maandag 29 november 2010

Leaders wanted

Managers are managing mainly on chats, rumors and speculations. The key to leadership.

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dinsdag 12 oktober 2010

Why do so few follow the P-CMM?

In the LinkedIn People CMM workgroup, a discussion was started by Tom Neff on why so few follow the P-CMM? Below his original question, and the reaction that I have posted based on things that we discussed in our P-CMM workgroup meetings. Reactions are welkome!





Why do so few follow the P-CMM? By Tom Neff:


The CMMI has gained fair acceptance around the world...even in some companies that might have to take the model and amend it to fit their situation. However, I believe most CMMI efforts either fail or fall way short of their full potential.

The last time I checked, 100% of all companies in the world have at least one employee. However, much closer to 0% of all companies are using the P-CMM. Why is that? I have come to believe that if one could successfully implement P-CMM (even just some of it) in your organization, it would SIGNIFICANTLY increase the odds of being successful with CMMI.

Given the failure rate of CMMI efforts but that you still need CMMI and you have people, it seems that one should work on P-CMM, then when the organization understands this "some change is good" thing, they'll be much more receptive to their new roles in CMMI.

Thoughts anyone?





Reaction by Ben Linders:


In the Netherlands there is a P-CMM working group, which is part of SPIder (the Dutch official Software Process Improvement Network, SPIN). We started in april 2009 and had a full day session with Gian Wemyss of the SEI in june (again thanks Gian for helping us that day!). We had several meeting where, amongst other P-CMM topics, the low adaptation level was discussed. Causes that were mentioned often were that only very few professionals and organizations know the model, there is very few information about the business benefits that the P-CMM has brought to organizations, and deploying the P-CMM is not always that easy.

As mentioned earlier the P-CMM is mostly know by the same professionals that have used the CMM(I). However these are mainly software development professionals, while the P-CMM is a management/HRM model. We have several HR and Management professionals in our working group, and are putting effort in promoting the model in HRM communities and getting (senior) managemenmt attention for the model, and its application.

There is only limited information of companies that have used the P-CMM, and most of that information is either confidential or there is insufficient detail in the publicly available information. That makes it very difficult to convince people that using the P-CMM can bring benefits. Also, there has been a shift in the goal why organizations (would) use the P-CMM. The initial business cases stressed the need to keep professionals, and keep then motivated as a main reason to deploy the People CMM. But in the economic crises, there are often other reasons to use the People CMM, like improving the quality of product and customer service. Differents goals to use the People CMM require different business cases; and since there are so few available many organizations will hesitate to use the model.

Finally, many of our working group meetings focused on getting a good understanding of the People CMM model, and discussing ways to deploy it. We learned a lot in the workgroup meeting, but it also became clear that the state of practice of the People CMM is still very premature. To state it otherwise, the maturity of using the P-CMM is very low, and there are very few people who are capable of deploying the model. There is a big need to share experiences of using the model (and any other People based practices/models), which we as a workgroup will continue to do in our regular meetings.

We have setup a website to exchange experiences at
http://www.workforcematurity.nl , and started a blog at http://people-cmm.blogspot.com/ . Since we are a Dutch working groups, part of the material are in Dutch; our apologies for that, we try to publish as much as possible in English but if we run across good things in Dutch then we also share them on our website and blog. You are all welcome to join our discussions on the web. If you are living in the Netherlands, I welcome you to join our working group, which are free of charge (this is by professionals, for professionals, helping each other).

I am looking forward to reactions on this? Do you see similar reasons why the P-CMM is used so little, or other reasons?



maandag 27 september 2010

De traditionele manager

Unfortunately in Dutch only.

De manager als:
Turf Smurf
Vink Vee
Spreadsheet fundamentalist

Professor Mathieu Weggeman in een inspirerende presentatie over de traditionele manager en de wijze waarop professionals reageren.


vrijdag 17 september 2010

Manager voorkomt doorstroming van talent

Gelezen in de computable:

Politieke overwegingen bepalen in belangrijke mate hoe managers omgaan met talent in de organisatie. Dit is een van de opvallendste resultaten uit een recent onderzoek naar talentmanagement in Nederland. Die werd uitgevoerd door trainings- en adviesbureau Vergouwen Overduin in samenwerking met de Leerstoel Strategisch Talent Management van de Nyenrode Business Universiteit.

