The Innovation Ethic

The Innovation Ethic John J. Sarno 1 © 2012 I have posited that “innovation” is an organizing principle that can serve as a foundation for corporate structures – the belief that a free people who spontaneously organize can create flexible social structures that produce new solutions to solve big complex problems. The innovation myth is inseparable from autonomy and is redefining the pursuit of happiness. I have argued that intrinsic happiness is based on autonomous individuals freely choosing to engage others in sustained and meaningful effort that promotes the greater good. I have called the personal choice to engage others, the “innovation ethic”; the effort itself, “knowledge work”; and the individuals who make the effort, “knowledge workers.” These are merely short hand designations that are meant to evoke a spirit, attitude, or general outlook of a time and place.

I have tried to teach my students that in the face of shrinking physical resources, collective knowledge building and innovation are the most important strategic tasks for most firms. Some students just assume that we will innovate out of any problem, whether it’s global warming or nuclear proliferation. But unlike production work – knowledge work can’t be forced out of people. To create a climate in which employees contribute their creativity and expertise, leaders need to develop collaboration, communication and conflict resolution skills and manage at the highest levels of integrity.

Decision-making must be fair and ethical. Trust and commitment must be instilled within the team and across teams to avoid hoarding of ideas. Knowledge workers must be motivated intrinsically from within just as much, perhaps more, than by a paycheck.

Innovation is not a passive exercise. It requires discipline, continuous effort and athleticism.

The hard work of management and leadership at all levels is to encourage and nurture an open and sustainable environment where information is freely shared and expectations for performance are transparent. The measure of the leader’s success is how well they inspire employees to not only to perform their best, but also to perform at the highest level of trust, sharing and cooperation. Various case studies, whether WorldCom, Enron or BP Petroleum, demonstrate at best profound ethical lapses by leaders and an uninspiring work ethic among the workforce. At worst, the cultures in these organizations perpetuated egregious fraud and criminality.

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Excerpt from Sarno, John, Perils of Prosperity AuthorHouse (2009), published in proceedings seventh

annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation (2012).

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I have tried to call it straight. Much of corporate work is dehumanizing. Since the corporate form of organization and control and the work that is performed from within these hierarchical structures are inescapable, for many workers autonomy and intrinsic happiness are only remotely attainable. But the principle of innovation and the evidence of technological and scientific advancement that follow are most likely powerful enough to instill the hope necessary to ensure survive and advance progress.

“Autonomy” refers to a person's capacity for self-determination – free will - in the context of moral choices. Autonomy is demonstrated by a person who decides on a course of action out of respect for moral duty. That is, an autonomous person acts morally solely for the sake of the greater good, independently of other incentives, like a paycheck or other form of pleasure. Compliance with a moral code creates the essence of human dignity and personhood.

We know that autonomy is not absolute and is usually, to one extent or another, given to another authority, such as by agreeing to follow governing laws. In a corporation, employees cede autonomy and agree to conform to corporate rules in order to be team members.

In class, we have focused on Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development, which postulates a stage theory of moral thinking from childhood to adulthood. In Kohlberg's first stage, the child assumes that powerful authorities hand down a fixed set of rules which he or she must obey. At this stage, the child defers to superior power or prestige.

In other words, the child conforms. At this early stage of child development, there is no substantive notion of free will or self-determination. The child’s primary concern is receiving rewards and avoiding punishment.

In 2002 Betty Vinson, a mid-level accountant at WorldCom pleaded guilty to securities fraud. Her lawyer was quoted as describing Ms. Vinson as a “victim of unscrupulous higher managers.” In other words, Ms. Vinson was only following orders. She had no choice, no capacity to decide. Viewed through the lens of Kohlberg’s theory of moral development, Vinson lacked free will and was essentially operating at the moral level of a child.

