People Dynamics - November 2017

WWW.IPM.CO.ZA NOVEMBER 2017 VOL35 NO.10

Learning going

MOBILE

FeesMightFall FACED WITH THE 4TH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Is digital design everything?

OVERCOMING TOUGH TIMES NO BAGGAGE

PLEASE! J O U R N A L

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T H E

I N S T I T U T E

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P E O P L E

M A N A G E M E N T

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CONTENTS

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Leadership

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Employee Morale

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Employee Wellbeing

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Legally Speaking

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Capacity Development

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Organisational Performance

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Professional Development

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Mobile Learning

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Leadership

LEADERSHIP CREDIBILITY Leadership is about Vision, Influence and Authenticity

PEOPLE DYNAMICS | November 2017

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n essence, leadership is the art of motivating others to act towards achieving a shared goal. In organisations, leadership success is measured by results. Many leaders, particularly with an accounting mindset, will deliver results, alright, impress the shareholders and move on to the next “turnaround� project. Yet, a couple of years down the line, the organisation - cut to the bone, might find itself at the brink of collapse.

While its focus is on the bottom line, successful leadership gives concern to how it gets there. Good leaders recognise that they have followers, and therefore, respect

and pay attention to their contribution. They establish rapport, gain commitment, monitor progress and ensure that everyone has a share in driving towards the organisational goals. This way, even when a leader vacates his position, successful leadership continues.

There are many adjectives assigned to good leadership - driven by different circumstances and situations that an organisation may be faced with at a specific time. You would be familiar with visionary leadership, charismatic leadership and authentic leadership. We briefly review these, with a bit more emphasis on Authentic Leadership.

Leadership

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Authentic leadership focuses on creating value rather than rearranging figures and getting the balance sheet look acceptable. dead-end situations. Once an organisation is on its way to success and the rest is humdrum, this leader may become restless for fresh challenges. Properly “managed” such a leader can be used to drive innovation in an organisation - responsible for new concept development. Yes, leaders do need managers too. That’s why organisations have executive coaches and talent managers.

Charismatic leadership

Charismatic leaders rely on their personality to influence people and keep them committed to a cause. Organisations may need charismatic leaders to get them through difficult times. These leaders keep the energies high and sustain people’s focus on the positives while the technocrats help with the nuts and bolts to tide the waves.

Charismatic leaders, by their nature, prefer little or no bureaucracy, and are likely to prefer informal roles rather than become permanent members of the organisational structure. International organisations use charismatic leaders as change ambassadors that get assigned to different regions and subsidiaries in times of need. They work well with people, are quick to adapt to foreign cultures.

Authentic leadership

Visionary leadership

Visionary leaders take a bird’s eyeview of situations and are able to cut through clutter and identify a new course in which an organisation should drive towards in order to emerge from an unfavourable situation.

Successful visionary leaders have a knack of selling their vision to those around the table, and rallying around to get the followers to see things their way and ultimately to provide the mechanics to drive the vision.

Visionary leaders are positively challenged by complexity and clutter and are turned on by what others may perceive as untenable

Authentic leadership found its prominence during the global economic crisis brought on to corporates by global performance pressure which certain leaders interpreted as “results at all costs”. This led to Bill George’s reflection on what good leadership is about.

Through his studies, George, former CEO of Medtronic, was led to the conclusions that authentic leaders find themselves there, through living a set of values that make them effective leaders. They are not carried by a wave of ambition, but rather, are driven into leadership by an understanding of their purpose and the mission of their organisations.

Authentic leadership focuses on creating value rather than rearranging figures and getting the balance sheet look acceptable. It concerns itself with doing the right things, but in particular, with doing things right.

Authentic leaders are not obsessed with “being” leaders, but are interested in working with others in finding solutions. They seek

to leave a lasting legacy by introducing and working through whatever is necessary to correct the wrongs and to find successful ways that assure the organisations of sustainability. Their commitment is in seeing things through, not jumping to a favourable bottom line.

Having written several books on the subject, George defines the authentic leader as one who uses personal adversity to the advantage of the company as a whole.

By overcoming personal challenges and difficulties, this leader is able to transfer that experience into carrying out purpose, practice of core values, passion, committed relationships, and self-discipline to lead a company with vision, the epitome of authentic leadership.

Five dimensions he cites as needed for authentic leadership: Purpose: Without knowing the reason of

why one chooses to be in his/her leadership position, there is the danger of becoming overconfident and arrogant.

Practising solid values: One should be wary of losing any integrity in company practices or in response to pressure from others. One should always seek to maintain this key value; otherwise, one is at risk of losing others’ trust as a leader.

