Category: Book review

Ensuring performance improvement: a review of Learning Transfer at Work by Paul Matthews

How do you ensure that learning and development activities generate the performance change you want? This question is at the heart of Paul Matthews’ readable and engaging book. A strength of the book is that the messages are equally appropriate for line managers supporting their team members to develop as they are for L&D professionals wanting to improve their value to the organisation.

Paul Matthews gets to the heart of the matter – how do you ensure that learning is enacted in the workplace, and that this change in meaningful, lasting and effective? From this flow a range of other questions and ideas, with a common theme of learning and development as part of a workflow, in which a formal training workshop is one of many elements. This requires a strong and active partnership between staff member, line manager and L&D team throughout the learning intervention.

The author adopts an unusual structure, the first 90 pages covering the theory and ideas in a traditional structure. He challenges why learning transfer activity is not undertaken, and explores elements of learning theory and behaviour change, including how memories form and how behaviours are triggered and adapted.

The second 130 pages are structured as bullet points and short paragraphs – asking direct questions, providing external examples/contributions and presenting previously established ideas in a different format. This theory first, application/engagement second approach mirrors the flipped classroom approach he espouses.

Key messages addressed include:

Is training the right answer?

Paul argues the importance of ‘performance consultancy’ – ensuring that all other opportunities to improve performance have been explored, and that the business benefits and sought outcomes are clearly articulated before a L&D solution is commissioned.

You need a coalition

To ensure successful behaviour change and performance improvement you need the involvement of line and senior managers before, during and after the intervention. You need to support and develop an organisational/team culture that supports development, mentorship and invests time in learning transfer activities such as coaching, reflection, on-the-job practice. You can gain buy-in through clarity around the exact business improvements that the programme will generate.

It is a 4-day programme, not a workshop plus pre/post work

Each workflow element is important and necessary in its own right, not an optional extra to the workshop. This message is as important for line managers as for the participants as it sets out the expectations that they will need to be involved in designing/supporting activities to embed the learning in the workplace, such as practising the new skills/behaviours in a safe setting.

Begin with the end in mind

What is the sought outcome of the learning activity? How will you know it has been successful? Paul Matthews challenges the attitude that successful L&D delivery is a well-attended workshop with positive feedback sheets, instead arguing that measurement of outcomes in terms of participant behaviour and business impact is fundamental to proving intervention effectiveness, as well as return on investment and value for the organisation.

Workshop attendance does not equal behaviour change

Exploration of how we learn, how we respond to triggers and form new habits is fundamental to designing a programme to generate the sought business outcomes. The exploration of Dr Ina Weinbauer-Heidel’s 12 Levers of Transfer Effectiveness provides readers with a clear framework to consider how far their L&D interventions support learning transfer.

Paul Matthews’ selection and effective presentation of fascinating insights from a wide range of psychology and neuroscience research is at the heart of this book, and provides practitioners with a range of mechanisms to ensure that learning is embedded and enacted in the world outside the classroom.

Buy the book from Amazon UK or Amazon USA

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27th February 2019
Review: The Strengths-Focused Guide to Leadership
If you want a practical manual to understanding how to harness strengths, for you and your team, this book is a great place to start, as it:
- introduces the key concepts of strengths
  - provides the research base for more inquisitive readers
  - illustrates with narratives
- prompts you with a range of exercises and action points
- explains how to weave strengths into your practice as a leader.
What really sets this book apart is the emphasis on practicality. Numerous exercises help you engage with the ideas. There are questions, forms and questionnaires for you to use. The book looks at embedding strengths in all your work, including coaching, team meetings, recruitment and appraisals. So even if you know the value of using strengths, this is still a worthwhile read.

A further great feature is the use of dialogues, showing the ideas in action (e.g. a coaching session transcript) or as two alternative ‘scripts’ – one using strengths, the other weakness. These stories keep you grounded in reality.

The whys, whats and hows of using strengths

The authors define strengths as something that:

They show the advantage of working with strengths: that you are doing more of what you are best at. They set out the alignment between using strengths and increased sense of authenticity and purpose, increasing satisfaction and engagement. This naturally leads into a more productive cycle, with faster and better results.

For any readers averse to leaving a weakness-focussed approach, the authors provide both the evidence for focussing on strengths, and also how to address weaknesses with a positive mindset.

