Go Beyond the Job Description: A Step-by-Step Guide to Optimizing Talents, Skills, and Strengths in Organizations - Softcover

Prisant, Ashley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1586445170 ISBN 13: 9781586445171

Publisher: SHRM - Kogan Page, 2018

Synopsis

What strengths are your employees leaving untapped, and how can you change that?

Go Beyond the Job Description introduces the Talent Engagement Optimization (TEO) framework, a 100-day plan that helps HR professionals and managers leverage the skills and capabilities employees already have but don't fully use at work. With step-by-step guidance, the book shows how to increase motivation, productivity and engagement by aligning individual talent with meaningful organizational goals. It features an online assessment to identify your Talent Engagement Zone, plus practical tools like development plans, transition guides and resource kits to ensure long-term success.

This is an ideal resource for time-pressed HR managers seeking to do more with what they already have - people included.

About this title

About the Author

Ashley Prisant Lesko, SHRM-CP, Ph.D., has a multifaceted background-from working as an officer in the U.S. Navy and holding leadership roles in Fortune 100 companies, to educating students at colleges and universities, and speaking at industry events. She has filled various roles at Amazon in operations, leadership and finance with oversight of more than $45 million and training programs, budgeting, and strategy across multiple fulfillment centers. She now leads Square Peg Solutions, an organization dedicated to helping companies develop leaders through a refined and tested talent engagement optimization process.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Go Beyond the Job Description

A Complete Guide to Optimizing Talents, Skills, and Strengths in Organizations

By Ashley Prisant Lesko

Society for Human Resource Management

Copyright © 2018 Ashley Prisant Lesko
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-58644-517-1

Contents

Foreword, 
Acknowledgments, 
Section 1 Why You Picked Up This Book (and How to Use It Now That You Have It), 
Introduction, 
Section 2 The First 25 Days (Finding the "What"), 
Chapter 1 Get on the Train: Leaving the Station with More Than What You Had When You Started Out, 
Chapter 2 Understanding That Change Is Not a Dirty Word, 
Chapter 3 What Cards Are in Your Hand? Knowing What Your Employees Have Helps You Know How Best to Stack the Deck, 
Section 3 Days 26–50: Starting, Resisting, and Becoming "Who", 
Chapter 4 The Results Are In! What to Do with Them? (Analyzing Initial Results), 
Chapter 5 Building the Action Plan. Caution, Construction Zone Ahead!, 
Chapter 6 Putting the Action Plan into Place and the Keys into the Ignition, 
Section 4 Getting There ... Is It Possible? (Transforming the "How"), 
Chapter 7 Checkup — How Are You Doing?, 
Chapter 8 Roadblocks, 
Chapter 9 You've Got Backup: Support in the Organization You Didn't Know You Had, 
Section 5 Crossing the Finish Line Is Only the Beginning (Knowing "When"), 
Chapter 10 Kaizen for Life, 
Chapter 11 Measuring Success, 
Chapter 12 Keeping It Going, 
Appendix A The Seven Deadly Sins of Kaizen —the Seven Wastes, 
Glossary, 
References, 
About the Author, 

CHAPTER 1

Get on the Train: Leaving the Station with More Than What You Had When You Started Out

1.1 The SBSG Story

Joe stands up slowly from his desk, removing his reading glasses from the bridge of his nose. It's nearly time to meet with Tyler, the CEO of SBSG and Joe's boss and long-time friend. Friend, yes, but not without their challenges. Joe is the VP of operations for the company and has been there for five years. With 50 stores in the tristate area, SBSG is trying to figure out how to grow profits without spending more on employee expenses. It hasn't been easy.

He looks up to see Elizabeth knocking on his open door. "Ready, boss?"

He nods. Elizabeth has been with the company for three years and is making headway in leaps and bounds. She is the operations manager for the main fulfillment center for the stores, at least in title. In actuality, she has tried to do much more — from operations, to customer service (where she started with the company and worked for about eight months), to finance (although no one, he thinks, would give her the accounting books any time soon!).

Joe and Elizabeth are going to talk to Tyler about a new concept — talent engagement optimization — that Elizabeth wants to implement within SBSG to help employees go beyond their own job description while contributing more to the company. At a minimum, she wants to lead her own department (HR), but if she gets some interest from other department leaders as "early adopters," perhaps also operations, accounting, and marketing to the project.

Joe thinks it sounds a bit too good to be true, but he has kept his thoughts to himself and agreed to let Elizabeth talk to Tyler about it. He presented it to Tyler as a developmental opportunity for Elizabeth.

Joe has to admit, Elizabeth did her due diligence. She had prepped for the questions that she thought Tyler would ask — as well as others that he doesn't ask. In the 30-minute meeting, Tyler is direct, as he always is. Working only from her notes, Elizabeth had prepared no presentation slides because she knows that Tyler's nature is neither to require nor request them.

After Elizabeth completes the basics of her points, Joe turns to her and nods. Nervously, she launches into her request. Tyler looks at her intensely, asking only occasional questions about the resources requested. She is prepared for some of his questions — but not all of them.