In contrast, Cynthia Cooper, WorldCom’s internal auditor pursued what she called “the rotten accounting.” Faced with an angry supervisor who threatened her with discharge, Ms. Cooper reported accounting improprieties to the audit committee of the board. When WorldCom’s comptroller was confronted by the committee, he admitted that the accounting could not be justified.

Cooper was able to achieve and maintain a degree of dignity and a sense of personhood within WorldCom’s degrading, oppressive environment. Vinson did not.

The innovation ethic presupposes working with awareness, passion and a level of engagement that expresses both individuality and an attachment to community.

“Innovators” therefore do not need to be original or ingenious and do not need to create

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or invent something new. However, to be faithful to an innovation ethic, workers need to contribute something of value by working with heart, body and mind on tasks that they are asked to perform or choose to do.

I hypothesize that knowledge workers tend to be intrinsically motivated and tend more to share information than hoard it. I have opined that social media can facilitate productive knowledge work. Finally, I have speculated that knowledge workers within open environments that add value will also instinctively aspire to be ethical leaders and good stewards of collective assets. I also want to be clear that without a free and robust market supported by democratic institutions, the “knowledge economy” may further entrench corporate governing elites. And that too is a peril of prosperity as it becomes ever more difficult for individuals to fulfill their aspirations and act ethically within command-andcontrol, monopolized social structures.

Consequently, laws must also evolve. The master-servant rules that supported the industrial economy, when physical labor was exchanged for a paycheck, do not lend itself to personal autonomy, free agency and knowledge-based work. Likewise, the work-forhire doctrine tends to disadvantage and demotivate employees. Intellectual property law fosters monopoly which tends to suppress competition and innovation. In short, as “property” becomes less physical and more intellectual and intangible, property law must also evolve to serve the needs of innovators.

To a great extent, America’s long-term success will depend on its ability to compete globally with value-added knowledge and the willingness of workers to acquire the skills and abilities to make it happen, as opposed to redistributing resources through tax code manipulations…. The dynamics of the market may also create unique methods to diffuse knowledge, such as open source programming which permits numerous developers to create software applications to scale monopoly control over source code, thereby driving entrepreneurial activity and innovation.

However, at the same time, some of these innovations are destabilizing even deconstructing corporations and accelerating the outsourcing of knowledge-intensive jobs, which would otherwise have remained within the organization. Increasingly the jobs that do remain require more than some knowledge; instead these jobs require value added knowledge work. This work can be defined as the cluster of abilities, skills and temperaments that accentuates an organization’s strengths. The CEO Project report issued in 2005 illustrates this point. About one hundred chief executive offers from fastgrowing firms, primarily manufacturers employing between 100 to 200 employees and booking annual revenue within the $16 to $60 million range. When asked to identify the competitive strengths of their firms, the top four answers reported were: proprietary technology (36 percent), unique approach (31 percent), process innovation (10 percent) and operational excellence (5 percent). In other words, the perceived strengths of the firm were directly connected to the ability to exploit the ingenuity and know how of the talent pool. Similarly, the biggest business opportunities that the CEOs identified were related to new products, processes and improvements; again, opportunities driven by innovation.

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Interestingly, when asked to rate their existing talent, nine of ten respondents issued a grade of “B” or better. However, when asked to identify their biggest obstacles to growth, 29 percent identified insufficient talent and another 24 percent identified slow product development and marketing problems. On 16 percent identified lack of capital as a serious impediment to growth. What this data suggests is the business success is based primarily on intangible factors relating to human capital and while most executives will state publicly that their existing talent pool is sufficient, they will nevertheless report that their biggest constraint to growth is attracting and retaining the “right” talent, the type of employee that plays to the firm’s strengths in creating and directing proprietary technologies and in developing unique and innovative improvements to processes. In short, these executives are reporting an innovation gap among exiting employees and recognizing that filling this gap is crucial for success.

Such value-added knowledge work is critically important but only a relatively small percentage of elite workers perform it. Most organizations are focused on production, efficiency and the elimination of waste. They are not interested in the know how of the average employee, and the average employee is satisfied by doing just enough to avoid discipline. To the extent that upper management is focused on retaining highly valuable knowledge workers, supervisors lack the skills to create a suitable environment.