The MORE model

My strengths: To identify your own strengths, the authors offer five different methods: strength spotting, weakness spotting, a 5 steps strengths map, 360 degree feedback and online strengths assessments. They provide the exercises, questions and examples to help you through whichever of these methods you prefer to use.

Roarty and Toogood suggest 8 ways to develop your strengths:

They also provide 6 ways to manage your weaknesses. To align your goals and strengths, they suggest usual SMART objectives should rather be SMARTIE – adding Important and Energising.

Others’ strengths: The book suggests approaches to introduce strengths as a concept and to support your team in identifying their strengths.

Regular conversations: To embed strengths into daily practice, the authors provide checklists and questions which embody the three principles that will help you develop a strengths mindset:
- start with an outcome focus
- focus on what’s working
- manage weakness from strength
They advise how to use this mindset in one-to-one conversations, development planning, team meetings and coaching: interventions where a strengths-focus has great rewards.

Employee processes: Roarty and Toogood provide specific advice for a strength-based approach for performance appraisals, development discussions and recruitment. Particularly interesting is their approach for adapting to institutional reality: that while you may be required to use certain forms, competencies or expected approaches, you can still use a strengths mindset and techniques to provide a better outcome.

Leadership and teams

The book ends by providing the advice, evidence and resources to use strengths in two key challenges: creating a high-performing team, and in leading change. While specific examples are given, the advice reflects the key messages delivered previously, as detailed above.

You can buy The Strengths-focused guide to leadership, by Mike Roarty and Kathy Toogood, on Amazon UK or Amazon USA

Eszter Molnar Mills is a strength-based leadership and organisation development specialist.

She helps organisations and individuals reach enhanced performance by reflecting on what works, and by developing skills and strategies for improvement.

If you’d like help or advice on using strengths – such as implementing the MORE model, helping you find or use your strengths, or adopt a coaching approach, then please get in touch.

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15th July 2018
Book Review: The Positive Organization by Robert E Quinn

So many business books leave you wondering “…but how does that work in reality?” That’s not a problem with The Positive Organization – this short book (less than 160 pages from cover to cover) is packed with ideas, examples, case studies and practical exercises, written in an engaging and straightforward style.

Throughout, Quinn challenges us to consider a different way of thinking, and to think about how we can effectively participate in building a positive organisation. A key strength of the book is that it has actionable lessons for all, regardless of job role or responsibility, from board room to shop floor. Each chapter concludes with a tool to use with teams in self-assessment and development, as well as questions to encourage the reader to reflect and set aspirations, to deepen learning.

The central premise of the book is that building a positive organisation requires accountability and authenticity, that for it to be successful it has to be emergent and self-generating. This approach is built on listening, consultation and empowerment at all levels.

What marks this book apart from many others is both the effectiveness of Quinn’s model, as well as the Positive Organization Generator – over 100 real-life examples of how organisations have successfully increased their positivity.

Mental Maps and bilingualism

Quinn suggests that the culture of an organisation can be summarised in a mental map – an indication of what a company believes and assumes, covering domains such as Motivation, Status and Change. Most organisations, and most leaders, operate using what Quinn calls a Conventional Mental Map, a top-down, traditional hierarchy. He contrasts this with the more complex Positive Mental Map, focused more on networks and relationships, and a focus on the common good and authentic communication.

However, this is not a binary state – Quinn suggests a successful leader needs to be ‘bilingual’ able to speak the language of both maps depending on the need of the people they are working with, to find the right tools for the right occasion.

A question of balance

Quinn provides us with a further analysis of organisational culture – the Framework of Organizational Tensions. Quinn groups organisational characteristics into two opposing lists, for example Individual Accountability and Cohesive Teamwork. If taken to extremes either of these positive characteristics could be negative – conflict on the one hand or group-think on the other. To illustrate the need to maintain balance between these positive forces, Quinn separates each pair on opposing sides of a disc, with an outer ring of negative forces that may arise if the positive force is over-developed.

This idea of tension and balance is crucial to Quinn – organisations are not static, they are dynamic, and to effect positive change we have to consider the whole system, that positives can turn into negatives.

A call to action

Having developed these models, Quinn turns to a number of key issues in developing a positive organisation, in chapters that focus on how to drive organisations forward by developing and promoting authenticity, creating a sense of purpose, fostering bottom-up change and collaborative development. He uses a range of interesting and relevant examples, referring back to the models at every stage.

