Personal Development Project - Report #5 - The Stay Interview

Part of the Certified Public Manager program involves the completion of a personal development project.  My selected project is to prepare a series of lectures to my fellow managers about basic managerial concepts.  These series of posts are intended to document my progress in that endeavor.  This report pertains to a presentation made on 4/21/14.

Stay Interview Questions

For this week's lecture on key management concepts I addressed the concept of the "Stay Interview".

Historically, exit interviews have gained acceptance as a valuable source of feedback on workplace conditions.  Unfortunately, an exit interview may be too late to find out this type of information, particularly if it is a valuable employee leaving.

For the presentation I handed out a series of questions that had been provided to me by Mrs. Jane Wood in conjunction with the Washington State Supervision Essentials class.  (I have yet to express my thanks to Mrs. Wood for the excellent class yet on the blog, and I really should correct that oversight.  Thank You, Mrs. Wood)

Some of the concepts that I tried to highlight was that it is important to be asking our employees about their motivations instead of making assumptions.

I did wonder while giving the presentation how many of our employees the managers would actually want to stay.

Conversely my assumptions about the employees run along the lines of, they are working at jobs for which their security is tied more to their family connections than their performance, they have positions that accommodate their fishing and fireworks endeavors, and they work close to their families.  So why would they want to leave.

With the reformulation of my capstone project, I anticipate this will be a worthwhile and interesting tool that I can draw upon.  More on that later.

As an aside, we did touch on the frustration of providing performance appraisals that was addressed in the March human resources course.  That they tend to be only a tool for building a case for discipline, that they are difficult to base on objectively measurable items, in most cases are not particularly effective, and therefore they tend to be endured rather than utilized.

Discussion Topic #3 - Term Limited Employment

As a discussion topic, I would like to explore further the concept of term limiting employment in the public sector.  What would be the pros and cons of making employment hires under the condition that the job will last no longer than 10 years.

Certainly, some of the details would need to be refined.  Perhaps providing substantial bonuses at the 5, 8 and 10 year marks.  Retirement accounts would need to be adjusted, but probably along the lines of the current movement towards defined contribution plans.  Jobs could be staggered to avoid any single mass exodus.  And potentially, provisions could be made to give the agency an option to retain the employee for an additional 4 years.  And the transition from our current system to this model would require a thoughtful approach with all the stakeholders.

The con’s that were presented in class seem to be losing institutional knowledge and difficulty in attracting top talent.  I will attempt to address those first.

Institutional Knowledge 

Working with the understanding that an employee was term limited would create more of a focus on documenting institutional knowledge.  This was a primary incentive behind our discussion for succession planning.  And given today’s free agency mindsets, should management not always be preparing for any employee to leave at any given time?

Attraction of Talent

The second objection to the concept was the difficulty in retaining top talent with the prospect of service being limited to 10 years.  Do we, or the top talent, believe they will want to be in any one position longer than 10 years?  We need to be challenging that top talent to grow and develop.

In contrast, is a top talent that has been doing the exact same job for 10 years, really ideal?  I was just reading recently HBR's When It;s Time For the CEO To Go that identified the CEO's optimal time to be 7 years plus or minus 2 years.

Other Considerations

Additionally, how many job descriptions, written 10 years earlier are likely to still be relevant.  This would give a great way of reassessing needs periodically and also of intentionally finding talent to meet specific needs.

One running joke in our HR class was that there was no problem in the HR field that could not be cured in 30 years.  Wouldn't it be prudent to cut that by a third? 

And how many of my CPM class cohorts, instructors, or lecturers have held one single position, without significant advancement for more than 10 years.  From what I know, that number is probably pretty small.  That is just becoming less of a reality for the Gen X/Y demographic. 

Finally, this might provide a great counter balance to bureaucracies intrinsic desire for self preservation described in the first installment of this discussion series.  In this model self preservation becomes building skills and talents that are valuable for the employee in the future, not hoarding institutional knowledge so as to become irreplaceable?

Journal Reflections from Module 2.1 - Human Resources

[Editors note:  The following is a journal entry addressing specific questions provided by the CPM course instructors for module 2.1.  Suggested questions had not been provided at the time the post was published, so the author took the liberty of recounting key insights gathered from the three day instructional session and 215 pages of suggested readings.]

Character Trait Inventories

How many more character trait inventory surveys can we possibly take?  So far I recall having done the following?

1.     Poster about ourselves

2.     Growth inventory assessment

3.     Recounted our best management moment

4.     MBTI personality traits

5.     360 Feedback

6.     Values Identification Exercise

7.     Conversation styles in conflict

Fierce Conversations

The Fierce Conversations book talked about by Betsey BeMiller looked like a repackaging of the Crucial Conversations methodology.  Fierce Conversations was just not as straightforward and with more steps to remember.

During the discussion, I was able to track in parallel the alignment of the Crucial Conversations methodology in the Fierce Conversations material.  I was pleasantly pleased with how well I could remember the Crucial Conversations material.

That the author of Fierce Conversations was an executive coach, I found to be  interesting.  I had just finished listening to Marshal Goldsmith’s What Got You Here Won’t Get You There and so the topic of addressing targeted deficiencies was something that was already on my mind.