Knowledge workers tend to be primarily motivated by intrinsic factors, but remain interested in position and compensation. As Homer-Dixon has observed, while idealism and job satisfaction motivate knowledge workers, the opportunity for profit seems to drive innovation the most. Therefore, striking the right balance between external and intrinsic rewards should be an important function of upper management. Managing knowledge workers requires such core values as honesty, fairness, integrity, humility and openness, qualities that are more or less inimical to the production values of efficiency and productivity. However, as organizations are forced to be knowledge intensive to compete, many are taking care to change the corporate culture. As for the knowledge worker, he or she must also be guided by a core set of values. For the knowledge worker, lifestyles and the desire for self-fulfillment resemble a secular creed. As such, a commitment to autonomy, esteem and lifelong learning are essential to their well-being and happiness.

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“Reengineering eliminates not just waste, but non-value adding work as well,” observed Hammer and Champy in the best-selling Reengineering the Corporation. “Most of the checking, reconciling, waiting, tracking, monitoring-the unproductive work that exists because boundaries within an organization- is eliminated by reengineering, which means that people will spend more time doing real work.” (Emphasis in the original).

Presumably, the “real” work means knowledge-intensive work and “since workers in reengineered processes spend more time on value-adding work and less time on work that adds no value,” knowledge workers should enjoy more job security. However, as noted, most white-collar production work constitutes little more than non-value added labor cost. Accordingly, by 1990, of America’s largest one hundred companies, 77 percent of all layoffs involved white-collar workers, many of them older workers. As a result, nearly six million people over the age of fifty who remain working are self-employed. Many are transitioning to retirement and while some of those laid off have been able to go on to more satisfying, more lucrative work, many have experienced lower wages, either as contractors or consultants, or because the jobs that they have landed pay less….

A senior project manager with an MBA from New Rochelle, New York, wrote about the intentional “dumbing down of the internal workforce” at many US companies and the impending crisis “if we don’t build or learn things here anymore.” He too raised the issue of skilled immigrants who are willing to work for less “with the bait of the green card.”

Another writer simply wanted Dean Slaughter to honestly explain, “that higher wages are one of the factors that harm U.S. competitiveness in a global economy.”

For some, this prospect of drifting to the bottom has hardened into Social Darwinism.

Michael Kinsley has written that the free agent movement has bred a generation of “smart loners” who “are convinced that they don’t need society-nor should anyone else.” While Kinsley concedes that he has generalized, it is no doubt true that labor that is devoid of social context as a different meaning than work that is the result of collective human effort. As Thomas Homer-Dixon has observed in The Ingenuity Gap, from the point of view of a worker who is detached physically but networked virtually, social and geographical reality is fragmented. “The Internet’s fragmentation tends to supplant the

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shared public experience that is the key foundation of a society-wide sense of community.” So perhaps for some work, a social context is not necessary. But if the objective is innovation and knowledge creation, even a simple brainstorming session requires a social context. Value added knowledge work requires much more. As previously explained, such activity requires collaboration and the resources of an organization. Rather than becoming the ascending presence in a free agent future, as Pink and Kinsley suggest, the “smart loner” is heading for extinction, as non-collaborative technical and data production work becomes increasing fragmented and de-skilled, thus being capable of being outsourced to any village or hamlet on the globe. In an odd paradox of language, for many workers in the globalized New Economy who simply cannot realize the full value of their labor, “free agency” means compelled redundancy.

Additionally, as wireless technology spreads to the far corners of the globe, some predict a time where knowledge workers around the world are hired online by the minute to work on a project-to-project basis. Such work will resemble piecework and perhaps be assembled and packaged by a contract team.