Heart: This means one should put their heart into their work. This implies being passionate about what one does in the company, and in having the bravery to maintain the company morale and carry everyone through hard decisions.

Relationships: One should embody trust and confidence within their relationships so that they are able to last, an indicator of one’s commitment to the company.

Self-discipline: This aspect is crucial as it involves being accountable to one’s responsibilities, as well as ensuring others within the company are as well.

Bill George leadership studies demonstrate that authentic leaders of mission-driven companies create far greater shareholder value than financially oriented companies.

And since what counts is sustainable value creation, this leader is in demand, not just in commercial entities, but more so in public enterprises.

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Employee morale

TOUGH TIMES UNCOVER THE REAL STRENGTH OF A PEOPLE. BY: PEOPLE DYNAMICS CORRESPONDENT

“We live in interesting times” – this is an old English expression that may not necessarily indicate prosperity, peace and tranquillity. Ironically, it is often used to indicate ‘uninteresting times’, marred by conflict and disorder.

PEOPLE DYNAMICS | November 2017

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his is the case for a number of South African organisations, currently. South Africans find themselves having to fight like ‘rats in a sack’ in hard times. In part, this is the remnant of a past of inequality that got a majority of the population having to make do only with basic education. The result is a bulk of the country’s people – of human resource - proving sub-optimal as far as technical creativity, innovation and productivity is concern. Many have been trapped in day-long menial tasks or in jobs reliant on brawn than brain.

When countries challenged in population or muscle volume realised that there was no one available to carry out the brawn tasks, they spent their energies designing machinery and electronic equipment that would take over these tasks, so that the majority can focus energies elsewhere. Thanks to the world becoming a global village, every

Employee morale

to manage this situation on behalf of the workers, it has been like quicksand.

Government is torn between keeping up with the world - placing itself in line for global innovation recognition - which, for a while can be enjoyed by only a handful of the population, and looking out for the social wellbeing of all its citizens.

In good times, most people move forward at a pace which softens conflict.

In hard times, conflicts get worse and fragilities are exposed. Greater social and political conflict destroys economic

South Africa is tough and resilient. We have seen tougher times and have emerged to shake off the dust, proving that: ‘Tough times don’t last, tough people do’. other country is compelled to fall in with this trend irrespective of its own socioeconomic reality.

South Africa as a country finds herself placed on the back foot. Not only does she have to keep up technological development to match new global production volumes and turnaround times, she has to find alternative occupations for displaced human resource. What alternative, given legacy education levels? Having had machines, technology, internet of things and robots taking over, what does the country do with her human resources? In an ideal world, the human resource would evolve to the role of arbiter over these mechanical things. In South Africa, though, we find ourselves in limbo, where jobs are swallowed, edging out the ‘arbiters’.

Yes, we say ‘hello’ to interesting times. No matter how unions have tried

performance, leading to a vicious downward spiral.

Many problems that organisations end up inheriting emanate from societal anomalies. These include a sense of entitlement, poor work ethic, crony capitalism, incompetence, lack of merit, victimhood, race-based policies, etc.

These are terms pervading an ailing South African economy and society.

For a high-growth, inclusive and sustainable economy, however, we need clean institutions, efficient business and productive employees. Are we ever going to get there? Might this spell the end of a beautiful, hard fought democracy? Is this the time when organisations start looking elsewhere for opportunities?

Not for those in South Africa for South Africa. That would deny South Africa the pleasure of becoming home to generations of diverse memories – a country that

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would transcend to a more homogenous, post-94 generation that represents the true potential of this part of the world.

Getting there, we will - one step at a time – no matter how difficult. No matter the sacrifice. Yes, fees have to fall; skills must rise proportionately and creativity must grow as a result, to replace enforced ignorance and forced poverty.

South Africa is tough and resilient.

We have seen tougher times and have emerged to shake off the dust, proving that: ‘Tough times don’t last, tough people do’. Mahatma Gandhi once said “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” This urges us to use tough times to uncover our true character and real strengths. Time is opportune to inspire the new generation into reviving this beautiful country to honour the brevity of previous generations.

Sadly, most managers forget to do this.

They forget that they set the tone; they lead and people take cue. A manager cannot be caught up in a storm, but should rather be the calm eye of the storm. Faced with threats of job cuts and layoffs, human resource managers, in particular, should be careful not to fuel anxiety and feed unfounded speculations, but keep people ready and prepared for any eventuality.

In times of adversity, organisations develop manifestos to build resilience and sustain motivation. You may think along these lines: • There will certainly be adversaries in my tenure – it is life in the business world • There are certain behaviours you can expect out of me in these tough times.

Hold me to them.

