1. Evolving from Controlling to Leading
New Rules and the New Tools needed to
THRIVE
in a Complex Organization.
Brenda Vester
Daniel Stafura
Joe Stafura
September 2016
2. About THRIVE -
THRIVE Learning System is a communication platform that enables organizations
to facilitate on-going dialogues and feedback loops between leadership, their teams, and
all other invested business partners. This communication takes place via interactions
sent from the THRIVE system to individuals, primarily via emails and text messages.
A THRIVE interaction, sometimes called a Micro-Lesson, is a hyperlink that can be
opened on any internet connected device - smartphones, tablets, computers. Each link is
uniquely created for a specific user, so there’s no need to login. This reduced user
burden creates a seamless interaction that feels similar to responding to a text message
or checking email, and typically take users no longer than 60 seconds to complete.
THRIVE combines different media content to create conversational interactions that
utilize text, images, videos, sound bites, and a variety of question types to assess and
gather feedback. As an example, a THRIVE interaction may include introductory text, a
short video, a series of questions, and then conclusion text.
All the data that is collected during a THRIVE interaction is gathered, analyzed and
organized into real-time dashboards for platform administrators. These administrators
can organize all their platform users into various groups, letting them view data as
focused, or generally, as needed. All collected data can be readily exported as PDF
Reports to share, or as CSV Sheets for further analysis.
This data is used to continually improve business processes, manage the implementation
of organizational initiatives and changes, gather on-going feedback from each and every
employee, and of course influence the content of future THRIVE interactions, creating the
continual feedback loop that’s required for any modern organization to flourish.
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3. Evolving from Controlling to Leading
New Rules and the New Tools needed to
THRIVE
in a Complex Organization.
When we speak to organizations, workers and industry experts, the demand in our
world of work is clear and most will agree that:
● We know we need innovation to happen faster
● We know that change is constant and quick
● We know people need to be more resilient and are overwhelmed
● We know that organizations are changing quickly and industry disruption is
prevalent
● We know organizations need to adapt to change with agility
● We know leaders need more honest and timely information
● We know we need high engagement of workers
And, we know the organizations that understand and master this will have the
competitive edge.
There is no set of rules for how we get there. While there will be best practices, this
evolution must be customized to the specific business, organization and people. We
want to further this understanding of the landscape and suggest first steps to take
toward this evolution.
We are now at a time where control and command optimization is showing its limits in
our corporate system. This thinking and the tools that support it are integrated into most
of our business processes and how people approach the workplace and their role in it.
The evolution we’ve described requires the ability to harness complexity, as we cannot
control & command the complex environment that is the modern workplace.
This shift is more than an upgrade from the type of leadership we have today; it is a
foundational shift at the core of how we all work. Therefore everything that we believed
about leadership, from how we treat employees to how we communicate as a team,
needs revisited, redefined, and realigned. We need to look through a new lens.
We all know the disruptors that have caused this shift and we feel it, but we have not
defined the new tools required to manage in a new way - tools that support human
performance.
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4. There is resistance to this evolution, as major investments in existing systems and
processes result in a hesitation to make these necessary changes. We also often
assume, as we have in the past, that we will need to build on what is existing. However,
in some cases our new framework will require we abandon many management practices
altogether, in favor of new systems designed specifically for our changing workplaces.
In addition, the mindsets within our work paradigm have been stagnant for a very long
time. Complexity not only demands transformation within the business, but also in us as
individuals; the way we treat each other, what we think, and perhaps most importantly -
how we think.
Moving to a workplace culture and leadership style that harnesses complexity begins
with open and curious minds, high levels of self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and
collaboration throughout the entire organization. Another critical insight about a complex
system is that leadership is a part of it, rather than the controller of it. This is a nuance
that has incredible impact when it comes to the behavior of ‘leaders’.
Understanding Complexity
Before we can harness complexity, we need to learn how to recognize it. We
must foster a perspective that helps explain why our workplace is complex, and why we
can't manage it the ways we’ve become accustomed to.
We do not have the same equilibrium as we have had in the past. That is obvious, and
there are many reactions as business is disrupted. Often the result is working harder,
longer and pushing our people and systems to maximum output, while using the same
mindset we have had as leaders for decades.
Any leader with vision can see this is not sustainable, and we are burning out; not just
resources, but most importantly our people, and all for very little gain. The mindset of a
‘leader’ and the tools used to manage the business strategy are incomplete. We need to
scan out further to recognize the impact of complexity. We cannot control it nor
command it. We must harness, cultivate, and balance it.