Yet, value-added knowledge work requires commitment and engagement, a sense of responsibility for organizational success and to unrestrainedly pursue the objectives of the organization. Unlike production work, were efficiency and productivity can be measured, creating and sharing knowledge cannot be easily quantified. Moreover, such value-added knowledge work requires voluntary cooperation. It requires an employee to go beyond the call of duty and to exert effort, energy and initiative to the best of their abilities. It requires psychological engagement. In contrast, production work (whether of the blue- or white-collar variety) is performed consistent with rules, regulations, procedures and standards. Such work is subject to compulsory cooperation. It requires employees to be precise, efficient and productive but not necessarily engaged in what they are doing. The employer does not take valuable production time to ask the worker what he or she thinks. The worker feels no obligation to share his or her know-how. To produce just enough to avoid further compulsion, such as a verbal or written warning, is sufficient.

As previously explained, most firms give innovation lip service, only to rely on more command and control structures to get results. Consider the economic model that underlies traditional notions of supervision, the so-called "agency model,” embodies the assumptions most common in the design of modern supervisory arrangements. The agency model presents supervision as a simple transaction consisting of a “principal” (the employer), an “agent” (the employee). The motivations of these actors are simple and as old as Adam Smith’s dictum on the master-servant relationship. The agent dislikes expending effort but likes getting paid. The principal dislikes paying the agent but likes the work that the agent does. The objectives of principal and agent are thus diametrically opposed: The agent wants to be paid as much as possible for doing as little work as possible, whereas the principal wants to get as much work as possible from the agent while paying as little as possible. Supervision is complicated by the fact that the principal can't directly see how much effort the agent is expending but can only observe a result of the agent's work, which also depends on random factors. For example, a salesperson's total sales might depend not only on how hard he works but also on the weather during a

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given week. The primary conclusion of agency models is the importance of tying pay to performance, to provide employees with appropriate incentives.

However, there are several obvious problems with the agency model as it applies to knowledge work. First, the difficulties in observing knowledge work are more profound than those assumed by the model. Not only can't a supervisor observe effort directly in knowledge work, sometimes the supervisor can't understand what the worker is doing and may not be qualified to judge results. Because knowledge work cannot be easily measured, it is also more difficult to see causality and to attribute results to particular worker actions. Measurements of results often don't faithfully capture the results you really care about. Second, “agent” motivators appear inconsistent with those of knowledge workers. Knowledge workers are often interested in their work and motivated by a desire to do it well. The agency model suggests no way of leveraging these worker motivations. Third, the agency model posits the agent as a lone actor, bargaining or conniving for best advantage regardless of the peer pressure that is often brought on selfish employees to conform to cooperative values.

In 2007, the Gallup Management Journal surveyed a nationally representative sample of employed adults and found that less than one in three employees were actively engaged in their work. Most were not engaged, primarily putting in their time, maintaining just enough productivity to avoid negative consequences, and putting little energy or passion into their jobs. About 15% of the respondent’s strongly agreed with the statement that their current job “brings out [their] most creative ideas.” The researchers also explored the role of that workplace friendships played in promoting innovation. It has long been thought that friendships at work increase an employee’s sense of job satisfaction and well-being. In his landmark The Psychology of Work, Walter Neff observed that the social context of work permitted friendships and a sense of belonging. The Gallup researchers found that about three-fourths of engaged employees, or about 21% of the total sample, strongly agreed with the statement “I have a friend at work that I share ideas with.” The research strongly suggests that of the relatively few employees who generate ideas, group affiliation and friendship play important roles in staying engaged.

Knowledge is created through social interaction, sometimes referred to as collaboration.

As noted in above, the traditional management strategies of a bureaucratic nature and the scientific management styles of controlling information and power, and seeking to direct workers might be counterproductive in relation to knowledge workers, and that a different management style which is less hierarchical and more flexible might be more appropriate. For the most part, managers who say that they value autonomy, innovation, creativity and flexibility are not prepared to grant autonomy to their staff and fail to consult, share information or encourage teamwork. Knowledge and expertise are often viewed as sources of power and as such are not easily shared. Ironically, this is even truer in a knowledge-intensive economy, which has unleashed the forces of globalization and where the premium and power attached to valuable knowledge escalate. In the absence of natural economic incentives and with the perceived power disincentives to diffuse knowledge, it follows that high-quality knowledge creation and collaboration will be stifled.