• I expect nothing from you that I, myself, won’t give.

• Drive out fear and steer the ship back on course.

• Remember, this too shall pass. It always does.

Such mantras can strengthen employees, assuring them that they can count on leadership and management to stand with them, with commitment to minimise any negative impact of the ravaging economic, social and political storms. Tough times are what reveal the true colours of a leader; uncover the real strengths of a manager and demonstrate what a people is made of.

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Employee wellbeing

“Leave your Baggage at the Gate!”

BY: PEOPLE DYNAMICS CORRESPONDENT

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eave your Baggage at the gate, you are here to work!” Some might recall these words jeered at them. It was once a popular or notorious warning from bosses and supervisors whose mission was to push productivity at all cost, back in the day. Reality has finally sunk in, that when you hire, you get the full package – the whole person.

An individual is complex. You may have been attracted to a candidate because of his intellect. We’ll call your candidate Patrick.

Patrick, now hired and eager to make himself an asset, also brings along his emotional, physical, social, financial, domestic or relational baggage, all of which you are paying for. One way or another.

Did I mention that you will also be hiring his children, the parents, the relatives, the neighbours, the schoolmates, the congregants, the exes, the bus driver, the train driver, the creditors, helper, the pool-man, the gardener and the landlord?

The first week, they are likely to leave him alone. And he is also likely to ignore the intermittent vibrations of his phone and message alerts, perhaps because the induction is taking up pretty much every minute of that week. Once he settles in and has his own work space, things start to creep up. By the second month, you notice that he spends a considerable time on his cellphone – that’s a positive - it’s his cellphone after all, not your office line. He’s saving you money.

Or is he? He is still costing you money – in time or productivity.

Don’t allow yourself to simmer with anger, PEOPLE DYNAMICS | November 2017

out of a very predictable, natural situation.

The best time to handle this situation is way before it happens, before it creates tensions and it costs you in more ways than time and money.

A company communication guideline that recognises the need for people to maintain a healthy contact with their families, creditors, social and professional support system is essential. You need to allocate or apportion reasonable time for such interaction, and factor it in your productivity, financial and emotional budget.

I once worked with a service centre manager who was constantly irritated by what she perceived as ‘excessive time her team spent on personal calls’. When I invited her to objectively measure the time each person actually spent on personal calls, she found that, in fact, it wasn’t unreasonable time at all. It was the effect of having a sea of faces she was in charge of and having at least one of them on a personal call at any given time.

When I proposed more frequent breaks than the tea break and lunch, she claimed that it didn’t help much. Actually, few took her up on the frequent breaks offer, yet they continued to bug her with private calls. The problem was lack of communication and proper engagement – explaining what she was trying to resolve. On engaging her staff, she found out that frequent breaks didn’t quite help because there was little or no privacy enjoyed during breaks. From their desks, the team could only either go to the kitchen – shared by the entire company, or to the

bathroom – which, admittedly, would be less than ideal to have a conversation.

This led to a realisation that the company either needed to create a more private pause area, similar to one enjoyed by smokers far from operations area, or simply grin and bear the private desk calls. The latter proved more feasible, at least in the short term. Instead of changing the situation, the manager had to change her own attitude. She learned to be more accepting and understanding, comfortable in the realisation that what she had perceived as abuse of company time was, in reality, not unreasonable time used by her team to catch up.

For further reassurance and equitable management, she decided to specifically allocate the equivalent of 12 minutes’ of personal calls per person in her budget. This translated to each person having an average of four three-minute calls per day – enough

Employee wellbeing

The lessons learnt here are simple but profound.

It encourages us that to think proactively and make provisions that will improve the relations and emotional wellbeing of our teams. to keep in contact with up to four personal friends or acquaintances each day. Such generosity would take care of a quick call to one child, a parent, a friend from school and to the bank or medical aid.

The phone calls were officially factored in the monthly budget and ultimately, the

quarterly and annual allocation. Not only was trust restored, but relations were preserved inside the company and outside - with personal friends.

The lessons learnt here are simple but profound. It encourages us that to think proactively and make provisions that will

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improve the relations and emotional wellbeing of our teams. So, let people manage their baggage wherever they happen to be. It is part of them. It may well be what makes them who and what they are.

Consideration goes beyond just making allowances for phone calls, but also calls for management to encourage good overall wellness management. They need to undertake regular health checkups and immediately attend to any threatening signs.

This helps organisations to avoid dealing with excessive, unscheduled sick leave that disrupts the operations and strains the remainder of the team who have to deal with unforeseen work load.

The gate is no place to leave any baggage, unless you want your team to keep making trips to the gate instead of focusing on servicing your clients, between the odd call to their loved ones!

