Corporate and Top Team Management in Asia

Paul Temporal & Rod Davies, Orient Pacific Century Singapore/Kuala Lumpur

The Suspicion

In South East Asia, the world of corporate success and management development are poised in a potentially dangerous relationship. The fast growth rates of countries such as Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand are now on track to see the double figures of pre-1996. We can still expect to see businesses bursting at the seams with opportunities for growth and development. However recent economic history leads us to ask two questions. Firstly, how far is the success due to managerial skill, and secondly, how can the human resource function cope with the need to develop top managers in greater numbers and more quickly than ever before?

It is fair to say that many factors in the Asia environment are responsible for business success, and management is just one of them. Many top managers will admit to learning as they go along, and the demand for management is pushing the average age of top managers down.

The problems for human resource management are significant. Business strategies in rapid growth economics change quickly, and research shows that there is little co-ordination between corporate strategy and human resource strategy. Secondly, the pressure for continuous improvement forces human resource managers to target middle and junior managers for training and development. They are the "doers" who put in long hours and suffer extreme pressure and stress along with the leaders.

Top managers, as already suggested, are shot into leadership positions with regularity. Transfers between businesses are common as firms search for the special, gifted and skilled executives. Little, if any, analysis of top team composition is ever done. Training needs analysis, assessment centre activities, and performance appraisal techniques rarely reach beyond middle management, top team opportunities are often made on the basis of "political" (in a corporate sense) and on a "who do you know" basis. These factors combine to create top management teams that are often unbalanced in terms of the skills and abilities of members.

THE EVIDENCE

Rapid succession into top management teams often results in compounding of one of the cardinal sins of recruitment, selection and placement. Cutting corners during the rush in both recruitment and top team development means that appointments are often made in the "same image" of the recruiter, and especially where the recruiter is internal rather than external. The emphasis is on how quickly a new team member can be recruited into the team and start performing rather than their medium and long term potential. It is an "easy way out" to select those that you know well, are unlikely to challenge current ways or modes of thinking, who agree with your point of view and you get along well with. This is why in the authors experience, more often than not, top management teams are inflexible in thinking and strategy, and inward rather than outward focused. Often the top teams of advertising and marketing firms are overloaded with creative and extrovert people, who have excellent networking and creative skills but are lacking in concluding producing and controlling skills. Consequently these organizations reveal excellence in ideas and concepts but fail when it comes to delivering on time and realizing the practical implications of their work. Similarly, the top teams of some banking and financialinstitutions are unbalanced having myriad's of detailed, quantitative, and "practical" people, but lacking the creative and "exploring" skills that are necessary for business development. Both examples provide manifestations of the same problem, lack of thought in top team recruitment and development caused by traditional linear management succession, and appointing the familiar rather than the challenger.

These teams are characterized behaviorally by a comfortable bonhomie among members, increasing insularity, and alienation from knowledge of the significant megatrends affecting their industry. One good analysis of this phenomena was described by Janis, who coined the term "groupthink" for a similar situation affecting the poor decision of a top US government advisory body to advise the "Bay of Pigs" invasion. Closer to home, recent bank deregulation in Australia and Malaysia, as well as other Asian countries resulted in many banks being caught out strategically, without the top team skills of exploring and promotion required to compete with foreign competition. Banks traditionally recruit analytical, practical, controlling type of people, who serve well the core business of banking but are often insufficiently challenged during their management development to broaden their skills. Traditional "individual-based" succession means that top teams as well reflect this imbalance.

HOW TO IMPROVE

A management tool that has been developed over the past 15 years and used by over 30,000 managers internationally has been proved extremely useful in developing top teams. Developed among many working managerial teams in countries as diverse as the UK, United States, Spain, Switzerland, Japan, Italy, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Australia, the Team Management Wheel and Team Management Index (Margerison and McCann, 1984) offers both a diagnostic and development tool for all management teams. While both well researched and validated to the standards required by such bodies as the British Psychological Society, the Team Management Wheel is differentiated from other tools of its ilk by its development "hand in hand" with many organizations and managers, both in Asia and overseas, rather than by academics working from the often insular university world. As a result, it is naturally assimilated into the culture of any commercial organization.