If we don't harness the complexity and balance the system we will end up in a chaotic
mess; there are plenty of examples of this.
First, let’s start out with a clarification: Complexity is not the same as complicated. We
know it is complex if it consists of “interdependent and diverse entities” and we assume
those entities “adapt” as they respond to the local and global environment. Complicated
systems also have many moving pieces, but they do not require continual adaptation. As
an example, needing to make more of a product to fulfil an order can be a complicated
problem, but one that can be systematically solved through control and command.
Cultivating a workforce that embraces collaboration is a complex problem. Control and
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5. command cannot address it, because it’s complex, requiring a process of continual
learning and adaptation to maintain a balance.
When you study complex systems you find that maintaining balance is of utmost
importance, and there will be key ‘levers’ that need to be balanced in order to get the
most out of the system.
● An insightful article highlighting the urgency of understanding the complexity of
our workplace today was written by Martin Reeves, Daichi Ueda from BCG, and
Simon Levin, Princeton University; ‘The Biology of Corporate Survival ~natural
ecosystems hold surprising lessons for business’, Harvard Business Review,
February 2016. https://hbr.org/2016/01/the-biology-of-corporate-survival
The article provides a bridge from understanding complex systems to applying them to
our businesses. They highlight research proving that companies are dying younger
because they're failing to adapt to increasing complexity.
They developed a point of view and 6 principles to follow to make a complex adaptive
system robust. In other words: what you need to do so you are not among the early
deaths.
The article leads you to key “levers” to pay attention to while working within a complex
system, providing a powerful framework and a new lens for your business.
However, for leaders to effectively execute on these game changing principles with
confidence, there is a need to shift the workplace strategy and structures to align to this
new thinking. This requires specific behaviors that will contradict some of the ways we
manage business and people today.
Below are the 6 recommendations from the article.
Structural Features:
- Heterogeneity - Diversity in people, ideas, innovations, and endeavors.
- Modularity - Barriers or loose connections between components of the business
system and between business systems.
- Redundancy - Duplication that creates buffering capacity in components of the
business system.
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6. Managerial Levers:
- Expect Surprise, but Reduce Uncertainty-Signals - collect signals, detect patterns
of change, imagine plausible outcomes, and take precautionary actions.
- Create Feedback Loops and Adaptive Mechanisms - monitor change, promote
variation, experiment, amplify innovations and iterate rapidly.
- Foster Trust and Reciprocity- Act in ways that benefit other participants in the
overall system, and establish mechanisms that ensure reciprocity.
This language alone is very new, and most organizations are simply not organized this
way, nor do their leaders have the skills or systems to collect and analyze the data
needed to support these principles. The traditional leader may be tempted to take these
6 principles and assign them to the team. However, we would not recommend that.
The leader first needs to understand the environment they have created, before they
can begin to lead a shift.
As the leader, you have the ‘power position’. This position gives you the power to
allocate resources, gather data and create the vision for the entity. It also provides you
with the power to create the environment, enabling your desired culture to form.
With so much focus on ‘engagement’ and ‘culture,' we are in constant assessment of
factors that have not moved the needle of employee engagement in 15 years. Things are
changing, but we simply haven’t been asking the right questions. The complex system
environment has specific ‘levers’ that require balance, as outlined in the HBR article.
Re-adjusting your focus on the environment will enable more support for the employees
within it. Again, contradicting the control and command mindset.
The needs of employees are complex and we have moved away from the “one size fits
all” workplace. HR is working on this, but like all leaders, also need a new lens. Josh
Bersin, from Bersin by Deloitte, publishes predictions for the workplace each year. And,
while he has surely shown the need for a new workplace design, we’re finding that
leadership behavior, as well as employee behavior, is still not evolving quickly enough to
effectively implement these drastically new concepts. There are barriers built that are
preventing the necessary shifts. As examples, we have not made the mental leap to
seeing employees not as just “workers”, but as partners. Also, we must truly spend the
money needed to support the entire system - not just the ‘high-performers’.
If we think about business over the past 100 years, the human factor has not been nearly
as important as it is with a modern workforce. Previously, you could train workers to do
most tasks, whether it was working with materials in a steel mill or compiling data into
Excel reports in the office. New hires would show up, be trained on what the ‘job’ was,
then repeat tasks for a paycheck, keeping the system in motion. This clear focus of
“train, work, repeat” resulted in us optimizing the hell out of that system. Unfortunately,
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7. most traditional employers are still operating this way, often to the detriment of their
workforce.