52 procent van de respondenten antwoordt bevestigend op de vraag of het voorkomt dat een manager doorstroming van talent tegenhoudt uit politieke overweging. Daarmee wordt bedoeld het belang om iemand binnen het eigen organisatieonderdeel te houden of juist kwijt te raken.
Daarnaast komt het volgens een derde van de respondenten voor, dat een manager talent benoemt op grond van dergelijke overwegingen. Bijna 60 procent geeft aan dat het voorkomt dat managers talent benoemen op basis van overeenkomsten met de manager zelf.

Kweekvijver
Het doel van het onderzoek was om beleid en beleving omtrent talent in profit- en not-for-profit-organisaties in beeld te brengen. Bij de overgrote meerderheid van de organisaties blijkt talentmanagement nog geen strategisch thema te zijn. Het systematisch bouwen aan en onderhouden van een kweekvijver van talent is in de meeste organisaties nog niet geborgd in verantwoordelijkheden van (hr-)managers.
Volgens de respondenten hebben organisaties verder weinig systematische procedures en processen voor de ontwikkeling van talenten. In een kenniseconomie waarin mensen het verschil maken en dus belangrijke assets zijn, is het ontbreken van strategische aandacht voor talent een opvallende constatering.

Tekortkomingen
Het onderzoek laat tot slot zien dat de invalshoek van talentontwikkeling aan het verschuiven is. In 2008 gaf ongeveer de helft van de respondenten aan dat talentontwikkeling een kwestie is van het wegwerken van tekortkomingen. Anno 2010 is talentontwikkeling volgens driekwart van de respondenten vooral bedoeld om beter te worden in iets waar je al goed in bent. Dit lijkt erop te wijzen dat competentiemanagement plaatsmaakt voor talentmanagement.


Read more:

dinsdag 31 augustus 2010

Learn from the guilds

Up to the industrial revolution, guilds were common for craftsmen to preserve craftsmanship, quality, fair wages and solid markets. During the industrial revolution craftsman were replaced by workers and machines and guilds nearly died out, except for a few folklore guilds that survived.

As from the industrial revolution organizational performance improvement was only focused on increase productivity through smarter machines and by scientific management on processes. At the end of 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, it was not common for industrial companies to invests in education nor in fair rewards for their employees. After social troubles workers received better payments and as a side effect markets increased surprisingly. Successes with scientific management increased the distribution of management, and by adapting ideas of people like Max Weber, organizations became more and more bureaucratic organized ran by those professional managers. But what happened with the competency development of the skilled workforce?

Although increasing complexity of work and machines, knowledge workers like ICT-employees are still treated in a rather scientific management manner. If people do not perform as desired or if they are moved to a new position, they could (if lucky) get a training associated with their jobs. But next it is often up to them to improve their own performance.
It is a fact that high performance organizations put more emphasis on people and processes rather than on organizational structures and management power and influences.

Organizations that invest in people and their competences are far more successful, profitable and reliable to their customers than organizations that don’t. Those organizations possesses often comprehensive training plans, to train their staff on appropriate skills, knowledge and process abilities needed to fulfill their jobs.

Let’s get back to the guilds, isn’t it much more effective if a modern master craftsmen (experts) could mentor journeymen (intermediate employees) and those journeymen could educate apprentices (junior employees). It would be far more convenient and logical if crafts maintains their own competence standards than if this has to be done by an ignorant manager.

This practice of the guilds happens already within some professions where groups are gathering and establish their own competence standards. Examples are the Open Group with TOGAF for the ICT architects of PMI with PMP for project managers.

Why don’t organizations learn from these best practices from the past and reinvent the guild principles? It could be applied to all employees, including managers, for their competence development and professionalism.

vrijdag 27 augustus 2010

Stelling: Leuk dat career development, ik raak er alleen maar goede mensen mee kwijt!

Motivatie:
  • In een tijd van economische crisis is er geen ruimte voor career development!
  • De goeden gaan, en de minder goede blijven, ik richt mij liever op de laatste categorie, dan gaan ze misschien wel weg!
Graag hoor ik jullie mening?

Stelling: Mensen die heel bewust aan career planning doen zijn op zichzelf gericht en niet op hun bedrijf

1.
Motivatie:
  • Waarom zou ik als bedrijf investeren in de carrière van mijn medewerkers? Dat moeten ze zelf maar doen!
  • Is dat mogelijk dan, open en eerlijk met je medewerkers over carriere praten?
Graag hoor ik jullie mening?

donderdag 29 juli 2010

The next meeting of the SPIder P-CMM workgroup is august 23. Subject "career development".