In these sections he is challenging and insightful on the role of the individual, on our willingness to work for the common good, our ability to leave our ego and control behind when trying to develop an organisation that thrives. He is also realistic about human nature, and how difficult meaningful change and personal authenticity may be, but makes clear the benefits of developing leadership capabilities and organisational positivity.

Over to you

Quinn concludes by sharing with the reader his Positive Organization Generator. Designed to confront sceptics and resistance, he provides 100 examples of where an organisation has made positive change (from a range of industries, and with links to further articles on each of them). This is an amazing resource that gives readers a real opportunity to understand “how it works in reality”. Rather than just adopting these ideas, his instruction to readers is to re-invent them – to be inspired by the examples, extract the principle and re-imagine it for your own context, moulding and adapting to fit.

Robert E. Quinn’s website www.bob-quinn.com provides you with the resources from the book, including the Positive Organization Generator.

Or you can buy the book from Amazon UK or Amazon USA.

For more ideas you can also follow his daily blog: www.thepositiveorganization.wordpress.com

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Formium Development helps individuals and organisations to harness their strengths and improve their performance and culture. We know change can be hard, so we can bring our expertise to help you with organisational development – such as implementing the ideas in The Positive Organization.

Click here if you’d like more information on how we can help you and your team analyse, assess, challenge, innovate, communicate and develop.

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5th July 2018
Big Data by Bernard Marr

Big Data is an expression that we hear often but not everybody understands what it is and how to use it beneficially. Bernard Marr’s book is a guidebook for all businesses on harnessing the potential of data. He argues that data by itself is valueless, data only has value if it is converted to insight– what he terms Smart Big Data.
Marr explains why “Big Data is the heart of the smart revolution” – and details how every facet of our life and world has become smart: health, parenting, homes, sport as well as love. Really successful companies realise who are their customers, what are they doing, what do they like, what are their needs now and in the future. Those businesses have that knowledge because they have collected their customers’ digital trace and know how to use that data.
Marr’s award-winning book is a practical guide, loaded with tips for business owners, leaders, managers or anyone working within this field. It’s a reader-friendly book about what could have been a dry topic. For all those who aren’t convinced in the importance of Big Data, Marr makes a convincing case that it is a phenomenon and sensible use can lead to success.
The book is available at amazon.co.uk and amazon.com.

Agi Galgoczi

11th May 2016
Edison’s method – Collaboration is the key

The light bulb; just a simple object in your everyday life. We need it at home, in the office, on the street, almost everywhere. Thomas Edison frequently receives credit for inventing the light bulb (inspite of the efforts of inventors such as Davy and Swan who came before him). We tend to imagine every great innovator alone in their basement laboratory working on their greatest ideas. But most of them don’t work alone, just as Edison did not invent the light bulb all by himself – he had a team.

In her book, Midnight Lunch, Edison’s great-grandniece Sarah Miller Caldicott outlines how you can use Edison’s collaboration methods to strengthen your team, whether face-to-face or virtually. It is a four-step process and all the processes within each phase are designed to link together, becoming a self-referencing system.

The first phase is Capacity; select small teams of 2 to 8 people of varied specialisms. Diversity of strengths will bring the diversity of perspectives. Everybody can learn from each other and the small number is important to create an environment of collegiality.

Context is the next facet where effective collaboration leads to innovation. It involves individual then collective study of the problem and experimenting with potential ways forward. Learn from the mistakes and use them to create new contexts. Discuss them with your team, listen to every individual, the diversity of the team will increase the possible number of solutions.

The third “C” is Coherence. There can be disagreements within every team. Step in and encourage a renewed discovery of the purpose with your team, the common goal that binds them together. Teams without a shared purpose are just groups of people. Every team needs an inspirational leader who can step in when it is needed.

Complexity is the last phase. You can find ideas in the book for how to manage the complexity of collaboration from reskilling the members of your team to leaving a “footprint” as a guide to the next generation, or to other teams.

Caldicott’s Midnight Lunch is not always an easy read, in order to follow the self-referencing system attentive reading is required. It is a challenging book that can make you rethink how you structure, manage and lead your teams. It offers a number of practical collaboration tools – straight from Thomas Edison’s laboratory – that you can use during your leadership journey.
Midnight Lunch by Sarah Miller Caldicott is available on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk.

22nd December 2015