The work today requires more of the person, and the way they think and feel matters to
the work they produce - modern workforces generate value through the creation and
sharing of knowledge and insights, not by completing predefined tasks. Complete
exploitation of our human resources leaves the organization vulnerable, because
knowledge stagnates.
Leadership Shifts
Certain leadership traits that have been rewarded for a long time will now be
become a handicap.
To harness complexity, we need leaders who seek to understand and support a
workforce, as a member of the team, not as a commander barking orders. Modern
leaders must also be open to learning from the system itself, instead of simply building
on past experiences. Leaders need to think about inclusion in terms of communication
and information within the organization, and it can’t just be top down - it requires a
continuous feedback loop.
Put simply, modern workers cannot be controlled nor commanded to do the knowledge
and insight work we need to keep up with the evolution of work. Dan Pink explains this
clearly in his book, DRIVE.
Many leaders still feel the need and responsibility to tell employees what to do because
they are in a leadership role. And, to be fair, many employees have been trained to wait
and be told. So, there is a mindset shift needed for the employee as well - this reinforces
the need for every member of a team to feel like they are partners.
Again, these are long held deep-seated belief systems and mindsets that are not quickly
shifted, and can’t be expected to happen without the right tools in place. Many are going
to need persuaded and then supported to change. The hard driving, competitive,
charismatic, driver of results at all costs will become increasingly ineffective.
In addition to building new skills, there are updated mindsets needed, and these
“Modern Mindsets” will require the openness of the individual to want to change,
because they believe in the value of changing. This requires a huge shift in thinking,
and is an important point as we learn to harness complexity.
Your best leaders of the past may not be able to make the shift to this new framework.
Many of them may not be able to harness complexity, as they are too closed-minded and
have not yet themselves adapted to a beginner’s mind or continuous learner mindset.
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8. Those in a power position will need to be vetted for any biases that might work against
the key levers of balance, which include diversity, inclusiveness and the ability to receive
and respond to feedback, even when that feedback challenges their perception.
To ‘walk the talk’ has never been more important.
Cultivating Balance in the Environment
It can be very uncomfortable for a leader to learn they do not have the same
control of the organization that they have had in the past. Leadership is at a crossroads,
and it is a tricky navigation for sure. We want to help as we need leadership now more
than ever. We would define leaders as anyone in a ‘Power Position’.
As we make this shift to ‘Harnessing Complexity”, there are key areas of focus that can
be managed in a new way.
Leaders will need to master the continual ebb and flow of information that leads to the
vision, innovation and adaptability of their organizations. The power will come from the
data collected in constant feedback loops. That is new territory, and a dynamic place to
lead. It is not static, and will be at the forefront of your most innovative work. This
feedback will continually inform the vision.
Leaders also need to create the environment that can ‘unleash workers’ and shift to the
mentality of worker as partner. This means providing resources, being inclusive in your
feedback loops, and co-designing an experience ‘for’ the employee that is holistic and
supportive.
These are not initiatives rolled out to blanket on the top of the organization. It is a new
way of leading. There is a need for evaluation and a purging of outdated management
tools that will be specific to each organization.
True learning and adapting organization will support the individual as they need to
personally develop new skills and mindsets. As a result, the organization, an entity in
itself, will adapt in ways that you cannot predict - however you can prepare for the next
step once you begin to see the emergence of the system.
Again, this new lens will not simply give a leader control, but will sharpen their vision so
they can see the insights that matter to them today and in the future.
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9. Using Technology to Harness Complexity
In her webcast, Digital Disruption: Transforming your Company for the Digital
Economy, Jeanne Ross from MIT Sloan Executive Education outlines how organizations
will need to think about a digital strategy. She also highlights that in the pre-digital
economy, we designed our strategy for efficiency. We have cut all the waste and space
out of the organization. We have employees totally maximized with regard to time.
This lean thinking can be operationally effective, however when it comes to people, we
need to rethink the way time is structured and leave more ‘space’ in the day. We most
likely will find that we need to shorten the workweek to provide more balance. For those
engaged in insight work, Quality of time is more critical than Quantity. The idea of
always increasing quantity defined the industrial era, and most businesses have not
made the required leap to focus on quality.
