Which Way Do I Go?

Think back to a time when you were starting a new job.  Remember how it felt to not know anything about the new place where you’d be spending a great deal of time?  We’ve all been there—excited about what is to come but apprehensive not knowing much at all about a totally new environment.

My colleague and co-author Cornelia Gamlem and her husband Carl recently visited New Bern, North Carolina.  Carl had been stationed nearby at MCAS Cherry Point when serving in the Marine Corps and they had a great time revisiting places they remembered. 

Cornelia came back from that trip with a brief article from New Bern Magazine which started out like this:  “You’re in the middle of a beautiful vacation town with no idea how to get where you’re going.  It’s a blistering hot summer day, the kids are screaming for an ice cold Pepsi and a ride on that old fire truck and you have no idea where you are. You’re lost. What an uncomfortable feeling. A moment before panic sets in, you notice there’s a sign overhead pointing you gently toward the New Bern Firemen’s Museum and two blocks away is the Pepsi Store.”

The article goes on to say that the signs overhead are part of a “wayfinding” system.  What is “wayfinding”, you say?  Well, it is the art and science of helping people find their way!

I understand that helping tourists find their way around a new location is important but it occurs to me that even more important in our busy world is helping new hires find their way at work.  This is why it is critical to have a well-planned on-boarding process so that your new hires are not wandering the halls looking for the rest rooms or the coffee machine.

The quicker your new hires get acclimated to their new environment, the quicker they will be productive—and isn’t that why you hired them?  The best way to design an on-boarding process is to gather a group of people together—employees who have been with you a year or less—and ask them what they would have liked to know when they started.  You will be amazed at how simple some of this is.  You probably already share important things like organizational history and leadership bio’s but have you considered some of the more practical items new hires need to know such as where the conference rooms are and how to book one or places to go for lunch in your neighborhood or the best dry cleaner close by?

Thinking of on-boarding as wayfinding opens up an entirely new way to think about assimilating your new employees and it’s never too late to tweak your process—the benefit will be to have new-hires be more productive faster and that is a very good thing!

Precision and Discipline

It was an incredible performance of Swan Lake by the Mariinsky Ballet Company. So many breathtaking moments and so many questions, such as: "How does she do that pose while balancing on his bent leg?" The precision of the swan maidens dancing in unison, four of them with their arms linked and dancing on their toes, was somewhat mind boggling. If one missed a step, it was over for the rest of them. "How do they learn to do that?" Barbara wondered aloud. Lots of practice, hard work, and discipline -- so much a part of the culture and traditions of a ballet company.

The very next day held an equally fascinating experience. My husband Carl and I visited the National Museum of the Marine Corps. It is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion and preservation of Marine Corps history, culture, and tradition. If you ever get the chance, visit it. For us it was special on a personal level, since Carl served in the Corps for four years. Touring the museum reminded me that I knew and remembered a great deal about the Marine Corps and that there was a lot I'd never known, or had forgotten, about its history and culture. There was one glaring comparison to the ballet the night before. Just like the delicate dancers, these rugged warriors were precise and disciplined, and they learned it through their marching drills.

Marines practice marching to learn how to work cohesively as a unit. They learn to react to a command at split-second intervals as a team. If one person makes an error with his rifle, you would pick it out right away. The flaw would be apparent. One missed step for either the ballerina or the warrior would impact the entire formation. Both professions are built on the values of confidence and trust, precision and discipline.

I recently read an article about confidence and the sales culture. "Of course," I thought. Sales professionals tend to be extroverts and project confidence in their very presence. However, the author was talking about a sales professional's ability to answer hard, smart, incisive, and challenging questions so they can persuade and convince a potential customer or client and close a deal.

Individual professions are unique social groups. Just as organizations have their own unique cultures, every profession within the organization also has its unique culture. It is that culture which often shapes the behavior of that social group.

It is important for leaders to recognize the different cultures and behaviors unique to each profession that resides within their organization. Many time these cultures clash. Within some professions, the approach to work is more task focused while others are more relationship focused. Think of the difference between engineers or IT professionals versus sales and business development professionals. Their approach to problem solving may also be at opposite ends of the spectrum, with engineers being more linear and logical and sales professionals being more intuitive. Yet, what they both have in common is integrity and passion for their work. The exciting challenge for leaders is to recognize the commonality and differences among all the cultures within their organization and put this diversity to work in order to build a positive work environment to make the organization succeed!

Cornelia Gamlem, SPHR

Diversity - It's About Everyday People

I was recently asked to comment on an article about the role of corporate diversity offices. The article, written by John Fitzgerald Gates, Ph.D., ran in the Huffington Post and was entitled, “Do We Really Need Diversity Offices?”  A link to the article can be found at the end.

 The article talked about the state of diversity management in corporate America and the fact that diversity as a function has grown little in focus and impact since this function began.  Gates went on to explain how the diversity function has remained focused on equal employment opportunity and affirmative action related functions typically administered by the companies human resources and legal departments.

 It was in the late 1990s that my friend and colleague Mary-Jane Sinclair, a contributing author to The Big Book of HR presented a workshop at a SHRM diversity conference. The topic:  Beyond EEO & On To Respect.  That corporate diversity offices are still focused on EEO and affirmative action is somewhat startling.

Diversity practitioners in recent years have begun referring to diversity as inclusion.  The premise behind this thinking is that if diversity is sometimes about counting people then inclusion is about making people count.  Counting people is clearly a function of EEO and affirmative action. However, in recent years I continue to hear the term diversity with respect to counting people.  This led me to agree with the conclusions drawn by Gates the article.  Last year I received a call from one of my clients who is a multi-national corporation headquartered in Europe.  The caller was from the European headquarters and she was inquiring if I could do a diversity plan for that office since I do similar plans for offices in the United States.  The plans I “do” for the U.S. offices are affirmative action plans, which are written according to specific regulations.  They are about counting and categorizing people in accordance with specific requirements.  I explained to the caller how I went about the analysis for this plan and that the methodology was not universal since it involves using U.S. Census data.

Diversity is about uniqueness. Diversity is what makes each and every one of us a unique individual. We each possess unique characteristics and qualities that we bring and contribute to the organization for which we work.

Diversity relates to people's values. Diversity also relates to an organizations values. Individuals want to work in an environment where others care about them and where they feel accepted and respected.  Diversity is about culture, both individual culture, and that's only one of the reasons why it's a business issue.

Gates says that we are stuck in seeing diversity within its limited definition of human difference. I'm not sure that I would interpret difference as limiting. Rather I interpret difference as uniqueness.  Diversity extends beyond what is obvious about people, those primary dimensions of diversity such as age gender race etc. Diversity encompasses much more including our backgrounds as education, religious believes, work experiences, geographic differences and also cultural variables.  Despite the fact that we live in a world that is global, the cultural variables or so often overlooked.

I do agree with the conclusions that Gates made. We have to unlearn our old mental models in which we see diversity as counting people and celebrate excellence and uniqueness.  When we do this we can celebrate differences and recognize that diversity has a place and affects all aspects of the organization – learning, resource allocation, product development and innovation, leadership integrity and even the bottom line. That's the business case for diversity that Mary-Jane Sinclair SPHR was trying to make so many years ago.

A link to the article is below.  As you read it, think about the song by Sly and the Family Stone, “Everyday People”. Those lyrics define what diversity is all about.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-fitzgerald-gates-phd/do-we-really-need-diversi_b_5564723.html