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Legally Speaking

DISCIPLINARY HEARINGS

Biased chairpersons not on PEOPLE DYNAMICS | November 2017

Legally Speaking

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BY: IVAN ISRAELSTAM, Chief Executive of Labour Law Management Consulting

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nder labour law employees have the procedural right to a fair hearing before being disciplined or dismissed for misconduct or poor performance.

The following is a checklist of employee rights that employers holding disciplinary hearings must adhere to – the right to: • prepare for the hearing • the assistance of a representative • an interpreter • bring witnesses • cross examine witnesses brought against them • an impartial presiding officer chairing the hearing.

Other than under a few isolated exceptional circumstances these rights are strongly entrenched.

More employers are starting to afford employees some of these rights but are still falling short as regards the employees’ right to an impartial hearing chairperson.

The reasons for this include: • The employer’s intention is to hold a kangaroo court and get the employee fired regardless of the consequences OR • Those employees assigned the task of chairing hearings are not properly trained OR • The employer does not understand what constitutes bias.

There are in fact a number of factors that may suggest that the hearing chairperson could be biased. These include, amongst others, situations where the chairperson: • has previously had a clash with the accused employee • has prior knowledge of the details of the case • is a close friend of the complainant bringing the charge on the employer’s behalf • unreasonably turns down requests from the employee for representation, witnesses, an interpreter or other requirements • makes a finding that is unsupported by the facts brought before the hearing.

What does not necessarily constitute bias is the refusal of the chairperson to: • allow legally impermissible evidence, • hear irrelevant testimony or

• allow unjustified adjournments.

However, it is extremely difficult for a hearing chairperson to distinguish fairly between reasonably and unreasonably turning down the accused’s request for a witness, representative, adjournment or other requirement. The ability to make rulings in this regard that will stand up in court can only be acquired via substantial formal training and solid experience of the hearing chairperson.

In the case of FAWU obo Sotyato vs JH group Retail Trust (2001, 8 BALR 864) the employee confessed to having stolen two bottles of beer from the employer and to drinking one of them during working hours. The arbitrator did not accept the confession as valid and also found that the chairperson of the hearing was biased.

This was because the chairperson had caught the accused employee with the beers and had been involved in drawing up the charges. This created a reasonable apprehension of bias and rendered the dismissal procedurally unfair. The employee was reinstated with full back pay.

In SACCAWU obo Mosiane vs City Lodge Hotels Ltd (2004, 2 BALR 255) the employee was dismissed for stealing an item belonging to a guest of the hotel that employed the accused. The arbitrator found the dismissal to be substantively and procedurally unfair because the chairperson of the hearing had been biased and reinstated the employee.

In order to ensure that employers do not lose cases due to chairperson bias or alleged bias at disciplinary hearings employers must ensure that: • hearing chairpersons have no involvement in or knowledge of the case prior to the hearing • hearing chairpersons have a solid understanding as to what constitutes apprehension of bias • they contract in a labour law specialist to chair hearings where the employer has no internal official with the necessary qualifications and knowledge to carry out the task properly.

To buy our E-book, Walking the Labour Law Tightrope please contact Ivan via ivan@labourlawadvice.co.za or 011-8887944.

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Capacity Development

FEES MIGHT FALL,

BUT WHO GUARANTEES EMPLOYMENT?

PEOPLE DYNAMICS | November 2017

Capacity Development

A renewed FeesMustFall call has been made by students during the last quarter of the year, aimed at convincing the government and tertiary institutions to eliminate tuition fees completely.

BY: JOSIAS WATSON

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Source – KPMG 2016

ith patience running out among the youth and 2018 knocking, decision needs to be made. Dare anyone even ask about the feasibility of free tuition at universities! The reality is that free tertiary education would not really be free. Significant funding would need to be drawn from somewhere. Public sources will be stretched amid an ailing economy that is faced with a deficit in tax revenue, estimated to be around R30 billion for the current fiscal.

According to a KPMG report, an initial estimate by Universities South Africa (USAf) indicated that up to R2.5 billion was needed for 2017– rather improbable, if data from a recent KPMG survey is anything to go by. Yes, KPMG, no judging please!

The data is based on a selection of South Africa’s economic characteristics measured against a group of 13 countries identified as having free or almost-free tertiary education (bachelor’s degrees). The data indicates that South Africa has little or no room to manoeuvre towards implementing tuitionfree tertiary education compared to these countries. In fact, the latest estimates for free tertiary tuition given by the Education Ministry and, later stated by Econometrix, stand more around R50 billion per annum!