Ross shares, “The organization needs to empower, collaborate, synchronize, and
partner. We have eliminated technology limitations, the only limitation now are human
limitations”.
If we want agility and a learning organization, in which people grow, we have to shift our
thinking from task production to making progress. Increasing task production can be
hard, but it’s not complex, and it’s easy to know if you are going in the right direction.
Truly making progress requires us to be less comfortable in the direction, knowing that if
we’re going to succeed, we will inevitably experience failures along the way. It’s not
always obvious what will lead to progress, but we always know it when it happens. Again,
a subtle nuance, but a critical one.
As modern workers we often find that the very behaviors we are so hungry for are not
enabled by our ‘environments’.
We must continue learning and adapting. However, it's not just about the speed of the
adaptation, but more so about how we are increasing the intelligence of each individual
as we go; and not just knowledge of the business, but knowledge of self.
People are motivated by progress, but today our outdated policies and procedures,
which we designed for an outdated system, make people work so hard and such long
hours that it results in so much stress they burnout, and look for new jobs.
Understanding the environment is now more important than trying to measure and
control the employee.
Ross outlines a new way to consider business strategy that incorporates a Digital
Services Backbone. The THRIVE platform is one of these tools. THRIVE provides
technology that will enable the harnessing of complexity - and it is a game changer.
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10. THRIVE supports the required evolution we’ve discussed with tools that can:
• Measure complexity for your specific business, and help identify the current mindsets
that are prevalent in the workplace and how they impact progress.
• Quickly help you to understand the interdependencies within a matrixed organization
and how they impact customer delivery or create vulnerabilities.
• Measure and assess needs in real time.
• Support learning resources, allowing employees to learn in the moment, when they
need it and can apply it.
• Be easily updated and redesigned with continuous feedback.
• Create many simultaneous feedback loops between every single employee in a
conversational way. Feedback that would typically have taken six months is now
available the same day it’s collected.
• Shape the culture, through communication, listening and understanding of data
• Reflect the truth about leadership and culture
• Allow the testing of small groups for changes that can affect the organization in a
large ways
Leaders at every level need data, but there is a lot more to it than just gathering the
information. They need the ability to gather information that is real, in context, and part
of ongoing conversations. This is the information that provides an understanding of
what's happening across the enterprise, and it needs to be in real time, creating a
collaborative effort to best meet the organization’s mission.
THRIVE provides those in power positions the opportunity to make decisions that include
the full scope of the organization/employee group vs. what they see in front of them in
the moment, providing more data and context to issues.
We are just getting started with this new framework and there is not an answer or a quick
fix to purchase off the shelf.
As a leader you'll need to prepare for the shift. You can begin in small pockets of your
organization as it is today, resulting in small changes to learn more about your
organization and the environment you currently have, informing the path you create and
follow as you move from controlling to leading by harnessing complexity.
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11. Applying the concepts in the workplace
THRIVE Case Studies
#1 Alcoa
Giving and Receiving Feedback Program
Alcoa is a global leader in metal solutions and advanced manufacturing
techniques, with 60,000+ employees spread across the globe. In order to ensure that
they are continually offering their customers the highest quality products and solutions
on the market, they have built diverse sets of teams, with members who have a variety of
expertises and professional experiences.
Alcoa has a standardized Giving and Receiving Feedback Model that all managers and
employees are expected to be familiar with, and comfortable utilizing on a regular basis.
While they invest considerable amounts into in-house training, such as multi-day
workshops and traditional learning management systems, they needed a scalable, virtual
training solution that could be distributed globally, on an as needed basis, to a variety of
devices, with minimal action required by corporate IT. Alcoa’s Talent Management Team
needed a way to measure the effectiveness of the Giving and Receiving Feedback
Model, ensure that employees are following this model, highlighting areas of both
strength and weakness, while continually gathering and providing feedback to ensure
continued improvement.
Alcoa partnered with THRIVE to develop a 90-Day Giving and Receiving Feedback
Course that focused on reinforcing their Feedback Model, while also evaluating overall
understanding through short, on-going quiz assessments. The Course also encouraged
employees to self-assess their own Giving and Receiving Feedback skills, as well as
those of their managers and coworkers. On-going results and feedback were provided to
all involved throughout the program.