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Moreover, value added knowledge work requires a greater degree of personal autonomy.

Social networking technology, such as blogs and wikis can be useful tools for collaboration, personal expression and knowledge sharing within a large organization but without incentives to transcend the agency problem, the novelty of these technologies is insufficient to motivate people to contribute voluntarily. The irony of this emerging trend toward social networking at work is that for the majority of employees, employers provide little direct incentive for them to contribute what they know. Research indicates that sustained communication may go a long way in creating a social environment for innovation. According to researchers Kim and Mauborgne (1998) “the ability to express one’s ideas or bilateral communication, which is the key element to engagement, implies the opportunity to voice one’s perceptions, knowledge, and ideas, and the need to hear opposite parties out. This increases the likelihood that a high rate of knowledge and expertise will be diffused and shared.”

In 2006, researchers at the university of Southern California and New York University published a noel theory to explain why humans seek out information, often for its own sake. Human beings, they wrote in American Scientist are designed to be “infovores” because knowledgeable people are more attractive mating partners, a fact that appears to be true across cultures, and because knowledge tends to increase the chances of survival.

The researchers also found that when people acquire new knowledge the brain is rewarded with a morphine-like substance as it connects bits of information into a cohesive whole. Apparently, “knowledge high” is the result of the integrating and understanding new information.

Related to open communication is trust; in fact, trust is the foundation of communication.

A world Values Survey that assesses basic values and beliefs in more than eighty counties, found that people care as much about fairness as they do about their own pecuniary interests. In commercial transactions, most people care about ethical values.

Yet, a Watson Wyatt survey in 2004 indicated that about half the workforce simply didn’t trust their employer. Most of this distrust centered on communication that is perceived as secretive or dishonest. When employees don’t trust managers to make good decisions or to behave with integrity, their motivation is seriously compromised. Their distrust and attendant lack of engagement is a big, often unrecognized problem in many organizations. Of course, the issue has always mattered, but it matters more in organizations that are dependent on the commitment and ideas of employees. Even Google, a company that receives a million resumes a year is experiencing defections.

While some of these departures are the direct result of stock option vesting, the company has begun experimenting with an offsite “skunk works” to counteract the perceptions of cramped communication and secrecy within the larger organizational culture.

It appears therefore that there are intrinsic motivators that transcend the agency problem.

Researchers and commentators have opined that such motivators are what drive knowledge workers. The U.S. Department of Labor’s most recent Longitudinal Survey on Job Satisfaction suggests that most working Americans are reasonable satisfied with their jobs. Among the factors that support high levels of job satisfaction are having

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responsibility for one’s own work (52 percent), having a sense of worth in a job (42 percent), being recognized for individual contributions (40 percent), and the opportunity to make good use of skills and learning new skills (35 percent). It appears that autonomy, meaning, affiliation and learning may be the necessary ingredients to nurture value adding knowledge workers. To this end, several companies have created “communities of practice” groups of employees of similar professional or other interests that cross boundaries of departments and units. For example, Schlumberger, LTD is an oil and fuel services company with 52,000 employees spread over 80 countries that has created 23 communities ranging from chemistry to engineering, with about 140 special interest subgroups. The company reports that 11,750 employees belong to a group. Uniquely, these communities elect their own leaders and govern themselves so that peer review and esteem remain powerful drivers of innovation and knowledge sharing. Make no mistake; while this environment can create competition and professional jealousy, the development of shared repositories and discussion databases that were actively managed by the community can foster a sense of mutual trust and obligation. In these shared spaces, individuals begin to evaluate who is making contributions to the greater community knowledge pool, and they began to judge the willingness of others to share the documents, templates, and other similar knowledge. The company spends about $1 million a year on these “Eureka” communities, as they are called, and compared to other knowledge initiatives, it is cost-effective.

