10,000 Hours

A few weeks ago, my friend Tim Scudder (CEO at Personal Strengths USA) posted the following on one of the networking sites we both frequent: "Just read Outliers by Gladwell. 10,000 hours to achieve mastery!? Speaks volumes to the value of retaining and developing people."

I have often thought about the importance of developing and retaining good people. Clearly investing in the growth of our employees is essential to the success of the organization.

But,Tim's comment caused me to stop and reconsider my thinking about the organizational costs of loosing an employee who has reached a significant level of mastery. His comment made me think about the true value of the individual, and the importance of retaining and continuing to develop these exceptional people.

From a leadership perspective, the knowledge, skills and abilities of the people within the organization contribute to the success of the entire system. (See the blog post on Knowledge, Skill and Talent) The stronger your team, the more likely it is that you can achieve your goals.

In Outliers, Gladwell states “…[T]en thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert – in anything...” (P. 49)

At first blush it seems that this in not that hard to achieve. Any employee who had worked for five years has invested 10,000 hours in a job. So why is it that finding people who have achieved mastery is so rare?

When you examine what mastery requires, it is more than time-in-grade. Mastery requires study and focused effort. For example, an employee may come into the organization having an idea of what leadership requires, but they may spend only a few hours each week developing their leadership skills; only a few hours in practicing the craft. It may take many years, even decades, to achieve the 10,000 hours necessary to develop a great leader.

If you do the math (and this is admittedly very rudimentary math based on some very gross assumptions), at a total cost of $100 per hour (including all overhead related to employing a person), and assuming that a person spends maybe ¼ of his or her time actually working on developing mastery of a chosen field, it will take 40,000 hours for a person to achieve the 10,000 hours of investment in a chosen field. This is equal to about 20 years of work. During those 20 years, the organization will have invested over $4 million in that employee’s development. If the person spends significantly less than ¼ of their time each week invested in developing their craft, mastery may never be achieved.

What is lost when that 20 year veteran, that person who has achieved mastery, walks out the door?

At a minimum, you will be trying to attract another highly experienced person from a competitor or related business. According to Human Resources experts like Hewitt Associates and Bliss & Associates, the best case cost for lost productivity, recruitment, and training will be 150% of the person's salary. (Julie Clark, City of Carlsbad HR Director) In the worst case, you will invest years bringing the new person up to a level of mastery that was lost.

A leader (and the organization as a whole) must consider not only the monetary costs of loosing an employee who has achieved mastery, he or she must also consider the systemic costs.

What were the costs to the classical music world for the loss of Mozart? What would be the cost to Apple for the loss of Steve Jobs? How would the world be different today if we had lost the other masters of their craft before their contribution was made?

What would be the cost to your organization of the loss of key leaders or "masters"?

Tim said that the concept that it takes 10,000 hours to achieve mastery speaks volumes about value of retaining and developing people.

I believe that it not only speaks, it shouts.



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Skills, Knowledge, And Talent

Please note that there are several great comments posted at the end of this blog. Be sure to click on the "comment" link at the bottom of this entry to see the comments. And, thank you to all who have shared their views.

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We often read or hear about leaders who are described as skillful, knowledgeable, or talented. But, what does it mean to be skillful, knowledgeable, or talented? And, can a person who wants to be a successful leader become skillful, improve their knowledge base, or expand their leadership talent?

Part of the answer lies in the definition of skills, knowledge and talents. Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman examine the difference between skills, knowledge and talents in their book First Break All The Rules.

According to Buckingham skills are the "how-to's of a role" (p. 83). Skills can be transferred from one person to another. A person can learn a how to hold a golf club, build a house, write a sentence, or do arithmetic. Skills are an important part of being successful at any endeavor. And, without skill any resulting action or effort will be clumsy and ineffective.

Knowledge is "what you are aware of" . There are basically two types of knowledge: "...factual knowledge - things you know, and experiential knowledge - understandings you have picked up along the way." (p. 83)

Factual knowledge would be the rules of mathematics, accounting, scientific principles, or other similar fact-based information. Like skills, fact-based knowledge can be learned from others and/or gained through some form of education. (p. 83)

Experiential knowledge is harder to teach. It is less tangible, more related to patterns and connections. To gain experiential knowledge you must take time to stop, reflect on past experiences, and find meaning. Experiential knowledge may be different for each person because each will experience a different pattern of life. (p. 83-84)

Talent is a totally different phenomenon. Talent is the pattern of thinking and feeling that comes from the very core of the individual. Some people care deeply about precision and accuracy, discipline, and responsibility. Others have a drive to compete, be competent, strive to achieve a mission, or dedicate themselves to a certain belief. And, others may feel strong empathy, value interpersonal relations, dedicate themselves to the success of a team, or exhibit great courage in overcoming resistance. (p. 84-85) Buckingham breaks talents into three categories: striving talents, thinking talents, and relating talents.

