Formatted Text
Speaker A Shift on this last exercise, we want you to just reposition. Some of you stay where you are. Some of you move. Just takes up a little bit, but it's also kind of getting you moving a little bit late afternoon. What we want to do now is the last exercise, and I'm going to have to ask if it's okay. We may run about 15 minutes over. When we really did a design, we had a design for 25 people, and now we have 40. So there's just been a little shifts in times that we've had to adjust to in terms of the original design. So if that's really not problematic for too many people, then just kind of fair warning, we might just go overboard. But I think we'll have some fun with this exercise and some fun with the discussion. What we're at then, in terms of the consulting process, essentially, that we've been setting up, is we've now gone into the organization. We've done all our interviews, we've had our protocols developed. We've gone in, we've gathered all this good information. We've looked at all these documents, we've looked at role descriptions. We've done all this kind of stuff, and we're kind of pulling it all together. And one of the pieces that we pull together in the requisite process is we've created now what we call an X stamp or a depth chart. In other words, what we've done is we've taken that manifest or surface chart and we've leveled it. In other words, we've taken the depth of the data and we have leveled. All right, so what you'll see underneath each of the manifest charts is the Xanth chart for this organization. I mean, it's made up, but it's the fake XANT chart for this particular situation. Just I think it's important to maybe what we could do is in your groups, just go up to the one of the walls, because I just like to explain how the chart is created and then so you have an idea. So just go pick a chart, stand up to it, and I'll talk to it, to all of you to kind of look at it up there as well, is a little bit of a chart that's called a legend, which explains the colors. You remember that in the way of doing this, is we said that to a client when we shared that with them. That color is not good. All right, so a couple of things about a depth chart or an extant chart. One, it's drawn from the perspective of the work. Even though people's names might be in the roles on a depth chart, it really is talking about the work. It is not making any judgment about a human being's capability in terms of person in any one of those roles. Could have capability right on. Could be above, could be below. That's not the issue. It's just describing the work and the level of the work period. The next thing is it's written from the perspective of the manager. In other words, remember we said when we're working with Herb that the time span is in the mind of the manager, and the time span is created by the manager. So initially the chart is drawn, all right? Where the roles are leveled. They're leveled as where the manager put them. All right? That's where the manager put them. What we have a situation, though, when you gather information, particularly if you're talking to a manager about his subordinates and he or she levels those, and then you go and talk to those subordinates. Sometimes a subordinate will say, I think mine or I would level my role, or I would describe my role as either being higher than what that is, not necessarily that that person knows what the managers said about it and generally we don't. Or it might be below. I think on this chart, there were no belows with an arrow going down. But any role with an arrow going up is where the individual in the role has said, I think my role is one level above where the manager had described it. Okay, so that's what the arrow means. The blues are basically the jam ups, all right? In other words, anything that's in a blue state. What that means is that there's two roles in a manager subordinate relationship occupying the same level of work. The greens, pure greens, are a gap. In other words, the manager and the subordinate role are at least one or more levels discrete or discrete from each other. So there's a gap going on there in some cases. You got to be a little careful with it because in some cases, roles are jammed one way and gapped another, so they will have a border around them. All right? I believe in this case, we also created a situation where there was one role where the manager actually leveled the role as being more complex than his own. In other words, so you'll see it's up above the manager. All right, I think I forget what the color? It's kind of a can't remember the color then. Believe it or not, what we also added, because it does happen, is we put a floater roll in there where there's no apparent line in terms of where it's connected. I think it's the person who has the women's services or whatever it is. That's a situation where in the interviewing process, the person in the role could not absolutely be clear about who in the organization was accountable for their work. And when we interviewed around it the role, we couldn't find anybody claiming accountability for the work. I don't know whether that surprises you, but believe it or not, I would say in probably 60% to 70% of our cases over the years, we found these floater roles where it just is not clear either to the person or anybody above them. So their older ones kind of floating. I think I covered all the things on the depths. I just wanted you to know what those things were. Okay, is that enough for anybody? Any questions about how it's formed? Okay, here's your task. All right. We formed the new subgroups. What we'd like you to do is use the XNAT chart, the alleged and the questions that are in section one, part six, I think section six of day one. All right, there's a set of questions in there.