The story of the executive who came to realize that he had a alcohol problem, seemed like it could have come from either book.  Both authors noted the inability of even successful people to identify our own shortcomings.

Mental Focus

One interesting parallel between Goldsmith and Cynthia Shaffer’s presentation was the discussion about having the ability to mentally focus.  I was recalling Goldsmith’s exercise of focusing on counting to 40 with your eyes closed and seeing how far you get before your mind has wondered onto another topic.

I'm lucky to make it to the mid 20's myself and I have often heard people marvel at my ability to focus on particular tasks.

Tolerance As Not Positive

The “tolerance as bad” principle that was presented in class seemed like a theory in need of further refinement.  Sort of a first draft of a masters or doctoral thesis.  There is value in the concept that “tolerating people” is less than the optimal method of interacting with others, but it didn’t seem to have the depth or polish of a comprehensive theory.

As I understand the concept presented, when we assess the differentiation between our behaviors towards those we “appreciate”, “tolerate”, or “despise”; we clearly want to be dealing with people in the “appreciate” manner and not to simply "tolerate" them.

Pretending everyone is your best buddy seems shallow and contrived.  Similarly, it would seem logical that there is a place for reserved or guarded interactions with those for whom the “cultural competency” has been as well developed.

Cultural Competency as Political Correctness

Also within this tolerance discussion, Mike made the interesting observation of equating “Cultural Competence” as the current term for “Political Correctness.”  I thought this was a very an insightful observation. 

Political correctness has achieved a certain level of stigma associated with its emphasis on refining our choice of words allowable to use based on an approved and acceptable list.

I think we all expect “Cultural Competence” will become stigmatized too, once it becomes another means of indiscriminately imposing the philosophies of our cultural and academic elite upon the practically minded masses.

Tips for Creating Job Duty Descriptions

Moving “Other Duties as Assigned” out of a job description’s Essential Duties to the “Non-Essential Job Functions” seemed like a great tip.  The reasoning being that this might help avoiding creating a situation of permanent accommodation which would effectively invent a job, apart from what the original job was created to do.

The underlying principle is to keep clean and accurate job descriptions.  That way organizations can be intentional about what ways they are serving their customers.

Harassment Game

The key concept I took from the Harassment Game was the prerequisite condition of being able to identify the victim within a protected group as the critical component of moving a case forward under a discrimination claim. 

A tangential observations from the game was that the “Yes, it was harassment” side won much more frequently, particularly when the “judge” was emotionally interested in seeing the harassment.  Strict adherence to the letter of the law in the finding of a desperate class was not always the judges emphasis.  I suspect this is truer to life that we would hope.

Process for Conducting Investigations

The lecture about the steps to conducing an incident investigation was excellent.  Getting the slides in a readable format will be worthwhile.

Cynthia emphasized that ensuring the parties achieve "Process Satisfaction" by keeping them informed and making progress on the issue was key.  This ties in closely with Herzberg’s dis-satisfier of “poor organizational processes”.   Tangentially, it would also relate to another satisfier of demonstrating “competence of supervisors”.  Finally, the entire issue of resolving interpersonal conflicts fits with the overarching theme of Herzberg’s emphasis in the finding that the dis-satisfiers generally emphasis interpersonal relationship aspects.

Using the phrase “your account of events” rather than “Your story” or “your version” or “your side” when conducting an investigation was a good tip.  It makes it seem less confrontational or accusatory.

ADA

Making ADA accommodations on a case-by-case basis without regard to the precedent it would set for others, was troublesome but understandable.

Andrew Neiditz

Andrew Neiditz presentation about his experience working is City, County, and SouthSound911 was very interesting.  The next few thoughts relate to his presentation.

City Government Configurations

Explaining the differences between county home rule charter governments and City’s with their strong Mayor as opposed to Council/ City Manager configurations was helpful.

Effective vs Efficient

Mr. Neiditz made the point that governments tend to be oriented around Effectiveness rather than Efficiency.  This is certainly something I have seen in my limited experience. 

Two derivative challenges are probably at play in this statement. 

1.  This is not the intuitive expectation of our customers.  People expect things to strive towards efficiency and hence get frustrated when things are done with process and effectiveness rather than with economy as the key constraints. 

2.  As managers of limited resources, our ultimate function is to manage those resources for optimum benefit (efficiency and effectiveness).  At my next interview, I probably will not make the big selling point , “I don’t really care how much gets done, but I’m really good at following processes.”

“Decisions are Cumbersome”

This statement also is a great articulation of something that rings very true.  I’ve worked in private firms that had nearly the same problem, but this issue is inseparably inherent to our representative form of American government.

Employee Orientation

Moving policy presentation out of the first day orientation experience is a good idea.  This would improve the chance of this information being retained.  It would also facilitate a further continued interaction between the new employee and HR staff about a month after starting.  This then, focuses the employees first day on relaxing and enjoying the first experience.

Tips for Dealing with Difficult Situations

If employees are unwilling to proactively address problems on their own, managers would need to move into the directing mode.