Practitioner's Forum
Judith S. Blanton
RHR International
The goal for this column is to provide greater visibility to the work of I-O practitioners. Much practitioner work is ephemeral, not in the sense that it has no impact (it does!) but in the sense that it is not documented. Practioners (and researchers) seldom know much about the work that other practitioners do. Sharing of knowledge and best practices is minimal. Sometimes this is because the work is the intellectual property of the practitioner (or client organization), but more often, it is because there is neither the motivation nor a mechanism to share knowledge or lessons learned. Client organizations are focused on the impact and the results of the project and seldom see much value in documentation of the process. Practitioners have little financial incentive to take time away from their client work to describe their efforts. At the same time, most practitioners I know express the desire to share their experiences and to learn more about what their colleagues are doing. In a small way, I hope that this column will enhance the dialogue among practitioners about methods and interventions that they have found useful. Elsewhere in this issue, Rob Silzer talks about the gap between practioners and researchers. Perhaps this column can also encourage researchers to explore the practitioner work described here with greater depth and rigor.
For this first column, I focus on four of the excellent programs at the New Orleans SIOP conference that described the work of I-O practioners. Below are descriptions of recent work that represents this varied practice. The selection of these programs was, frankly, unsystematic. I depended on nominations from senior SIOP practitioners and my own sense of topics that might be innovative or spark discussion. There were literally dozens of programs that deserve space and further discussion. For future columns, I look forward to input from practitioners about innovative or impactful interventions and tools that they (or their colleagues) have used to implement the projects. I would be particularly interested in projects where the practitioner was able to gather systematic data to document impact.
I would also like to highlight the scope of I-O practice. We know that our members are engaged in a wide variety of activities with a broad range of clients. I would be interested in hearing from members who are working with nontraditional clients and/or using I-O tools and knowledge in innovative ways with clients. I welcome your suggestions in how to make this column useful as well as ideas for projects to feature. Please send your comments and ideas to Judy Blanton (jblanton@rhrinternational.com).
Toward Innovation: A Five-Year Journey With Coca-Cola. Kathleen K. Lundquist, APT; Irwin L. Goldstein, University System of Maryland; Cyrus Mehri, Mehri & Skalet PLLC; Rene Redwood, Redwood Enterprises; and Joseph Moan, Coca-Cola.
This presentation dealt with the impact of a major employment discrimination lawsuit against Coca-Cola Company. As part of the settlement, rather than react defensively, under court scrutiny Coca-Cola Company agreed to create an external task force to review and revise virtually all HR processes within the company. The goal was to create a “gold standard for diversity” by developing processes that were best in class, by committing to diversity as part of business strategy, and that used data as an accountability index. An additional goal of the project was to have employees perceive the processes as fair and equitable. The task force met on a bimonthly basis and was assisted by Irv Goldstein and Kathleen Lundquist (the “joint experts”). The joint experts also consulted with the HR process owners on development and implementation of new processes. Integral to the process was the annual data collection on each process. These data were provided by the company to the joint experts. In addition, there was an annual report to the court covering results and recommendations for each process. The annual court reports can be found at http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/ourcompany/taskforce_report.html.
The evaluations included annual analysis of workforce demographics, perceptions regarding diversity fairness, and effectiveness of HR processes. In addition there were annual audits of such HR data as training completion, performance appraisals, staffing, and slating data. This was not a short-term project but took place over 5 years. The effort provided a rare opportunity to simultaneously design and implement HR processes for all jobs system wide and to track the success of these initiatives. The project is an excellent example of turning a negative (such as a lawsuit) into a positive and transformative process.
For more information, contact Kathleen K. Lundquist of Applied Psychological Techniques [KKL@APTMetrics.com]. A longer description of the program can be found in the forthcoming book: Adverse Impact: Implications for Organizational Staffing and High Stakes Selection (8/03/09), edited by James L. Outtz, (SIOP Organizational Frontiers Series), Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, ISBN: 978-0-8058-6374-1.
Management Due Diligence: A Model to Accelerate Change. David Astorino, RHR International.