Speaker B So what we'd like you to do.
Speaker A In the new subgroup is start tackling those questions. What does this Xnant chart start to tell you about the organization having analyzed it? And what are some of the key things from this extent chart you'd want to point out to your client? Is it possible to project that on the screen, the questions? No, not possible. No, it's not. What you could do is just pull them out of your binder.
Speaker C You said what section did you say?
Speaker A One section six. Okay. That's all that's in that section. It's just the exercise. So one or two people just wanted to take up the what I'd like to do, though, is also are using a flip chart to document some of the things that you want to say to a client so we can share it back out with them. And what I'd like you to do is see what you can do with this exercise in 30 minutes. I'll give you a little more if we need it. Let's try 30 and see how we do. Anyway, let's start over here. What were some of the highlights from your group's conversation about the exercise or about the extent chart in terms of what might it be saying? What's it leading you to want to say to the client as a result.
Speaker B Of what you come up with, levels.
Speaker A Of where these things are and where they're.
Speaker D Well, we submit to all the questions necessarily.
Speaker E Okay.
Speaker D I'd say where there were issues in the chart in terms of compression or gaps. I think there was a sense that there would be real problems around that. We had quite a lot of conversations around the difference between the jobs and the capability of the people and.
Speaker A When.
Speaker D Does the capability of people come in and does that explain perhaps some of the jobs that have arrows going up and things like that? We had an interesting conversation about is six levels, the right number of levels for a bank like this, both in terms of capability of people running banks, but also what Ron was saying in terms of where branches sit. If this has got 1000 branches and the most in the retail area and there's maybe 10,000 people in that area, you can work your way up to say that consumer can't be level five.
Speaker A It has to be level six.
Speaker D But we don't know how many people there are in the branches.
Speaker A Yeah.
Speaker D Because we covered a lot of ground. But what were your thoughts around the key areas? We had a lot of conversation, a lot of disagreements and things as well, of course.
Speaker A And when you work on a consulting team together, you'll find that you'll have that too. We thought that in this four looks quite heavy, quite crowded, just semi optically. Optically it looks crowded, but it's interesting. It's quite actually one thing that's missing.
Speaker F Translation.
Speaker A Quite a lot of crabing out of three. So it just looked crab there looked like quite a gap between we also very much felt that in terms of the strategy, there was nothing serious that had been signaled around the data. No CIO.
Speaker F Specifically said about the strategy.
Speaker A What you do and what you don't do both send signals. So you're sending a signal about the strategy which are actually sending completely the off top message about what you'd originally said your strategy was, which is it's been elevated.
Speaker D So if you're going to go with.
Speaker A Those others, then you wanted, if you.
Speaker F Could find one.
Speaker A Anything else, Adam or a group? Yeah, you detract about the talent that may lead. There might be some risks in there around because that's often the case when you get that kind of crowding. Because essentially what it means is that if it's a true JAMA, what it really means if I'm in that subordinate role in that relationship, I'm probably and I'm capable at that level at least I'm not able to express my full capability, I just can't find the space to do it. Or I get frustrated because sometimes that superordinate role in the end of the day is really just dotting I's crossing t's, not making any substantive value add to my thinking or to my work. At some point when that headhunter calls, there's a chance to say, I think I'll take a look at that because it looks like it might solve some of my frustration. How about the Snoom group? What are the high key things you can ask?
Speaker F Yeah, we had a lot of different discussions and ideas that was very valuable. We felt that a lot of essentially the jam up stuff is that there's going to be lack of clarity, lack of accountability, a lot of infighting going on, resulting in unhappy reports, not getting value from their own managers, which would drive poor retention problems, poor morale, actively disengaged employees, there's room for improvement.