Managers of knowledge workers often don't understand how best to manage their staff.

Firms that want to maximize the fullest potential of their knowledge workers must have effective collaborative environments (the best work is produced by means of teamwork, not by individual careerists), sharing of information (knowledge workers are listened to, trusted, and know what is going on), loose hierarchies (managers serve their staffs, not dominate them), and devolution of decision making (knowledge workers are trusted and trained to make decisions where the value is created—at the frontline). These environments tend to drive commitment and behaviors far beyond what could ever be written into a job description. Many traditional management techniques are not effective when dealing with work that is largely intellectual. In a knowledge-intensive organization, the role of management changes. Management becomes less about setting and policing rules for workers and more about establishing strategy, setting goals, showing leadership, and measuring results. Knowledge management is less about managing people and more about giving them the right goals, the right motivation, and the right tools, and clearly articulating how success or failure will be measured.

Accessing the higher levels of human creativity and motivation in today's Knowledge Economy requires a sea change in thinking: a new mindset, a new skill set, a new toolset -- in short, a whole new habit.

A recent Hewitt Associates survey of employees cited 28 attributes that they felt were important for their supervisors to have. The top five attributes were Honesty (which is not only avoiding the scapegoating of employees but also includes knowing when the supervisor is part of the problem); Integrity (which means being invested in the success of others and not hoarding information for personal advantage); Caring (which means understanding that most employees experience some difficulty balancing the demand of

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work with family responsibilities); Fairness (which means letting employees know what’s expected and having an ethical foundation for the use of discipline; and Approachability (which means making the extra effort to maintain positive relationships and active listening). In short, supervisors in knowledge-intensive organizations must be leaders.

For most organizations, supervisors have no incentive to be leaders, that is, despite the corporate party line, management has no interest in supervision based on core values.

The primary values for these organizations, many of which are competing globally, are efficiency, productivity, the elimination of waste, and reducing idleness. The primary role of the supervisor is to count time, apply procedures, and to justify discipline or discharge decisions in a well documented fashion. Since the exclusive focus is on production, supervisory training tends to cover how to follow the rules consistently and to avoid being abusive. In contrast, supervisory training in knowledge intensive organizations focuses on communication skills, conflict resolution, and the exercise of what Richard Florida terms “soft power.” Soft power is the ability to get what you want by attracting and persuading others to adopt your goals. However, without acting form a core set of values, soft power is often an exercise in manipulation and deception. Thus, all supervisory training in knowledge intensive environments starts with the clarification of individual and corporate values.

And what of the knowledge worker? A rough estimate of the percentage of truly indispensable workers at about one in one thousand, as measured narrowly by the skills and abilities that make a customer come back for more. The Gallup research suggests about 14 percent of workers are highly valued due not their extraordinary level of engagement, commitment and willingness to share what they know. They have their best ideas at work and in the knowledge intensive environment must be considered part of the organization’s core. This, of course, is conjecture but experience and case studies lend more than an air of credence to this hypothesis. Research suggests that these core workers, what I have been calling throughout this discussion “value added knowledge workers” are motivated intrinsically, in various degrees, by autonomy, esteem and learning. The social science literature suggests that their work is a form of personal or creative expression, permitting them to “self-actualize.” It is thought to be the highest form of social development.