So even for the remote possibility of this proposal being realised, a trade-off will be necessary. Significant funding would need to come from public sources. It is a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. The Finance Minister will have his work cut out for him. He will have to move funds around, with likely sacrifices made on social grants, housing, defence, and, god forbid - health. As we speak, the health department has its own share of woes, with growing concerns over deteriorating facilities, extended demand imposed by unplanned or uncontrolled migration, and poverty escalation.

The alternative the authorities will be left with is most likely to go and borrow from the World Bank and the IMF. This means an increasing deficit beyond the initial billions anticipated to deal with current needs.

This threatens to bankrupt an already fragile economy. It will further mean the rise in inflation; price rise for energy, food, commodities, goods and services. The entire economy will be affected. Rising prices will further impact the cost of living, the cost of doing business, borrowing money, mortgages, corporate and government bond yields, and every other facet of the economy.

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With constricted spending, the job market will dry out even further, limiting the cash to finance the fees debt. One asks: when the students complete university, will there be jobs to absorb them? Will the current high youth unemployment have been sufficiently dealt with?

Fees must fall is a fair proposition, especially if it was promised. It stands to afford many more students access to education and provide a key to successful careers and realisation of human potential.

We have to take it as a given and embrace it.

We need to start figuring totally new ways of coping as an economy.

For starters, to ensure that there is no ‘fruitless’ expenditure, we would have to ensure that • Funding goes to those who genuinely need it – from affordability point of view • Funding is prioritised according to the students’ effort – reviewing the academic merits of continued funding through the years (diligence and academic performance) • Proper career guidance is given and assessments done to establish students’ strengths and optimal fields of study • Funded students prioritise education, not lifestyle or luxury while at school • Funding is not a black hole, but rather comes with commitment for refund over a fixed post-university period, to be able to fund the next generation of students As a community supporting this worthy cause, we should also start focusing on smart consumption – putting more effort on learning trades and developing skills for occupations that address our immediate community needs – less on esoteric products and artificial consumption. This way we can start stimulating job opportunities for our local youth, and guide them to becoming profitable citizens.

Those among us with capital would do well to plough it into the economy than let it waste in the bank. You can help reduce unemployment and take advantage of high human resource supply to gain higher returns on human capital.

Indeed, the markets may be jittery, and the agencies may downgrade our economy yet another notch, but without education there is even less hope for the economy.

Skills development agents and career guides just need to ensure that it is a sacrifice well made, by guiding the right minds toward the right careers, and not let our youth waste their time on studies they can’t use optimally.

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Organisational performance

FACED WITH THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION,

IS DIGITAL DESIGN EVERYTHING? In a recent report from Accenture titled, “Thriving on Disruption,” researchers found that only 20% of chief strategic officers believed that they were highly prepared for digital disruption. Yet, digital is everywhere.

BY: BELIA NEL, Founder, Improvid Performance Consulting

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ike it or not, digital is everything. To stay close to the future given current the rate of change, we need to take a closer look.

In his article titled “Becoming a Futuresurfing Enterprise,” Terry White says digital disruption “…is about changed customer expectations and your digital response.”

In this changing future world, our customers have changed. And this has relevance to design and solutions’ conformity of design. Today’s customers are expecting bespoke solutions to performance issues and challenges. The standard off-the-shelf approach is no longer valid. This article makes up part five of a PEOPLE DYNAMICS | November 2017

series of articles on the 10 standards for Performance Improvement.

As a recap of what was discussed in previous articles, the first four standards are known as principles, as they are the lenses through which performance improvement practitioners apply systematic methodology of consulting and managing. The methodology guides how it’s done. In part three of the series, the improvement consulting process was kick-started by determining “where is the gap?” In part four, the importance of data and cause analysis was uncovered.

In this article, the focus will be on the seventh standard.

Standard 7: Design Solutions including Implementation and Evaluation

The seventh standard of the International Standards for Performance Improvement deals with design. Design in the Future of Work (FOW) is changing rapidly and this standard should be seen against evolving performance landscapes and disruptive industries and economies.

These principles are still valid as per the 10 International Standards. Competent practitioners design solutions and plan to implement them. Their designs describe the following for each of these solutions: • Features, attributes and elements • Feasibility • Alignment to the identified factors • Expected improvements to performance Their plans should also include: • Timing and schedules • Resources required • Recommendations on how to sustain the improvements • Methods to monitor improvements However, the above elements will encompass the changing world of digital disruption where those type of designs are required.

The impact for clients are: • Comprehend the implication of implementing the solutions • Make the appropriate resource commitments for the next steps • Commit to what is required to sustain the expected improvements

Organisational Effectiveness

It is important in this fast-moving and fast-paced disruptive landscape that we consider the profile of a new performance design disruptor. So, what does the profile look like? I hope you are holding a mirror.