Speaker A And you're describing some of the things that happen up from that crowded situation. That's the kind of impact that goes over into and it often shows up, as someone mentioned earlier, in employment engagement surveys too. You can often do an alignment between the engagement surveys of setting and some of them jamming and crowding.
Speaker F Yeah, that was the basic points.
Speaker A Right.
Speaker F And we also felt that in a couple of cases where there's likely very unrealistic expectations of people, it gives them just when they're off to the side in a situation there's a four running a team of twos, right. Things like that. Right. He may be expecting that they can do the work of three, but they're not he may not even know how to. If he's really that capable of that level, to spend a lot of time managing people at level four, he may just be really frustrated because these people need a lot more direction than he's used to giving. He's used to self starters. They're not self starters and they need direction. That creates problems too.
Speaker A What generally happens in a gap situation? What are some of the scenarios that happen in a gap situation that would yeah, who's doing it? Or what we often find is the manager saying I seem like I'm spending a lot of time on stuff that.
Speaker D I'm not supposed to be spending time on.
Speaker F Everybody need might not even realize it's not supposed to be there.
Speaker A Right, exactly. The other thing that's interesting though, too, is that sometimes a gap gets hidden because of capability. So in other words, it doesn't appear like a gap in the real world to them because the person has really got the capability to manage themselves. But what's the major then issue with that in an organization? Sometimes, yeah, but what else.
Speaker B Yeah, then.
Speaker A You really realize what's going on, what else can happen. In other words, it probably is the comp for that person is probably in level two, yet they're demonstrating level three and doing level three alert, which would one would say in rapid organization there.
Speaker G Sorry, I just couldn't see the comments.
Speaker A Sorry. So hey, just a little side.
Speaker F I think that was all the I.
Speaker A Guess we're talking about the last question. Twelve. Right.
Speaker F We just think that because of that structure, there's probably a lot of politics and working the system going on versus doing the work. People might think that that is the work.
Speaker A I suspect that's not a bad assumption. And I think my sense would be if you were if we're in a real situation where you're actually not only done the interviews relevant to get the death chart, but you heard some of those stories that we've been talking about, the storytelling that we go on throughout those interviews. You'd probably be able to match that kind of data.
Speaker F It often happens for us if you.
Speaker A Can because everybody knows what's going on at the culture.
Speaker F I can talk from personal experience what happens in a dysfunctionally designed organization where when you have a manager two levels above you that can work the system and work with one that can't. Right. And everybody pays big time when you have one that can't work because they're not focused on the work, focused on trying to figure out how to get resources for their team or whatever.
Speaker A Or like I said earlier, doing the stuff like what does it take to get ahead around here? How about over here?
Speaker D Well.
Speaker B Also a lot of different discussions looking at the charts and some of the points that just mentioned something different. One of the interesting observations was that we didn't find any relationship for manager once removed. Manager and subordinates, that is. I mean, Mac, what you had was manager to subordinate. So you never had those three together anywhere. This is one interesting point in terms of Gem Up, and we're discussing a lot of the time the amount of the Gem Up at level four and level five. And what was also interesting is one question that we had was who was really assessing the CEO's role? Was it himself or someone on the board? And also, it's not very clear whether he sees his role or someone sees his role as five or six, which even increases the geometric level five even more. One of the other points when we see those arrows, I mean, the CFO is an event and the question is to what extent the role assessment would vary depending on the capability of the person determine the test. So does that manager operating at current capability, level four? Would he be able to design tasks at level four if he's being demanded level five? So, I mean, the CFO is an example boards that report their own roles at a level of yeah.