In The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt distinguished between Animal laborens and Homo faber—between man as a worker, thoughtlessly and amorally lost in his labor’s object, and man as a maker of society and its institutions, a builder of life in common. For Arendt, the maker had it all over the worker, who was, in her view, basically an indentured servant, alienated from his work and devoid of any social meaning. While this distinction is perhaps too contemptuous of practical life, the knowledge worker appears closer to a maker of his or her society and the institutions of the new economy. In many ways, the modern knowledge worker can be compared favorable to artisans and craftsmen. The work requires intense, constant involvement and ongoing learning. It often requires thousands of hours of what might be called an apprenticeship. In that regard, the elite knowledge worker is not alienated in the Marxian sense, since he or she

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is the means of production. Such a person is not engaged in uniform activity or the mere expenditure of energy, but rather is engaged in something psychologically meaningful, akin to a craft, where spontaneity, exuberance and freedom to perform make work and play nearly identical. The work is naturally creative. Such “free conscious activity constitutes the species-character” of the knowledge worker.

But unlike the craftsman whose identity was forged through a social or communal consciousness, the elite knowledge worker of today is released from the need for communion and instead finds meaning and context in an abstract self-fulfillment. Unlike the craft worker, who could see the fruits of his labor immediately- a chair, for example, it can be hard to find gratification from work that is largely intangible, or from delivering “goods” that are often symbolic. You can't even leave a permanent mark on a hard copy document in increasingly paperless offices. Thus, knowledge work is more or less intangible.

“Not only is work harder to measure but it's also harder to define success,” states Homa Bahrami, a senior lecturer in Organizational Behavior and Industrial Relations at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business. “The work is intangible or invisible, and a lot of work gets done in teams so it's difficult to pinpoint individual productivity.” She says knowledge workers measure their accomplishment in net worth, company reputation, networks of relationships, and the products and services they're associated with -elements that are more perceived and subjective than the output of a production quota.

Additionally, technology can obscure the full meaning of knowledge work and often results in the suppression of a human dimension. For example, computer-assisted design 11

has largely replaced architectural drawing. It has, of course, increased efficiency and lowered costs. As Sennett has observed in The Craftsman, the architect, having no need to put pen to paper, now works in a condition of estrangement from the physical world and from the “relational” aspects of his or her work. The result, Richard Sennett explains, is poorly designed structures at odds with their surroundings and with the human needs of their inhabitants.

The Business Case In today’s modern workplace, where the primary resource is knowledge, collective knowledge building is a key strategic task. Production machinery remains present, but unlike physical production, knowledge-sharing and teamwork rely on strong interpersonal relations. Further, to the extent that knowledge, and other intangible assets, becomes the indispensable ingredient for value-added work, the nature of the work and the social identity of the worker are changing.

Because knowledge work tends to be modular and non-linear, the work is performed in teams. It is well documented that diverse teams outperform homogeneous teams.

Leaders are trained on strategy and production but unlike production work – knowledge is a resource that can’t be forced out of people. Therefore, to create a climate in which employees contribute their creativity and expertise, leaders need to develop communication, team building and conflict resolution skills. Decision-making must be fair and ethical and must be made within legally appropriate guidelines. Trust and

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commitment must be instilled within the organization to avoid hoarding of ideas and feet dragging. Since knowledge workers, much like volunteers, are intrinsically motivated from core values, the hard work of supervision and leadership at all levels is to nurture an open environment where information is freely shared and expectations for performance are transparent. The measure of the leader’s success is how well they inspire employees to not only to perform their best, but also to perform at the highest level of trust, sharing and cooperation.

Diversity Training Most diversity training efforts at American companies are ineffective and even counterproductive in increasing the number of women and minorities in managerial positions, according to an analysis that turns decades of conventional wisdom, government policy and court rulings on their head.

A comprehensive review of 31 years of data from 830 mid-size to large U.S. workplaces found that the kind of diversity training exercises offered at most firms were followed by a 7.5 percent drop in the number of women in management. The number of African Americans and female managers fell by 10 percent, and the number of black men in top positions fell by 12 percent. Similar effects were seen for Latinos and Asians. The analysis did not find that all diversity training is useless. Rather, it showed that mandatory programs - often undertaken to avoid liability in discrimination lawsuits were the problem. When diversity training is voluntary and undertaken to advance a company's business goals, it was associated with increased diversity in management.