Deals that require integrating organizations (PE buyouts, mergers, or acquisitions) are fraught with risk. Aside from legal and financial issues, the capabilities of the senior team members are key determinates of success or failure. A relatively new area of practice for I-O psychologists is “management due diligence.” The process is designed to ensure that the right people are in position to swiftly create profitability. It can take place as part of due diligence and/or during the ownership period. This presentation described a case study in which a major private equity firm asked if the new management team could create the necessary organizational transformation and lead in the new environment. After assessing how the investment thesis translated into needed management behaviors, the consultants created a talent map that compared managers on the appropriate dimensions. The assessments included standardized testing, in-depth interviews, and reference checks. Short individual report snapshots on each manager were developed. Based on the assessments, a number of management changes were made. All managers received individual feedback, and a series of team meetings were held over the course of the first year to align expectation and accelerate team performance. The PE firm found the process highly valuable because of the clear understanding of the relationship of the investment thesis to the assessments and the follow-through during the ownership period. For more information, contact David Astorino (dastorino@rhrinternational.com or visit: http://www.rhrinternational.com/ Senior-Management-Services/Management-Due-Diligence/).
Insights on Teams at Work: Lessons From Collaborative Work on Team Development and Effectiveness. Linda Rhoades Shanock, University on North Carolina at Charlotte; John Mathieu, University of Connecticut; and Scott Tannenbaum, The Group for Organizational Effectiveness (gOE).
The goal of each year’s Master Collaboration session at the SIOP conference is to have a leading researcher and a leading practitioner discuss the overlap, interaction, and current state of science and practice on a particular topic. Scott Tannenbaum and John Mathieu drew from their experience with a wide variety of work teams (from surgical to sales to senior leadership teams) to discuss team effectiveness and ways to conduct science–practice collaboration using an example collaborative project they did together.
According to Scott, the top needs from the practice side are the creation of usable diagnostics, especially rapid diagnostics as well as rapid interventions, better team training, ways to make sure roles are clear, help for teams with changing membership and distributed teams, and support for team leaders. John Mathieu stated that the top needs from the research side include the need to define multiple applicable types of criteria for effectiveness, to seriously model temporal issues, to differentiate highly related constructs, to create a sophisticated team composition model, to identify contextual drivers and influences on members, to decipher multiteam membership dynamics, and to incorporate team interventions into theoretical models.
An important take-away message from the session was that when working with organizations the stated problem is not necessarily the underlying issue that needs to be addressed. Thus, it is important for those engaged in practice to do good questioning/diagnostic work to get to the heart of the matter. For example, organizations often ask for team building when what they really need is team training (i.e., to develop team KSAs) or perhaps leader coaching and/or process and structural changes. Or when they say two teams are fighting with each other, the underlying issue is often that the teams have competing priorities. In such cases, an intervention should raise awareness of the implications of each team’s actions for each other, teach collaborative behaviors, and ensure clear leadership from above.
The two also provided tips for effective science–practice collaboration. These include finding the right partners, clarifying the desired outcomes for each party early (including intellectual property issues), establishing respective roles (remember, role clarity leads to team effectiveness), being aware of timing issues that could affect completion of deliverables and the size of effort required by all, refraining from exaggerating scientist–practitioner differences (build trust with each other and make each other look good), and challenging each other constructively (e.g., does the work pass the academic sniff test, is it credible)? Does the work pass the practitioner sniff test (e.g., will anyone care)? For more information, contact John Mathieu at John.Mathieu@business.uconn.edu or Scott Tannenbaum at scott.tannenbaum@groupoe.com.
Audits of Human Resources Programs (Panel Discussion). Irene Sasaki, Dow Chemical Company; S. Morton McPhail, Valtera Corporation; and Michael T. Tusa, Jr., Sutton & Alker, LLC.
With an increasing focus on accountability in organizations, I-O practioners may be called on to assist in ensuring that HR programs conform to professional standards and legal guidelines. This session reviewed some of the best practices for auditing HR programs in a variety of areas. It is possible to identify three purposes for conducting audits: (a) evaluating the business proposition (e.g., utility, effectiveness, best practices, and prevention or detection of business risks), (b) limiting legal liability or exposure, and (c) defending legal or regulatory challenges. The panelists discussed several specific issues including the role of controls (such as policies and procedures, segregation of duties, delegation of authority, monitoring, and access control) in preventing or identifying problems. Important considerations for audit processes were offered for several examples. Key issues in auditing testing programs included the quality of the validation research and the extent of exposure of the testing program. It was suggested that audits of performance management systems should include evaluation of statistical information, system validity, administration and procedural structures, and implementation issues. Auditing downsizing processes included both issues in the design of the process and appropriate statistical modeling to evaluate the outcomes. Finally, risks such as legal privilege and failure to act on results of audits were addressed. For more information, contact Mort McPhail of Valtera (mmcphail@valtera.com).