Speaker A One of the things that, generally speaking, on a generalized basis in our examples, for example, when we find that kind of a significant kind of arrows up kind of thing, there's kind of an indication that maybe this whole organization is or is trying to lift up something's going on in terms of its fundamental complexity. The tricky part in terms of collecting the data is when you're interviewing someone, you have to really make a distinction between am I listening to the facts here? And kind of dig for the facts in a pure leveling exercise in terms of getting a concrete example that you can cite of the work as opposed to am I listening to this person's capability. Yeah. So you have to kind of make that distinction. And again, the more you do it that's why we're advocating the more that you can get out and actually do some of these leveling interviews, these timestamp interviews is you'll learn you'll just get much more sensitized to the difference between the work and people and how to.
Speaker B Make some of those discernments, but also the opposite. As a manager, am I assigning tasks based on the capability of my support or based on what I would like my support? That would be there's always for you to explain the gap.
Speaker A Yeah, there's always a potential factor in there. But again, you're still trying to the assumption is in the left chart, you've leveled those roles on the basis of a really solid time span interview. That's how you got so you've got a concrete example or examples you can relate to that bears the longest task. Does anybody disagree with that. It has nothing to do with the person's capability, that's task.
Speaker B And also the last one that also interesting is that you have a formal organizational chart and you probably have an informal managerial relationship because with so many gemaph situation is my manager my real boss or do I recognize my boss as not being my manager?
Speaker A Well in some cases people will actually admit my boss is not my real boss, my boss's boss is and when I really need something I have access and I go probably have any farm but that's how we get it. One of my clients actually wrote a little paper that's kind of germane to some of this too, is that he called it the articulate incompetence. And really what he's talking about in some senses is that people at a certain level can often describe work at the next level up, but they're not ready to do it yet. They're adjacent to it. So if they see the next level and they see what it looks like, they can often describe it but they can't necessarily do it. But they got all the words around it. How about this.
Speaker C Were made?
Speaker G But just add to that the areas where there was duplication or the person placed above their manager that's going to cause a lot of frustration and where there's gap that's going to cause inability for someone to understand how their work actually is aligned to corporate strategy because there isn't someone to set the context for them. Just in general we thought that this company probably had a very high payroll because there's way too many at the core level. So high payroll burden, low reaction time, low decision making, low productivity place, I don't put my money in the bank. No one else brought up that point about that one box of orphans. In a situation like that if she doesn't have a home or whoever's running that operation doesn't have a home, that means no resources, no place to go in terms of things not working which means that position is probably not going to last too long.
Speaker A Yeah, for sure one of those nice sort of things to do in the business but it's not really funded and it looks good on paper kind of thing but it's not really real.
Speaker D Thank you.
Speaker A Last but not least, we have larger.
Speaker H Days of the comments that we've heard. I guess our summary would have been that slightly that there's a confused strategy at the moment leading to silos. There seems to be lots of opportunities for silos lacking integration across support. Good news is there's lots of opportunity to fix it and displaying that way I think is a good way to show those opportunities are yeah, as I.