Performance Design Disruptor Profile

• Understands that customers’ profiles have changed • Expects constant change • Exhibits a future-thinking mindset that includes future performance landscapes • Understands the anatomy of this future performance disruptor landscape • Continuously questions to refine the customer experience • Continually learns outside own comfort knowledge • Knows who new customers are in a changing world of work • Identifies and analyses customer transformational needs systemically and systematically • Understands that customers want a changed customised experience • Understands the customer’s disruptive performance landscape • Understands that technology is the game changer—not digital • Utilises technology as the vehicle for a digital experience • Knows how necessary it is to continuously disrupt competitors • Understands working with partners and complementary suppliers and organisations will provide the edge • Networks with people in other disciplines • Future-proofs own role by contributing to a changing business model • Contributes daily to organisation’s unique expertise to stay ahead of the pack • Reads outside their field of expertise • Understands the design disruptor value chain • Design disruptors are not product focused—they are performance driven • Understands the importance of relationships as a personal connection that AI cannot fulfill • Designs and delivers on the customer expectation now and in the future • Has access to change-platforms that are future ready • Understands a seamless integration of many disciplines, (e.g. internally, a performance management system could be in the customer engagement and/or marketing space) • Understands that design offerings will completely change as industries evolve

Practical Guidelines and Tips: What Design Disruptors Do

• Work in the space of the total performance canvas • Recommend an entire suite of digital solutions to address the entire performance system of the customer • Understand what the interconnectedness of the deliverables are • Create the desired customer experience against the total performance system • Design solutions that meet the changing disruptive performance landscape of the customer • Utilise products and services outside their usual domain for bespoke solutions • Design and deliver a transformational solution, which delivers beyond the

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closer to the centre of the enterprise… It’s about applying the principles of design to the way people work.”

These are some of the features: • Creating models to examine complex problems. Design Thinkers use physical models to explore, define, and communicate.

• Exhibiting thoughtful restraint. By removing features, a company offers customers a clear, simple experience.

• Using prototypes to explore potential solutions. They may be digital, physical, or diagrammatic, but in all cases, they are a way to communicate ideas.

• Tolerating failure. The iterative nature of the design process recognizes that it’s rare to get things right the first time.

Today’s customers are expecting bespoke solutions to performance issues and challenges.

The standard off-the-shelf approach is no longer valid. transformation expectations of the customer • Remain solution-neutral vs solutionfocused — because technology is the game changer • Design and track metrics most critical to the entire performance landscape where the solution is provided • Know that core strengths may become irrelevant as customers demand new experiences • Involve other experts in other product or service industries • Are agile in their design offerings So, did you check how you measure up? Should you?

Is Design Thinking the Answer?

In order to find your own answer to this particular question, perhaps we should explore briefly what Design Thinking is. Design Thinking is a process that is structured to guide ideas to successful execution. It combines customer insight with experimentation and business sense.

In “Design Thinking Comes of Age,” Jon Kolko from Harvard Business Review indicates, “There’s a shift underway in large organisations - one that puts design much

In his article, Terry White concludes that, “There seems to be a wilful blindness to disruption. The Accenture report revealed a dichotomy where 80 percent of CSOs admit that new technologies have already rapidly changed their industry over the past five years. However, out of the more than 500 CSOs polled, not a single strategy executive mentioned any attempt at disrupting their own industries first.”

You may question whether Design Thinking is of value in isolation anymore. It certainly necessitates a new way of thinking and doing to avoid being disrupted by competitors and organisations around you which may seem to be in unrelated field or industry. The reality is: borders between industries have collapsed. Think banking and cellular solutions; think health care and holiday making. I can go on.

So, does Design Thinking have a place?

While this article has not analysed the value and benefits of Design Thinking, it has posed the question for organisational introspection.

While you ponder, just realise that your competitor may already be asking himself or herself: “Is Design Thinking enough?” Is it the only answer? Don’t be caught napping.

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Professional Development

Continuing Professional Development MADE ACCESSIBLE

PEOPLE DYNAMICS | November 2017

Professional Development

After obtaining a qualification, it is essential to keep active through practice and staying up to date through reading, research, commentary, refresher courses, conferences, and so on.

By: PEOPLE DYNAMICS CPD CONSULTANT

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s a designated professional, you carry a responsibility to deliver the best service to your clients, in representation of your professional oath or in honour of the profession’s code of ethics. Continuing Professional Development keeps you refreshed and updated on any new trends, theories and methodologies in your field. Keeping up is not an option. Failure to do so erodes the value of the qualification and compromises the quality of your service, placing your clients at a disadvantage.

