate issues, from smokescreens intended only to delay or derail the initiative.  Third, you need a  set of trusted colleagues with an enterprise first mind-set to help make tough calls.  Last, to reinforce a point made a few days ago, you have to get the governance aligned toward global, so that  "no" answer to a customization request will stick.