Speaker A Said, what we generally find is that the picture, the old thousand words and the picture tells a lot of stories for people when they just look at it. They can just very quickly without a lot of explanation. If you've done a reasonable job of educating them about some of the principles, they can look at these fairly quickly and begin to interpret for themselves. Because often what we do with it is share with the people and having them know a little bit about the principles, if you will, having them talking about, what does that mean to you? What do you think some of those issues are, including all many of the things that we really great now, the reason we did that is we want to hold that because inevitably what's going to happen is you're going to start thinking about what the heck? What do we want to recommend that these people do? And of course that's what we're going to do tomorrow. So one of the evening assignments that we'd like you to do is just to start doing a little individual thinking before coming in tomorrow in terms of what would be some of the key things that you think for sure from a structural point of view. Need to change, need to be different in terms of levels or groups or whatever. So just give some thinking to that because tomorrow we'll do a little bit more input stuff and then the majority of the day, from late morning through to mid afternoon is going to be some teams to provide at least one redesign of this organization and a defense for it based on what we know. If I were putting on my academic hat and talking to graduate students who are going through this exercise, nobody would have gotten an A on the exercise for a very simple reason that when we brief, we tell the students about briefing executive management, president DP of HR. There better be some dollars on that, because otherwise it was very hard to get them to pay attention to. We did actually talk about a lot of things that ended up wasting dollars inefficient usage, confusions and all that sort of stuff, but we would very much want to have do you guys incorporate that as well? In this type of a process, you would be looking more for something very tangible. This one instance over here cost the company almost 10 million whatever. In other words, we look at organizational capital and human capital are some of the two big kind of intangible assets of organizations today. And so we try to our best to put some financials to that in terms of what that might be costing you and both in terms of inefficiencies or ineffectiveness, even salary costs where it's inappropriate when you pay more than you should for certain roles, for certain levels of work kind of thing. So yeah, the answer is yes. And then often if you have that baseline from the current structure, when you do some propositions, you can cost out the propositions too. So you can talk about what's the number of shifts in terms of roles at each of the levels and what would that translate into? Compensation up or down? So if someone has an idea of the propositions you're presenting from the baseline you started with, with this chart, which we didn't put on here, then you can give some kind of idea of whether this is an uptick in the cost of your structure, whether it's a downtick or whether it's neutral.
Speaker C Question around jam up. If you have a jam up, is it worse if you have it towards the bottom of the organization, or if you have it towards the top? Does that matter? Are they all equally bad?
Speaker A Well, I guess in the pure sense of if Ellie would say they're all equally bad, that's what he would say. My experience is that if you're going to this is moving to the next organization, the question will be sometimes, will it be purely requisite or will there be a jam up somewhere or a gap somewhere? Sometimes, for variety of reasons not to get into the organization may choose it's their organization, it's not ours. They may choose to create a purposeful jam up. The difference is that they understand that they have it. They understand that there may be a problem with it. And so our recommendation is, if you're going to have any, keep them higher up because you've got fewer of them. All right? So in other words, the people in that situation can manage that situation more easily than if you've got it down too low and you got all bunch of stuff at level three or a bunch of level stuff two. You got too many roles to have to manage that delicacy, if you will. So our push is if you're going to have one, but we really push never to have one if you can avoid it. But, but if I was pushing, I pushed, I keep them a little higher. So you have to be aware of.
Speaker G Them pardon me, more expensive at the top ten.
Speaker A Well, but the point is, one of the major reasons that we've let go of it is they are very clear for a developmental purpose. So for in other words, they've got a president at level five, and they'll create a jam up at level four to create an opportunity for someone to come in and be developed to actually take that role. But they're very clear that this is a path they're taking. This president is moving on in 18 months or 24 months. And this is just clearly a step. Our Suncorps was exactly the same way. Suncorps are a big energy organization. When I first started working with it, it was a level sixIST organization, moved to seven, but they had a jam up in between the they had a COO role in there. But the point is that COO was only there to replace the existing chairman, the existing CEO, and they had a timeline for that. And the minute the CEO retired, the COO disappeared.
Speaker D That doesn't always happen.
Speaker A It doesn't. But they understood the principles and they made it happen.
Speaker C I understand the logic. If it's higher at the top, it has less people potentially to be affected by it. But wouldn't it still have an effect, theoretically, all the way down? Because then the work up, like it keeps going up. Now there's an extra layer, let's say, on some sort of decision or something, that you're trying to change the accountability. You have one extra level of accountability as a workforce off, and that affects everyone down.
Speaker A Yeah, it can affect everyone down. Jam ups definitely complicate the decision making process again because it goes back to that thing of which of those roles has really got the D. Herb made.
Speaker E A really interesting point yesterday, that when you're creating a role to drive fundamental change in a part of the organization. You often want to establish that role at a level higher than what the eventual role will be. So when we were helping Owens Corning about 15 years ago introduce an entirely new manufacturing process, they said, well, we have ten plants. The worst one is in candyac Quebec. Let's at this point, start the project there. The plant manager role would end up at lower mid level four. And my recommendation was choose one of your best level five people to drive it, and the subordinate roles will end up being level three. Choose some of your best level four people to drive that part, and then make sure that they have an exit strategy so that they don't feel stuck in that role. And once the transformation is over, then you bring the roles down to where.