• Striving talents explain the why of a person. They help you understand why a particular person cares deeply, and why they try a little harder than others in certain circumstances.
• Thinking talents explain the how of a person. They explain how a person analyzes situations, how decisions are reached, whether thinking is linear or intuitive process, or is the person systematic or creative.
• Relating talents explain the who of a person. They explain the relationships the person is likely to build, in whom will the person trust, the way the person will relate to strangers, and expose deep feelings about the way the person will manage interpersonal relationships. (p. 85)
  

Buckingham says that talents cannot be taught. If a person does not have a particular talent, there is very little a person can do to inject it into themselves or others. Talents are difficult (if not impossible) to transfer from one person to another.

If Buckingham is right, this creates an interesting situation for us in our role as leaders. It becomes essential to understand ourselves deeply; a process that takes dedicated self-examination.

Knowing our own skills, knowledge, and talents is the start. We can then develop ourselves through purposeful learning, receiving coaching, and reflection (making sense of our experiences). We can also make use of this self-knowledge to help us identify people who bring skills, knowledge, and talents to the organization or team that are complimentary to our own.

This self-development takes courage and the ability to admit that we may not have every attribute necessary to create success (or as Dr. Peter Koestenbaum would say, "Greatness").

Relying on others is easier for people who already have a strong relationship awareness skills, or what Buckingham calls "relating talents". (P. 252) It may be harder for people who tend to be autonomous thinkers. But, regardless of your personal talents, being able to bring the right people together at the right time is essential to the success of any endeavor.

If you are interested in doing some meaningful self-reflection, nothing beats having a great coach to guide you along the path. As one of my colleagues (and one of my unofficial coaches) Ray Patchett pointed out to me one day "Even Michael Jordan has a coach." No matter where you are in your career, the corporate hierarchy, or how good you think you are, there is no substitute for having someone who can help you take a realistic look at yourself.

In his article "Teaching Smart People How to Learn" (Harvard Business Review, May , 1991), Chris Argyris points out that professionals often find learning about themselves most difficult. Self-examination and questioning our own behavior is extremely difficult, particularly for those who have achieved some professional status. Having someone who can help you through the discovery process, who cares about your success, opens pathways to greatness that many never discover.

The more you understand about yourself the more you are going to be able to understand others. Also, the better you understand your own skills, knowledge, and talents, the better you can identify where to improve yourself, and when to bring others close to you to help fill in gaps.

Trust

Trust is the essential ingredient in any successful relationship. Whether that relationship is between two people, within a family, organization, community, or government, trust is the element that allows the relationship to function effectively.

In their book "The Leadership Challenge" Kouzes and Posner express the importance of trust this way:

Trust is at the heart of fostering collaboration. It's the central issue in human relationships within and outside organizations... Individuals who are unable to trust other people fail to become leaders. (The Leadership Challenge - P. 163)

In "The Speed of Trust", Stephen M. R. Covey notes that in high trust organizations the speed of every aspect of the business goes up and costs go down, whereas in low trust organizations speed suffers while costs can rocket upward. (The Speed of Trust - P. 13)

Trust is the lubricant that lets an organization work smoothly and quickly. In high trust situations ideas are communicated with a minimum of effort, tasks are completed without excessive oversight, processes flow without excessive rules, and people feel valued and empowered. In a low trust environment, a cultural friction develops that causes the slowing of systems, growth of management structures to oversee and monitor work, establishment of new bureaucracies, and creation of rules. In these environments true leadership becomes almost impossible.

Because they can't bear to be dependent on the words and work of others they [leaders] either end up doing all the work themselves or supervise work so closely that they become overcontrolling. Their demonstration of lack of trust in others results in others' lack of trust in them. (The Leadership Challenge - P. 163)

The leader's own assumptions about the organization play an important role in creating a high trust environment. Edgar Schein says that "... a fully connected [communication and information] network can only work if high trust exists among all the participants and that high trust is partly a function of leader assumptions that people can be trusted and have constructive intent." (Organizational Culture and Leadership, p. 370)

If a leader starts from the position that people cannot be trusted, communication and information networks cannot function quickly. The cultural friction slows every aspect of the organization.