Continuing Professional Development refers to the process of developing, tracking and documenting the skills, knowledge and experience that you gain both formally and informally as you work, beyond any initial training. It’s a formal record of what you experience, learn and apply. There are three main contexts for CPD acquisition: theory or academic studies, industry engagement or participation in the profession’s policy debates or practice development, and the practicing of the profession itself. Not only do these keep you up to date in your current field, but CPD eases transition, should you wish to cross over to a different career.

Increasingly, the South African Qualifications Authority is pushing professional bodies to encourage development among their members by offering ongoing development, and by facilitating recognition of prior learning or RPL. When CPD culture is well-entrenched, competency assessments are made much easier for people who wish to enter new fields or qualify in more practices.

Your professional membership number is recognised across allied professions to give you credit for whatever training you have completed or experience you have chalked up in the related field. Each practitioner is responsible to keep a personal record of his or her CPD points, and periodically have these logged and verified with their professional body. This is critical for personal development, as well as for professional references and referrals.

Professional bodies are a central point of reference to verify training and source

suitable suppliers or service providers in the given field. Constant involvement in your profession’s activities and regular contribution in the networks, including the community of expert practitioners (COEP) not only keeps you on top of your game, professionally, but it exposes you to multiple opportunities.

In a paper entitled “Models of Continuing Professional Development”, Eileen Kennedy lists nine categories under which acquisition of continuing

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• community of practice • action research • transformative Kennedy considers each model in turn, discussing their interaction and relative capacity for supporting transformative practice. It is worth noting that the models are by no means prescribed, nor can they be considered as exhaustive or exclusive.

They merely represent and attempt at identifying key characteristics of different types of CPD, in this case to build awareness and demonstrate to diversity of potential acquisition methods.

Please feel free to engage the IPM Professional Designation advisor to share with you some of the common approaches that the institute encourages to keep you current.

A significant advantage with CPD activation is the opportunity to have your designation reviewed periodically,

Continuing Professional Development refers to the process of developing, tracking and documenting the skills, knowledge and experience that you gain both formally and informally as you work, beyond any initial training. professional development can be grouped.

While these are all formalised and rigorously measured or even prescribed in certain countries, most professional bodies prefer to grant professional autonomy in determining what model or approach to CPD acquisition is most appropriate for individuals based on their customer needs.

Notwithstanding, it is important to know what may be practiced in other countries, given that we operate in a global environment.

This main characteristics of a range of models of CPD are identified and categorised into: • training • award-bearing • deficit • cascade • standards-based • coaching/mentoring

in recognition of your advancement and growing professional capacity. Such professional recognition is independent of organisational hierarchy, and recognises your enhanced status based on your personal competency and operational capability. So, should there be a growth opportunity outside of your company, you will not be stunted by the level of post you held due to parochial, restrictive structure. You will be recognised based on your worth and the value you will add in the new organisation.

If you are an independent practitioner, continuing professional development and periodic designation review will ensure that you progressively attract the right level of complexity when it comes to clients or projects. This way, you will be remunerated or rewarded at the appropriate level.

OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE IPM

16

Mobile Learning

Learning Gone Mobile Conservative Learning and Development practitioners often get frustrated by last minute training cancellations due to non-availability of employees and failure to meet the requisite minimum numbers for group training.

By: DENNIS LAMBERTI, Director and Co-founder, Media Works

T

his is not just an in-house training issue.

Training facilitators often tear their hair out at no-shows for pre-booked open sessions at hired venues. With demands on employees to stay competitive and maintain certain levels of performance, some opt to forgo training, perceiving it as an “optional extra” activity. This restricts their development and eventually stunts performance.

Empower your employees through mobile learning

With over 23 million smartphones in use in the country and over 11 million South Africans accessing the internet solely through their mobile devices, mobile learning has truly come PEOPLE DYNAMICS | November 2017

of age in South Africa. It’s time to shine a light on the importance of digital education, and why managers should utilise technology to upskill their workforce.

Mobilise your workforce

Traditional workplace training often takes the form of lecture-style group learning, which can result in hours of workday productivity lost. Adding to this, in this type of environment, employees are often unable to concentrate on the training, as they are distracted or stressed about the office work that needs to be completed.

Instead of accessing their learning materials solely from their desktop computer or through

physical notes and group lectures, mobile education brings interactive learning directly to the individual.

The objectives of mobile learning are the same as any other learning style; to teach and provide a powerful education experience that will not disappoint learners. With mobile learning, you have a greater control over how the information is disseminated, and how it is consumed.

The learner can go through the course material at his or her own pace, without being distracted by classmates or by work pressures.