Speaker G They need to be.
Speaker E And that's a very powerful way of ensuring the successful implementation of a major transformation.
Speaker A Is this about role definition one struggle above, or is it about bringing in.
Speaker D Extra capable people in the role, which is designed?
Speaker E See, for me, the reason you establish a role is because the work requires a certain amount of brain power. That's why we're establishing roles at certain levels, because we recognize the work requires a certain cognitive capacity, a certain amount of gray matter. And so if the gray matter required.
Speaker A If you establish that role at that.
Speaker E Higher level, it's a transitional role. So the plant manager role was going to end in three years, and the four level three superintendent general manager roles were going to end in two years. So everyone knew that's the way it is. But as soon as they're gone, as soon as they finish, then the roles get established to what they should be. But it was a recognition that the work of making major transformation is often one higher level of complexity than the work of running what you end up transforming.
Speaker A I mean, let's put it this way. If you take this extant chart, Adriana, I would take that in our group, we would come back with certainly one, maybe. Two kind of requisite propositions. So in other words, the proposition we would bring back would be a truly reckless proposition. We say if you're going to design it purely recklessly with no jam ups, no gaps, this is the proposition of what it looks like. What we're kind of talking about here is that we know that the managers of that company, they're the accountable managers, not us. And so they're going to make decisions on the best basis of what they think their judgment is. And I think our job is to help them make those decisions as best we can. And to advise them and inform them is that if they make that decision about creating a Jam app or whatever, having them be clear about the consequences of that and how they might want to manage that in some kind of a transition way or whatever, but just give them best advice around the potential problems of that and to help them guide through a decision that if left to our own devices, we might not make that decision.
Speaker D Theoretically, jamaps to the bottom end of the organization is going to have an impact on service delivery much quicker than jamaps high in the organization. I say theoretically, jam ups at the bottom end of the organization should have a confusion, frustration, should have a faster effect on client service delivery more actively than the top end. So that's one more reason to solve it out at the bottom much faster than at the top. You may be able tolerate a little.
Speaker A Bit longer there for some reason.
Speaker C Another question earlier, I don't know who it was, but referenced the fact that within a level so let's say it was level three, you might have different degrees within that low, medium high. Would you see in terms of reporting structure, could you see someone at a high level three reporting to a low level four? Is that still okay or would you expect that it's still requisite?
Speaker A But is that some yeah. The reason when we found out what the processes were, information processes were, but only found that out late 80s, it accounts for actually why you want a one stratum difference. Right. If I'm at three and you're at three and you're my manager, I'm saying A lead to B leads to C, and all you can do is give me another D lead to E leads to F. If you can do the parallel processing, you can show me how my series interact with other people's. That's how you add value to me.
Speaker C So it doesn't matter that they might be like close to the close to the red line.
Speaker E It's better if there's a little more.
Speaker A Difference, but more difference. And if you're two levels above me, I can't track you anymore. I can't track what you're saying. So that there's a tie in between.
Speaker G Yeah.
Speaker I And the difference in the thinking is discontinuous, totally discontinuous. It isn't like a slow change and when somebody moves from three to four over a period of time, they'll do four thinking. Then if they're tired or they're stressed or they're whatever, they'll do three, they'll go back and forth. But once they're clearly in four, they are thinking very differently than someone at high three, very differently. And they can really add value to that person who thinks in pathways. So it doesn't matter if that's a high three or a low three.
Speaker A Okay, we're just right on our time. Thank you very much for that work and thank you very much for your work today. You guys had a really good work session today. We felt from Facilitator perspective. Hopefully Mr. El one. The little assignment again is just to start thinking a little bit about tomorrow. We'll have some putting some propositions together.