A lack of trust is often translated into a feeling of suspicion. A leader working in a suspicious system feels that everything that is done should be questioned. Employees feel that they have to cover their backside with extra work, and that everything will be checked, and double-checked. Within all of this effort, the lack of trust (suspicion) robs the leader and the organization of time and money.

Mahatma Gandhi believed that "When there is suspicion about a person's motives, everything he does becomes tainted." (The Speed of Trust, p. 8) Therefore, in organizations where there is low trust, no matter how much additional work is done, it is the underlying motives of the leader or workers that will be questioned. There will always be the search for the hidden agenda or conspiracy.

In his Leadership Diamond Model, Dr. Peter Koestenbaum expresses the belief that trust is an essential part of the ethics of the leader. (The Philosophic Consultant, P. 46) Koestenbaum would agree with Schein that a leader's assumptions about the organization, and the leader's ability to behave in an ethical manner toward the organization (an attitude of care and empathy for humanity, and how our actions affect others), contributes to the environment of trust within an organization.

But, if the experts agree that trust is so important to a leader's success, 1) why do so many leaders fail to understand that their inability to succeed is tied to their own inability to establish trust within their organizations? And, 2) what can a leader do to create trust when it does not naturally exist?

Before a leader can start to build (or rebuild) trust, a leader must understand that a trust gap exists. This is a bit like starting any 12 step program - the first step is recognizing that you have a problem, and need help. Without recognition, you can never cross the gap because you are unaware that it exists.

As to why so many leaders fail to see the trust gap, it is hard to say. But it is likely that the answer lies within the leader. Kouzes and Posner show that managers and leaders "... with the highest control scores have the lowest personal credibility." (The Leadership Challenge - P. 166) Credibility is an essential element in trust; we tend to trust people we see as credible. Highly controlling behavior on the part of the leader sends a signal that is received as "You don't trust me." When I see myself as trustworthy, and receive the signal that says I am not trusted by the leader, I respond in kind; I will not trust the leader.

Let's say you are the leader in question. Breaking this cycle starts with you. Before you can ask others to trust you, you must first demonstrate your trust in others. This means going first, being willing to risk, and communicating.

Communications - letting people know what you are thinking, when you are thinking it, and why you are thinking it - is the starting point. Constant, person to person, open, and honest communications is a step in recreating a trusting relationship. Self-disclosure, and a willingness to be vulnerable to others whose behavior you cannot control is all part of this process. (The Leadership Challenge - P166-170)

There is more to the process. And, if you are interested in taking the journey required to rebuild trust, I recommend both The Leadership Challenge, and The Speed of Trust. In addition, a good coach could be worth their weight in gold (literally speaking). Creating trust within your organization could make the difference between success and failure, for both you and the organization.

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Gaining Competence

Learning any new skill, or becoming competent in any new subject takes time an effort. And, it comes as no surprise that the same applies to learning to apply the concepts of leadership to your life at work and home.

One way to understand this is to use the metaphor of learning a new sport. For a moment, lets say you have never ridden a horse. As you move through the process of mastering the skills and techniques that will allow you and your mount to float effortlessly over even the highest jumps (or fences), you move through the four stages of competence:

1. Unconscious incompetence - At this stage you don't know what you don't know. You have no idea that there are muscles you have never used, or that there are signals you send to the horse through your seat, legs and hands. You have no concept of the depth of the knowledge you will need to master the sport.
2. Conscious incompetence - At this stage you become conscious of the vast amount of learning necessary to master the sport, and that you do not yet have the skills that will make you a successful rider. But, the good news is that the world of possibility has opened before you, and you are ready to take on the challenge.
3. Conscious competence - Now you have learned the skills, but each time you apply them it takes significant conscious effort to remember the correct position, command, sequence, and subtle nuisances of the relationship between your and your horse. After completing a ride, you are exhausted from the effort of having to think through every muscle movement, and correcting every error.
4. Unconscious competence - And finally, you have reached the stage where you have mastered the sport. You and your horse communicate without even having to think about commands or analyzing feedback. You flow together around the course as if you are one. No conscious effort is required to apply the skills that only a few months or years ago seemed so foreign and difficult.

It is the same with leadership. The concepts of leadership initially seem difficult and cumbersome. It is difficult to hold all that you have learned in your mind at the same time. And it is particularly hard to call on the concepts when you are under stress, or on a tight deadline, or the proverbial waste material has hit the rotating blades.

However, comfort comes with practice. Every time you apply the concepts of leadership you take a step toward unconscious competence. And, at some point in your future you will find that you are able to apply a leadership perspective to the challenges of life.