The Team Management Wheel is based on the knowledge that managers skills are based on work preferences, that are developed both by innate psychological makeup and experiences both in their work and personal life. As a manager develops, he or she works better and practices on those skills that they prefer. Remember back to your school days. If you were like the second author, subjects like Literature and History were almost second nature, requiring little study and effort, but resulting in top performance as evidenced by grades and assessments. Other subjects like Mathematics and Science, involved much study and effort, and resulted in poor to moderate performance and borderline passes. So effort in the former areas was far more efficient than the latter. However, passes in all subjects were necessary. The education system at least at that time, was individual based, but as can be seen from other articles in this volume, for various reasons the unit of organizational success for Asian companies in the future is the team. If the second author had worked with a colleague who had preferences and abilities in the science and mathematics areas, performance of the team would be high and synergetic. Of course, that would have broken all the rules of traditional educational assessment but it breaks none of the rules for high performing organizations. (The whole discussion on the mistake of organizations to "ape" educational assessment in their managerial assessment methodologies is also relevant but is best addressed separately. After all, around 90% of managerial work is carried out in teams rather than by individuals so why do we continue to insist on assessing managers individually?).

The Team Management Wheel, presented below, incorporates both the "types of work" that have to be covered by top managerial teams, and the 8 "role preferences" that characterize the preferences of individuals in a team. These 8 types of work are:

• Innovating
• Promoting
• Developing
• Organizing
• Concluding
• Inspecting
• Maintaining
• Advising

The 8 types of work are represented around the "spokes" of the wheel. The central type of work in "Linking" which is the essential function of linking and coordinating the work of a team. This can be performed by all members of a team but especially by the team leader.

Any job, whether it be individual or team based can be analyzed by the critical "Types of Work" that characterize it. This can be achieved by self or group analysis, or a special job analysis questionnaire called the "Types of Work Index" can analyze the job objectively and provide percentage breakdowns of functional make up as a prelude to job redesign, selection, re-engineering, career development and performance appraisal.

During their talks with managers in teams, the researchers also found that managers generally had preferences for one to three of these activities, but rarely more than this. Additionally, these activities were usually adjacent or closely related on the Team Management wheel. A manager in production for example often had a preference for "Producing" activities, but felt less able in the innovating and promotion activities. Similarly, a manager in Research and Development may have a preference for advising and innovating, but was less able to perform "Production" and "Controlling" activities. Again these work preferences were a result of both naturally occurring preferences, but more importantly the "testing-out" of these preferences until they transformed into "abilities" at the workplace.

The Team Management Index is a short 60 item questionnaire that analyses the work preferences of managers and transforms them into "role preferences". The role preferences are the 8 terms around the spokes of the wheel, and short summaries of these are provided below:

Reporter-Advisers

Reporter-Advisers are good at generating information and gathering it together in such a way that it can be understood. Such people are usually patient, and are prepared to hold off making a decision until they know as much as they can about the work done. Others may feel that they procrastinate and put things off. However, to the Reporter-Adviser it is better to be accurate than put forward advice which later is seen later to be in error. Such people are invaluable as "support" members of the team, but they are not likely to be the people who will be sufficiently interested to want to push forward as an organizer. Indeed, their concern is to make sure that the job is done correctly. Usually they are knowledgeable, well-liked people who prefer an advisory role.

Creator-Innovators

Creator-Innovators are people who have a number of ideas which may well contradict and upset the existing way of doing things. Such people can be very independent and wish to experiment and develop their ideas regardless of the present systems and methods. They therefore need to be given the freedom to work in this way until their new approaches have been proven. Many organizations therefore set up research and developments units (often separated from the production units) which allow people who have the ideas to bring these to fruition. However, every team must have people to develop their ideas and they should be given an opportunity to talk through their views, even though it may seem at the time to be disturbing the existing way of operating.

Explorer-Promoters

Explorer-Promoters are usually excellent at taking up an idea and getting people enthusiastic about it. They enjoy finding our what people outside the organization are up to and they like to compare any new ideas with what others are doing. They are also good at bringing back contacts, information and resources which can help promote the team or project. They may not necessarily be good at controlling details, but they are excellent at seeing the broad picture and developing an enthusiasm amongst other people for an innovation. They are very capable of pushing an idea forward even if they are not always the best people to organize and control it. They can be influential, speak easily in public and frequently come up with a lot of options and ideas for tackling problems.

Assessor-Developers

Assessor-Developers like to have new ideas with which to experiment. They have a strong analytical approach and will enjoy developing prototypes, looking for new markets and testing to see how, when and where the product or service will work. They often make excellent product development managers, or people concerned with assessing new ventures. In a team role they are at their best when given several different possibilities to analyze and develop before a decision is made. They like organizing new activities and respond well to such challenges. They are willing to push the idea forward and organize it into a workable scheme. However, once they have shown 'hoe to make it work' they will not usually be interested in the regular production and control of the output.