1.2 The Nuts and Bolts

Why are you here? If you read (or at least skimmed) through Section 1, you may have a few ideas based on what I suggested. If you skipped the section, you may want to review it when you get a chance.

Are you here because you want to help your team members or other employees in your organization get more out of their day? Their job? Their career path?

Are you here because you don't have a lot of money to spend on a large-scale transformational consulting project — but you need to make a change?

Are you here simply because you know the status quo just isn't cutting it, and you know that you can make your team better — but may need an outline or framework to do so?

Or something else?

The bottom line: You're here to help someone go beyond the job description. Whether it's a group of two employees, a team, or an entire organization, you believe there's a way to optimize each employee's talent engagement. We call this talent engagement optimization (TEO) — which is a mouthful to say that you are more than just a job — and this book will help you get more out of your team.

First, you need some support.

Getting Executive Buy-In

This is the first of several times you will see this as a header for your to-do list. If you are not at the top of the food chain in your organization (and 95 percent of us are not), you will have to find and convince the people at the top that your TEO project is worth pursuing. You may simply need their support — or you may also need their time, ongoing support (stated in an e-mail or in person to others), and resources (people, places, or money). At the very least, you will need their stamp of approval.

WHERE DO YOU START?

You will find I am a checklist person. Measuring your work is a great way to see that you've accomplished what you set out to do or are making progress. It's also one of three ways to prevent your job from becoming a "miserable job" (Lencioni 2007). Review the following list to help you cover your "executive buy-in" bases:

1. Take a look at Part 1.3 and answer the first three questions. These questions ask where you currently stand and where you want to go. Part 1.3 also contains a table allowing you to perform a gap analysis. This information is what you need to focus on, and you will build your action plan around it. Check out Section 1 on the best way to succeed with this book or Chapter 3 on how to assess to help you decide what areas you are going to measure.

2. Build your goals. Figure out where you'd like to be. Think about how long reaching your goals should take. The focus of this book is built around a 100-day action plan. You will not change the mindset of everyone in a 10,000-person company in that amount of time — but you could impact a department of 50 people who are looking for a transition (if they just don't know how to do it).

3. Define success. Yes, you've picked your goals, but what would success look like? If you were able to meet 50 percent of your goals within 100 days (or the time you choose) — is that success?

4. Prepare your goals for your executive team. The leader (or leaders) has a lot on their plate. What is important to them? What are the goals for the leader or the organization this year? How can you align your goals for this project with their goals?

5. Brief your executive team. At this point, you know what's best. It could be a quick e-mail saying "Hey, I'm doing this. Let me know if you have any issues. Otherwise, I'll let you know when I need your support." Or it could be a full presentation. Reference Section 1 or Chapter 11 (how to sell it and present it for results) for more information on best practices to do this.

6. Define a flexible and tentative timeline so the executive team knows when to start expecting yields after approving your project.

The above checklist will help you find what you need and gather executive buy-in. Many projects fail from not first getting buy-in, dooming the rest of the project before it starts. Check out the next chapter, which explains some of the reasons why projects like this fail.

TEO PROJECT TEAM TYPES

This book focuses on you as a leader. You may not be the leader of the group that you are working in — you could be an HR director, a chief operations officer (COO), a project manager, a consultant, or a part-time analyst. But for purposes of this book, regardless of your title in the organization, you are a leader. A leader is someone who influences others, and you will definitely be doing that in your TEO project. You are part of the team that is leading the TEO project to help your employee group go beyond the job description. You are the point person to make it happen. This book is here to support you to make sure that you are successful.

As such, from here out, I will refer to you as the "leader" of this project.

Now, what kind of team will you be leading? There are several types:

• In-place team. This is a traditional team of 2–25 people who are in the same group or department. For the most part, they also work at the same location. They generally do the same work (e.g., product management), although they may have different ranks or titles. The work is homogenous, but their viewpoints toward the work are anything but. Your challenges may be differentiating them and getting them to sing their best tune (noting that some of them can't sing, so you'll have to be creative for a few).

• Hybrid team. This team is still fairly traditional, but with a twist or blend. You have people from different departments, throughout the organization, or in different locations. The challenge with this team is that neither the work nor the viewpoints are homogenous. This group offers a greater chance for a project champion — someone in the group (or a few people) who can support it (so you're not the only one).

• Virtual team. This group is in many locations. Employees can be from the same department or in a hybrid environment, but they are in enough locations that change as a whole will be difficult for them. However, being spread over many locations can be a good thing in that negative Nancys will not be able to become roadblocks as quickly (see Chapter 8), but you have to work harder at communication. Having a virtual team can expand the reach of your TEO project and increase its opportunities in the future.

The idea of creating your TEO team is to define a target audience large enough to reach statistical significance but small enough to experiment your proposal to prove its value. Table 1.1 summarizes the types of teams.

1.3 Activities and Application

Starting the Application: Getting Executive Buy-In

You'll have the chance to fill out your action plan and the checklists for your TEO program in upcoming chapters. The three questions below pertain to the project and goal and will help get your wheels turning as you move toward collecting and analyzing the data to successfully implement your project:

• What is the goal of the project? What do you want to have at the end of the project?

