May 2007
Executive Summaries
'There Are No Happy Losers'
By Tony Bingham and Pat Galagan
A small regional phone company goes up against national competitors in a tough market and succeeds. In the words of its president and CEO Jack Rooney, U.S. Cellular is “the little engine that could.” Rooney’s philosophy in a nutshell: Believe that your work is noble, and good things follow.
In an exclusive interview with T+D, Rooney discusses learning and development and the role it plays in the phone company’s strategy.
“We started by training the top five leaders in the new rules of the road for the dynamic organization,” says Rooney. “Then, because I believe that learning includes teaching, we had them teach the vice presidents, who taught the directors, who taught the managers. All this time, the executive vice presidents were also engaged in learning.”
Rooney explained that U.S. Cellular has a specific idea of the characteristics it looks for in a leader.
“We don’t want managers; we want people who motivate,” he explains. “That’s what the dynamic organization is all about. We motivate people by giving them noble goals, and we concentrate more on objectives than we do on the tasks to get to those objectives. The dynamic organization says we understand who we are, what we are, and where we are going. We don’t need somebody standing over us making sure we do things.”
FREE PDF
Balancing the Leadership Paradox
By Thomas J. Griffin and Jim Gustafson
U.S. Cellular’s unique business model addresses financial results and leverages employees’ potential to succeed.
The dynamic organization business model is more than a description of the ideal organizational culture at U.S. Cellular; it is the beating heart and inner soul of the company.
The dynamic organization is a collective pattern of principles, values, and behaviors. Our description of the dynamic organization includes seven principles, six values, and 10 behaviors. They are timeless because they have been tested and refined over time.
Leadership effectiveness is the foundation of our business model. Nothing happens without strong, committed, and capable leadership. At U.S. Cellular, leadership is a means to an end. The need for effective leadership drives the organization to create the programs, tools, and processes that allow its leaders to thrive and flourish in a complex and competitive environment.
Leadership success at U.S. Cellular is not easy, and only those leaders who understand and effectively manage the paradox of both/and will ultimately survive. The notion of a paradox—simultaneous opposites, parallel contradictions—creates tension for many leaders who thrive on the either/or, only one right answer, or a single-minded approach to leading and managing.
PURCHASE ARTICLE
Ignoring the Obvious
By Eric Lesser and Ray Rivera
As more companies shift their focus from cost containment to revenue growth, they are focusing on their ability to build and maintain a pipeline of talented employees. However, many organizations are finding that changing workforce demographics are making it difficult to effectively retain valuable employees.
Workplace learning and performance professionals clearly agree that changing workforce demographics is an important issue that requires attention in their organizations. An IBM and ASTD study revealed that 43 percent of respondents believed this issue will have significant impact on their organizations within the next three to five years, while 38 percent felt that the impact of changing workforce demographics on their organizations would be moderate.
However, despite the recognized importance of this topic, there appears to be a notable disconnect between recognition and action within the surveyed organizations. Although the majority of companies believed that changing workforce demographics will have at least a moderate impact on their organizations in the near future, only 46 percent of WLP professionals stated that their organization is doing a good or excellent job in addressing changing workforce demographics.
Furthermore, only 26 percent of organizations have plans in place to address positions that are at risk because of turnover. Overall, and perhaps most sobering, only 42 percent of respondents said their organizations were addressing skills and capability needs for the next five years.
PURCHASE ARTICLE
What Does Your Hiring Process Say About You?
By Scott Erker
Bad impressions during the hiring process lead to negative perceptions of your employment brand, driving your best candidates away. If a candidate accepts a position, she has already started out with your company on a sour note, making her more likely to leave.
No matter what corner of the world you’re hiring in, the war for talent is intense and candidates have a lot of power when deciding whether to accept your job or take one with your competitor.
Development Dimensions International (DDI) and Monster recently surveyed 4,000 job seekers, 1,250 hiring managers, and 628 staffing directors to understand how an organization’s hiring process influences a candidate’s decision to accept a job and remain with the organization. The study, Slugging Through the War for Talent: Selection Forecast 2006-2007, examined four important aspects of the hiring process: recruiting, selecting, landing the candidates you want, and retaining valuable talent.
The survey revealed that bad impressions during the hiring process lead to negative perceptions of your employment brand. The research also revealed that organizations are making many mistakes attracting and retaining talent. So how can you put the best face on your organization, and turn your hiring process into a competitive advantage?
PURCHASE ARTICLE
PODCAST
Virtual Threat, Real Sweat
By Jenni Jarventaus
While traditional training methods such as drills, field exercises, and classroom sessions continue to be an indispensable part of emergency personnel training solutions, the major push now is toward developing new learning and assessment technologies, and incorporating them into the training mix. Online assessment databases, modeling and simulation technologies, and computer games are rapidly becoming more sophisticated and customizable, offering a cost-effective way to train emergency personnel, to gauge their competencies, and to deploy responders with appropriate skills to the incident site swiftly and effectively.
Even though virtual simulations are not a new phenomenon in training, computer-based simulation and gaming technology has moved into the mainstream of emergency response training in the past few years. The change has been swift. Whereas a few years ago staff in many local emergency response agencies didn’t even have personal computers, now the necessary computer technology is becoming more accessible, and virtual training is gaining approval as a younger, more computer-savvy generation is entering the emergency responder workforce.
While computer-based simulations hold great potential in emergency response training, many companies that offer customized and complete emergency preparedness solutions use the technology first and foremost as a way to supplement a wider training tool set.
PURCHASE ARTICLE
PODCAST
Communicating the Value of Learning
By Tony Bingham and Tony Jeary
An excerpt from the ASTD Press publication, Presenting Learning, this article highlights the critical role that communication plays in learning’s strategic impact.
Many learning professionals expend a tremendous amount of energy trying to generate concrete return-on-investment numbers, without recognizing that it’s equally important to make a persuasive case for learning’s overall strategic impact on an organization.
Communication is the means by which learning spreads throughout an organization, so one of the best ways learning can align itself is by heightening awareness of the strategic importance of learning and facilitating more precise and purposeful communication throughout the organization. The great side benefit of this approach is that learning’s contribution and value will be difficult, if not impossible, to dispute.
Communicating strategies and objectives in a way that everyone can understand is a challenge for many organizations. A CEO may issue a demand for “organic growth,” or “more efficient deployment of resources,” which might sound good and leader-like on paper, but to rank-and-file employees, it may mean nothing more than just another call to do more with less. If strategic objectives are communicated in vague, hollow language, even if the script has been approved by the organization’s leaders, it can take some work to sift through the verbal fog to locate a true strategy and the consequences that arise from it.
PURCHASE ARTICLE
BACK TO MAY 2007