The Pilot Program was well received by the organization’s employees and leadership,
and resulted in Alcoa becoming an annually licensed customer on the THRIVE Learning
System, which they use to support and reinforce in-house training efforts. Alcoa uses
THRIVE to interact with employees prior to in-house training, and then after, to first set
baselines, and then to reinforce the topics.
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12. Alcoa has seen the following results:
Increased Understanding and Awareness -
● 90.5% cumulative score on quizzes over pilot run, with quiz scores increasing by
an average of 10% from the first week to the final week of the course.
● 86% of learners report increased awareness in the ways they Give and Receive
Feedback in the workplace
● 94% of learners report increases in confidence when Giving and Receiving
feedback in the workplace
Satisfied Learners -
● 100% of Learners report that they would recommend their coworkers take this
Giving and Receiving Feedback Course
● 90% of Learners report that they would like to take additional courses via the
THRIVE Learning System
Global and Flexible Distribution -
Alcoa is currently distributing the Giving and Receiving Feedback Course on-demand to
multiple countries via email and text message, on an as needed basis.
#2 Westinghouse Nuclear
Knowledge Working Observation Program
As a nuclear energy company, safety is the number one priority in everything
Westinghouse does. They know safety happens as a result of mindset, and that it’s not
something that can simply be taught one time and assumed to be implemented - it needs
reinforcement, influence, and measurement. This requires on-going dialogue and
continuous feedback loops, because nuclear energy is also not an industry where they
can afford to wait for a safety failure to happen to see if their employees are
implementing a culture of nuclear safety.
To create this dialogue and feedback, Westinghouse implements a required Knowledge
Worker Observation program. Managers deliver four (4) observations to their employee(s)
each month, and then document those observations in an online system. A formal
Observation involves a manager directly observing their employee’s utilization of a safety
focused Human Performance tool, and then either reinforcing or coaching how the tool
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13. was used. Currently, Westinghouse counts these entries to ensure they are completed,
and trends basic metrics, such as observation topic and the process being observed.
They are measuring only quantity. Westinghouse defined a goal to begin measuring the
quality of these observations. For example, they wanted a way to measure, organize, and
trend the effectiveness, from the employee's perspective, of these interactions, among
other metrics that cannot readily be “counted” within their current system.
Westinghouse partnered with THRIVE Learning to develop a 3-month pilot program titled
“Knowledge Worker Observation Quality Improvement Project”. The project had 4
objectives:
● Improve the quality of the conversations that occur during Knowledge Worker
Observations
● Ensure that content and key learnings from Observations are being effectively
communicated
● Improve the overall efficiency of the Knowledge Worker Observation process
● Move from measuring compliance (quantity of Knowledge Worker Observations)
to measuring quality (effectiveness of Knowledge Worker Observations)
The pilot program included a set of managers who each chose a group of reporting
employees, all of which were enrolled into the THRIVE platform. During the 3 months,
managers documented the Knowledge Worker Observations they conducted via THRIVE
interactions that were delivered at the beginning of each month, and ready to be
completed as formal Observations are delivered. During this documentation, managers
identified the employee they delivered the Observation to, prompting THRIVE to deliver
that employee an interaction asking them to evaluate this Observation their manager
provided, including them ranking the overall effectiveness.
Along with these evaluations, THRIVE delivered interactions to assess and reinforce the
Knowledge Worker Observation process, in general, as well as specific Human
Performance tools. These interactions included feedback based on data gathered from
documentation and evaluations, as well as interactive fictional narratives that prompt
everyone to react to and evaluate both best and worst practices.
THRIVE is offering Westinghouse a way to continue ensuring that KWOs are being
performed and documented, while also providing real-time measurement of metrics such
as:
● Employee rated effectiveness of each KWO
● Whether employees feel engaged in 2-way conversations
● Whether employees feel they received positive reinforcement
● Whether the observation provided was focused and specific
● Both the manager’s and employee’s overall perception of the interaction, on a
negative to positive scale.
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14. These real-time, continuous measurements not only allow Westinghouse to trend items
overtime, enabling continued improvement, but they also allow the Human Performance
team to efficiently organize this information to locate both high and low performers.
Those needing improvement can receive necessary intervention at the appropriate time,
while high performer’s interactions can be conveniently shared with entire teams,
transferring both knowledge and best practices.
For more information or demo of the THRIVE platform contact:
Name: Rousseau Kluever
Email: rousseau@gothrive.io
Phone: +1 267 - 909 - 0422
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