• Where are you now in terms of reaching your goal? For example, if your goal is that 75 percent of the team will start taking initiative, are you currently at 25 percent?

• Have you done a gap analysis? Compare the previous two questions. Table 1.2 is set up for you to use as a guide.

Now that you know what your goals are, the following questions will help you focus on buy-in and your specific stakeholders:

1. Who are the key people/leadership/executives that you need to keep informed about this project?

2. Whose buy-in do you need for this project?

3. Whose buy-in would be nice for you to have for this project?

4. In your initial discussions or e-mails, you requested support, confirmation, or buy-in from the people in questions one and two. What did you ask them? Note when you sent it and the time they or you set for a requested response. What did they say?

5. Are there any follow-up steps or tasks? Write them here, then load them in your task or to-do list for action on the appropriate date.

6. How will you check in with the stakeholders and leaders? You will eventually put the information from above in the action plan. But for now, while the meeting or e-mail is still fresh in your head — write down your thoughts about how you will communicate with them.

7. Get confirmation from your project sponsor if you are able and add any comments here:

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1.4 Real Stories

In each of the following chapters, Part 4 shares stories from individuals around the world related to the topics in the chapter. The stories are aimed to provide some context and to reinforce what you just read in the rest of the chapter, and to give you suggestions, ideas, and support

Signing up 20 Leaders One Step at a Time

For the retail industry, the e-commerce strategy affects many business units (BUs) — sometimes disproportionately. Because of those impacts, many large retailers will require a global change in e-commerce strategy to have buy-in and agreement from as many as 20–25 BU leaders.

In my case, the retailer's e-commerce channel had 35-plus different shipping offers and thresholds depending on the product type and price. It was extremely confusing fora customer who had multiple items in their cart. Also, feedback from customers was that the overall user experience was very complex. This directly resulted in a high number of abandoned carts, which in essence were lost sales for the company. To provide a great customer experience and drive sales higher, we needed to drastically simplify our customer experience and provide our customers one single shipping threshold. There were many steps in this phase — from agreeing on threshold values to managing lower margins.

This was an enormous undertaking and, together, first we put a cross-functional team with members from top 10 BUs (total team size = 12: 10 BUs + 1 e-commerce + 1 leader). The cross-functional team got the data first with a benchmark of what other competitors were doing and did several steps to demonstrate that all inputs and assumptions were factored in.

They conducted extensive reviews with every BU leadership team to ensure their input and feedback were taken under consideration. Based on the feedback, the team had to reassess their plans. The team also conducted hundreds of sample tests to confirm their ideas. This helped validate their results with actual results. Finally, as the leader of the project, I spent a significant amount of time throughout the project conducting shuttle diplomacy and consensus building with every BU leader. While this overall process took more than six months — which was very long compared to any other e-commerce project — at the end of the day the change was implemented with full support and consensus of all BUs.

— Ritesh Chaturbedi

An Unexpected Buy-in to Set up an Unexpected Team

I had just started my position as the vice president of business development (VP, BD) at a Fortune 200 company. I reported directly to the general manager (GM) as part of his executive staff. He had been recently promoted to his position as well and was in the process of building out his team. I had always respected and admired him as both a leader and a manager.

The GM's vision for BD was to split the responsibilities into two departments between two VPs. He had already hired another person to lead one department, and because of my experiences, he asked me to lead the other department. At the time, my entire team consisted of myself and one other person. The GM gave me great latitude to hire additional personnel and build my own team. How could I refuse such an amazing opportunity and offer?

At first, the GM wanted me to report to the other, more experienced VP, who would report to the GM. I had nothing against the other VP, especially as I didn't know him at all yet, however I knew this hierarchy was not good for either the team or the business. I convinced the GM that our two departments had very different needs and operating requirements due to the nature of our respective responsibilities. It would make more sense if we both reported to him directly so he would get both pictures together and could oversee things more holistically. This was not my ego, but what I truly believed would be better for the GM and the business. After some discussion, I was able to get his buy-in, and that call turned out to be more prescient than I could have possibly imagined.

The other VP was a nice person, but professionally, he was not getting the job done. After about six months, the GM had to let him go and asked if I would take over both teams. [Note: this story continues in Chapter 3.]

— Alex Min

Helping Leaders Buy In and Not Lose Their Marbles

Several years ago, I was working with an executive in Africa who was satisfied with the direction his company was taking, yet unsatisfied with the input he was getting from his team. The more we discussed the issue it became clear he was worried that his team felt uncomfortable, and potentially afraid, to speak freely with him. The fact that he was worried about this made it almost certainly true.

During our conversation, he provided stereotypical explanations of his meetings. One-on-one meetings were held in his office with his employees sitting across his desk from him. Team meetings were held in the conference room where he would sit at the head of the table to control the conversations. He acknowledged the physical set up of these meetings could likely be contributing to his issue, and he was still quite reluctant to change what he had become comfortable with.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Go Beyond the Job Description by Ashley Prisant Lesko. Copyright © 2018 Ashley Prisant Lesko. Excerpted by permission of Society for Human Resource Management.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: SHRM - Kogan Page
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1586445170
• ISBN 13: 9781586445171
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 224