New Business Ideas 4 U

Posts Tagged ‘Book Review’

CEO Material

DA Benton, McGraw-Hill,  2009

Debra Benton is a successful consultant and author, with a long list of top drawer clients. She has previously written best-selling books including Executive Charisma, and How to Act like a CEO.

This book is sub-titled ‘How to be a Leader in any Organization‘ but could almost be sub-titled ‘Debra’s Book of Lists,’ because each chapter contains lists of characteristics and is filled with exhortations of what you should do if you want to to be regarded as a potential CEO. In her Conclusion chapter she actually lists 365 things you should do – one for each day of the year – to get yourself regarded as potential CEO material.

The author follows the same approach in each chapter. First, she gives a short bulleted list of key elements in the chapter topic. This bulleted list generally contains three points, each of which becomes a section heading a little later on. A couple of these lists are slightly longer. Then she lists the behaviors that a budding CEO should exhibit to demonstrate competence in the topic area. The list for Chapter 1 Have a Good Track Record, for example identifies 20 such behaviors, though this is the longest list in the book. Read the rest of this entry »

HR Sacred Cow 1     It’s HR’s job to Look after the People in the Company

Why is this sacred cow?

Let me share a true story. I was once taken to task by the assistant HR manager of a company to which I was consulting. I had proposed a change to the company structure, which included a change in the way the sales forces were paid. The lady bailed me up one day – almost literally ‘spitting tacks’. “You have no right to interfere with my staff” she spat. “Madam”, I replied, “you have no staff”. She became apoplectic, to the extent I deemed it expedient to withdraw – from the scene, not from the remark.

I am so glad that some few years later, the learned professorial authors of The Differentiated Workforce have justified my stand.

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Immunity to Change

Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey, Harvard Business Press, 2009

After more than 40 years in the HR business, I thought I knew most of it. This was my ‘big assumption’. Kegan and Lahey know a great deal more than me, I found out, and I thank them for sharing a generation of experience with me – and I hope, you too.

The authors seem to have found the answer to why people find it difficult to change – as you have doubtless found it difficult to change some of your staff. Their discovery is startlingly simple. Most people have an immunity to change. Their research over many years and thousands of people has drawn them to this conclusion, and in this gem of a book, they share their findings with us.

They show how this immunity comes about, how to identify what the immunity – or blockage – to change actually is, and most importantly, how to use their research findings in developmental  activity with your staff and even staff teams.

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Here are the last three key points made by Baker, Huselid and Beatty on the relationship between line managers and HR in the development of the workforce.

Workforce accountability begins with creating performance expectations of both line managers and HR

• So both line managers and HR need to agree and spell out what are their respective accountability as regards workforce development and performance. By doing this the possibility of the whole process falling between the cracks – a concern I expressed in the last posting – is alleviated a little, but not entirely. The agreement must be:
  • Clear – it says exactly what each party will be accountable for
  • Written down – a verbal agreement is insufficient. Writing it down and signing off the agreement is a much stronger commitment
  • Measurable – how will each party be quite sure that the other has met the accountability?
  • Assessed – it needs to become a part of the performance appraisal of each party, and not just assessed on an annual basis only. Once a year is nothing like enough. This accountability is of sufficient importance to the functioning of the company it needs to be assessed at least monthly

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