Art Petty on Management

Art Petty on Management Has Changed and Moved

I don't like to do things small or simple, so in what I sincerely hope is the absolute last time I put myself and you through this, I have moved and changed the name of my blog. 

You will now find me at www.artpetty.com and the new name of the blog is Management Excellence.

As I'm writing this and realizing that most people that have moved blogs have basically had to start over from zero to build traffic, this seems like taking two steps in the wrong direction.  However, sometimes you have to step back to grow, and I've got some compelling reasons for making the move, including:

• Integrating my former corporate web site and my blog under one content management system.

• Creating a simpler url (artpetty.com...12 characters versus the almost 40 for this site).

• Gaining the tools and the control through a hosted blog so that I can easily add planned podcasts, webcasts, forums and other tools that I will roll out this year.

• Aligning my blog's name: Management Excellence with my personal mission to promote high performance, great leadership and the pursuit of excellence in business.  

All of the posts and hopefully, all of the comments have been moved to the new site, so 14 months,  160 plus essays and a tremendous number of thoughtful comments on best practices in leadership and strategy, project management, product management and marketing and sales, all remain part of the library. 

For those of you that subscribe via your favorite Reader or happen across this post via Search, please take the opportunity to visit the new Management Excellence site and click on the site's feed.  And don't forget to check out some of the new tools, including the live polls, free down-loadable tools and links and references to many other great resources.

Thanks so much for reading and referencing Art Petty on Management, and I hope to earn your confidence many times over in my new home at the Management Excellence blog!

Good People or Good Ideas? The Importance of the Working Environment

Ed Catmul, cofounder of Pixar and president of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios offers his perspective on the people versus ideas question in a powerful and practical leadership article entitled: How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity, in the September, 2008 issue of the Harvard Business Review.

Mr. Catmul is quick to offer his selection of “people” over ideas, a choice that almost might seem counter intuitive for the leader of an organization that clearly wins or loses on big ideas.  While acknowledging that great creativity is essential starting with the “High Concept” (the high-level idea for a new production) and continuing through thousands of steps to completing the project, he submits that it is the working environment that allows this creativity to emerge and evolve rapidly and effectively.  (As an aside, his description of moving from the “high concept” to the finished product as “an archaeological dig where you don’t know what you’re looking for or whether you will even find anything,” wonderfully describes the reality of the creative process in so many functions and industries.  As leaders, we are well served to remember that creativity doesn’t happen on command and rarely on schedule.”

Your Priority as a Leader: Create the Right Working Environment

Catmul’s thesis: getting talented people to work together requires a working environment that nurtures trusting and respectful relationships and unleashes everyone’s creativity, is valid for leaders at all levels and all situations.  The concept of creating the effective working environment is so important to me that it earned a full chapter in my portion of my book with Rich Petro, Practical Lessons in Leadership.  It is also the essence of my description of “The Leader’s Charter” which starts out with the words…”The true role of a leader is to create an environment that… .” 

Mr. Catmull offers that while “most executives at least pay lip service to the notion that they need to get good people and should set their standards high, how many understand the importance of creating an environment that supports great people and encourages them to support one another so the whole is far greater than the sum of the parts.” 

This great article goes on to tie in Pixar’s three key operating principles as powerful components of their effective working environment:

• Everyone must have the freedom to communicate with anyone (my phrase: an effective feedback culture)

• It must be safe for everyone to offer ideas (feedback culture again)

• Stay close to innovations in the academic community (my interpretation: foster a learning organization). 

Pixar’s operating principles emphasizing open communications, mutual respect and the development of trust are bolstered by a refreshing attitude towards risk:

"Management’s job is not to prevent risk but to build the capability to recover when failures occur." 

And on pursuing a compelling vision:

"We as executives have to resist our natural tendency to avoid or minimize risks, which is of course much easier said than done."

The Bottom-Line for Now:

After many years of leading and now several years of working with aspiring and experienced leaders in all manner of industries and cultures, I remain convinced that most individuals lack proper context for their role as leaders.  The great leaders at all levels understand that they have a unique responsibility and unique power to adapt and form their working environment to the unique circumstances at a point in time.  Less effective leaders allow the environment to form around the wrong issues including ego (theirs) and petty politics.  The lessons of Pixar are hard-won and the outcomes visible to all.  You would be well served to listen, learn and apply some of Mr. Catmul’s wisdom to your environment. 

Latest Edition of Leadership Development Carnival at Great Leadership

Dan McCarthy is back this month with the 3rd edition of his Leadership Development Carnival at his Top 25-rated blog: Great Leadership.  Dan brings together in one place some of the best leadership and talent blogging content from around the globe.  Oh, and he was kind enough to include a post of mine as well! 

Enjoy this one-stop shop for compelling content! I would be shocked if you don't walk away from this Carnival without a few great ideas to put into play in your own world.  Dan, thanks again for your hard work putting this together! 

One last word of advice.  Dan consistently puts out some of the best leadership content in the blogosphere.  Check out his recent posts and remember to subscribe.  You will be glad that you did.  -Art

HR Has Yet to Establish Credibility As Weapon in War for Talent

The August, 2008 Issue of the McKinsey Quarterly Chart Focus Newsletter includes an interesting article highlighting the expanding perception gap between HR Professionals and Line Managers over HR’s role in Talent Management. 

The article: Realigning the HR Function to Manage Talent, identifies three major challenges in the continuing war for talent:

1. Minimal collaboration and talent sharing among business units
2. Ineffective line management
3. Confusion about the role of HR. 

Additionally, the article offers up the latest survey results on what McKinsey describes as the declining influence of the human-resources function. Line Managers significantly differ with their HR counterparts over:

•  HR’s capabilities to develop talent strategies aligned with business objectives (33 percentage point gap)

• HR’s accountability for success or failure of talent-management initiatives (28 point gap)

•  Whether Talent Management is the responsibility of HR (22 point gap). 

None of the gaps are favorable towards HR.

Art’s Quick-Take:

I’ve observed a few great HR leaders that really understand that they are key enablers of a firm’s talent management success and key participants in the strategy process.  However, many others and many HR departments remain pigeonholed as compliance police and benefits administrators.  An enlightened management team and CEO recognize the strategic value of HR.  They also recognize that talent development and management is the responsibility of all of a firm’s leaders and not just HR.

As an aside, there are no excuses for the perception gaps highlighted above.  Twenty lashes for the leadership groups that allow those gaps to emerge and sustain.

One suggestion if you are a manager or leader in a firm with a generally tactical HR function: ask for help.  You might be surprised how anxious your HR professionals are to engage in something outside the normal bounds of compliance or benefits.

While not quick to throw stones as my own functional counterparts (sales and marketing) have plenty of their own challenges, it is time for HR to stand-up and be counted on as a key enabler of strategy. They can start by helping their firm institutionalize talent identification, recruitment, retention and development.