Anytime anywhere

By downloading the course material onto smartphones or tablets, employees can access their notes and assignments at a quiet time during the workday, or even on a train, taxi, flight, or while waiting for an appointment.

If the learner feels more comfortable taking their time with the material and engaging with it at home, there is the scope for this too.

Through mobile technology, we are presented with an opportunity to ‘leapfrog’ traditional structures by cutting out the learning centres and delivering training to the learner anywhere at any time.

Mobile Learning

This trend is accelerating and is said to overtake most large enterprises in the next five years.

The people who crucially have a need for a decent education are generally unemployed, or in very basic employment, with no access to a learning facility, or to a computer and internet connection. Mobile negates this need by delivering access into the hands of the learner. This allows learners to study at their own convenience, at a time that suits them best.

anytime. Let the employee learn the theory at their convenience and use the instructor’s time to show and mentor the employee while on the job.

In this way, they are able to talk about what they have learned and apply their learnings to real-time workplace scenarios.

Flipped learning is a far more active, engaging way of learning.

Enterprise mobility

Staying refreshed

In business, we are starting to see the rise of ‘enterprise mobility’, which is a term used to describe the trend of working outside of an office environment, and using mobile devices and cloud services to carry out business tasks.

This trend is accelerating and is said to overtake most large enterprises in the next five years.

By embracing mobile education, you are essentially getting your workforce ready for this change, while upskilling them and empowering them through relevant education.

The ‘Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve’ hypothesises the decline of memory retention over time. The curve indicates the percentage of information lost, over different periods of time, when there is no attempt to retain it.

After a month, only 21% of the information will be retained, if the learner hasn’t made an attempt to look over the notes again or to refresh his or her memory of the course material.

Through mobile learning, the learning material will always be accessible, allowing learners to dip in and out of the notes when they need to be reminded of certain concepts or facts. This allows the key learnings to remain clear, and therefore prolongs the value of the training.

While millions of South Africans have access to smart phones and tablets, they are often only connected to the internet when connected to a WiFi hotspot, as opposed to paying for data.

To overcome this, learners can now download the material when they are online to access it when they are offline. This makes the learning material accessible, whether the learner is connected to the Internet or not.

This offline capability is one way to guarantee that you maximise the return on investment on your training spend. Learners have no excuse not to access their training, and there are none of the costs that would be associated with teacher or lecturer.The learner has the added benefit of a streamlined learning process; improving performance, with a lower reliance on teacher-led learning.

The beauty of the offline technology, is that when the learner returns to the office, or to any WiFi hotspot, all the activity will automatically be updated.

Flipped learning

Training traditionally happens in a classroom environment, where learners are taught concepts which they then need to put into practice in the workplace.

Flipped learning is where we take this theoretical component out of the training room and make it available anywhere

Through discussion forums, fellow learners can discuss topics related to the course material and ask online facilitators for assistance with points they might be struggling with. In this way, a community of learning is created.

Using the questions asked by the community, a list of frequently asked questions (FAQs) is built and made available to the learner, providing instant access to answers.

Peer assessment is also a very valuable component of digital learning.

Fellow online learners are able to assist and give feedback to one another. This creates an opportunity for learners to communicate and discuss the learning material; this is where the real learning happens, amongst peers. Learners are able to group themselves into smaller, online working groups, to tackle problems and go into detail about the assignments at hand.

Peer communication in a learning scenario also helps to develop self-assessment, which promotes independent learning. This helps learners to take a greater responsibility for their own progress, as well as developing keen judgement skills.

Education and skills training is vital to ensure a more productive and motivated workforce. Thanks to technological advances and the move to mobile, this training is more accessible than ever before. Media Works, through its online learning platform iTuT, is at the forefront of this technology.

By allowing learners to easily download the training material and store it on a mobile device, the individual is always connected to learning materials. When connection is re-established, all the activities that have been completed offline, will automatically be uploaded to the system. Whether you at 37,000 feet on a plane or driving through a rural village, you will always have access to your course material.

An online learning community

If it seems counterintuitive to suggest that you can have more interaction and discussion in an online platform, than in a real-life classroom scenario, you only have to look to social media and WhatsApp to know that digital communication is more prevalent than ever before.

Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve Retention (%)

Offline ability

17

100%

100%

80% 60%

58%

40%

44%

20%

36%

33%

28%

0% s te nu

ly

e at di

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im

i

20

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1

ho

9

ho

u

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y

1

da

2

ys da

25%

6

ys da

21% 31

ys da

Elapsed Time Since Learning Source: https://www.trainingindustry.com/wiki/entries/forgetting-curve.aspx

OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE IPM