However, to enhance maximum performance in a diverse team, employees still need to know what conduct is unacceptable in the workplace (whether or not they might describe such conduct as harassment), and managers and supervisors need effective tools to respond to observation or reports of behavior that impedes performance or that undermines teamwork. But regardless of the level of knowledge in a workplace, research demonstrates that organizational culture is one of the key drivers of success or failure.

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Workplace Civility Training Employers have offered workplace civility training as a means of reducing conflict in the workplace. Thus, unlike standard compliance training, such training does not focus on eliminating unwelcome behavior based on characteristics protected under employment non-discrimination laws, but rather on promoting respect and civility in the workplace generally.

According to researchers, incivility is often an antecedent to conflict, stress, unproductive behavior, even workplace harassment, as it creates a climate of "general derision and disrespect" in which counterproductive behaviors are tolerated. Researchers also have found that uncivil behaviors can often "spiral" into bullying behaviors.

Workplace civility training focuses on establishing expectations of civility and respect in the workplace, and on providing management and employees the tools they need to meet such expectations. The training usually includes an exploration of workplace norms, including a discussion of what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate behaviors in the workplace. The training also includes a heavily skills-based component; including interpersonal skills training, conflict resolution training, and training on effective supervisory techniques.

Bystander Intervention Training Bystander intervention training has long been used as a conflict prevention and resolution strategy. The training has been shown to change social norms and empower individuals to intervene with peers to prevent destructive behavior from occurring. Most bystander intervention trainings employ at least four strategies: 14

   

Create awareness - enable bystanders to recognize potentially problematic behaviors.

Create a sense of collective responsibility - motivate bystanders to step in and take action when they observe problematic behaviors.

Create a sense of empowerment - conduct skills-building exercises to provide bystanders with the skills and confidence to intervene as appropriate.

Provide resources - provide bystanders with resources they can call upon and that support their intervention

Conditions that Give Rise to Conflict Substantive

Emotional

Departmental Goals Allocation of Resources Distribution of Resources Policies/Procedures

Mistrust Anger Fear/Resentment Personality

Why conflict escalates: 1. Latent Tensions – resulting from frustrated needs, poor communication skills, and weak relationships.

2. Overt Conflict – resulting from disputed rights, unequal power, conflicting interests, and injured relationships.

3. Power Struggle – No limitation, no attention, no protection.

4. Litigation – No viable alternatives.

Third Side Training 2 The Third Side offers a promising way to look at the conflicts in the workplace. The Third Side is the entire work community -- in action protecting the most precious interests in safety and well-being. It suggests 10 practical roles all employees can play on a daily basis to stop destructive behaviors at work.

Like Bystander Intervention Training, The Third Side possesses the power of peer pressure and the force of public opinion. It uses the power of persuasion and influences the parties primarily through an appeal to their interests and to community norms.

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Ury, William, The Third Side: Why We Fight and how We Can Stop, Penguin Books (2000).

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The Goal of Organizational Transformation This holistic training would be highly interactive and case driven and will utilize primarily live instruction and practice, and video feedback technology, to the extent that it is available. The content would be interdisciplinary in nature and would synthesize the fields of human resource management, organizational psychology, law and ethics.

Participants will gain insight into knowledge as a human resource and how they can work more productively within diverse work teams. The training is life-affirming and empowering. Participants will:           

Evaluate their strengths and weaknesses as leaders and teammates, Improve existing communication and interpersonal skills, How to think and act like a highly motivated person based on ethics and transparency, Tap into co-worker’s good will and to maximize their cooperation, Understand the difference between discipline and cooperation, Leverage core values to maintain performance and engagement, Motivate employees by being authentic and genuine, Empower employees to make positive changes, Maintain civil and respectful personhood, Be a constructive third way precipitant Protect the organization legally from misdeeds,

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

Evaluate lifestyle and career choices consistent with nurturing and expanding selfrespect and dignity

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