Thruster-Organisers

Thruster-Organisers make things happen. Their concern is to produce action out of ideas, discussion and experiments. They enjoy organizing and will always 'thrust' forward to make sure results are achieved. They keep pressing for outputs and decisions. others may have the ideas but it is the Thruster-Organiser who pushes for action to get ideas into practice. They are sometimes prone to impatience. On occasions they might rush into action without enough information. Nevertheless, if you want something to happen, give it to a Thruster-Organiser. For them action is the name of the game, even if it does mean that on the way certain 'feathers are ruffled'.

Concluder-Producers

Concluder-Producers take great pride in producing a product or service to a standard. They will do this on a regular basis and feel that their work is fulfilled if their quotas and plans are met. Indeed, they like working to set procedures and doing things in a regular way. The fact that they produced something yesterday does not mean that they will be bored with producing it tomorrow. This stands in contrast to the Creator-Innovators who dislike doing similar things day after day and want the variety and challenge of doing things differently. To the Concluder-Producer the important thing is to use one's existing skills rather than continually change and learn new ways of doing things. They therefore enjoy reproducing things and achieving the plans they set.

Controller-Inspectors

Controller-Inspectors are people who enjoy doing detailed work and making sure that the facts and figures are correct. They will be careful and meticulous. Indeed, one of their great strengths is that they concentrate for long periods of time upon a particular task. This contrasts with Explorer-Promoters who continually need a wide variety of tasks. In contrast, the Controller-Producer wishes to pursue something in depth and makes sure that the work is done according to plan in an accurate way. They are extremely valuable, for example, in financial work and quality issues where the control and inspection or work is vital.

Upholder-Maintainers

Upholder-Maintainers are very good at making sure the team has a sound basis for operations. They take pride in maintaining both the physical side of work and the social side. Such people can very well become the 'conscience' of the team and provide a lot of support and help to team members. They usually have strong views on the way the team should be run, based on their convictions and beliefs. If these are upset, such people can become rather obstinate. However, when they believe in what the team is doing, they can be tremendous source of strength and energy.

For each manager that fills out a Team Management Index, a 3000 word profile is produced which describes the major and related role preferences in detail and provides further information on leadership strengths, how to work with people with different role preferences, and areas for development.

A top team therefore has the technology to analyze their balance. This was the technology used to analyze the role preference make up of the banking and advertising top teams outlined above. In the former case the team was made up of many Controller Inspectors, Concluder Producers and Thruster Organizers, but no Explorer Promoters, Creator Innovators, or Reporter Advisers. The Types of Work analysis however revealed that there was a need in the team for people with Innovating, Promoting, and Advising skills. This was a classic unbalanced team. Strategies were then devised on how to fill the gaps, and this included medium term recruitment policies, development of existing team managers so they would be better able to focus on the missing areas, and the contracting of consultants with advising and innovating skills to provide that focus in the meantime.

CASE STUDIES : PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

Various specific case studies are provided below from the work of the authors in Asian organizations:

MALAYSIA

Two major organizations were analysed using the Team Management Index and the results translated on to the Team Management Wheel. Both the organizations showed that the top management team composition was very unbalanced, the bias being similar in each case with 80 - 90% of members having work preferences in the areas of Thruster-Organisers, Concluder-Producer and Controller-Inspector.

In Company A, a bank, these were similarities on the early background of the managers with most of them being trained in Accountancy. The top team acknowledged, when presented with the information that

• there was too much involvement on their behalf in detailed day to day operational type activities as opposed to strategic thinking
• there was a lack of 'people concern' in the organization which stemmed from the behaviour resulting from their preferred role types.
• there was lack of creativity in organizational problem-solving
• there was lack of marketing expertise at senior levels
• the advisory functions were weak

In Company B, the whole of the management and officer levels were analysed by top team, senior management, management officer and department splits revealed for all analyses, again showing a bias very similar to that of Company A, the two organizations however, being very different. The results were so shocking to the top management team that a comprehensive analysis of organizational problems and strategic planning was ordered.

SOLUTIONS

Stemming from these revelations in Company A, it was concluded that the following action should be taken

• the major effort should be made to change the culture of the Bank to make it more people-oriented
• the top team should move its focus to strategic matters
• a major program of marketing and selling skills training should be implemented
• new product developments units should be boosted with Creator-Innovator type people
• a mentor program be created for graduates designed to expose them more to strategic matters and "the big picture"

Nearly all of the above have been implemented and record increases of profits have been posted over the last three years.

In Company B, the results of the survey were to have far-reaching effects. The basis of these efforts was to identify in around 150 people the strengths associated with their work preferences and to form and train many task forces/project teams. The starting point was to gain a strategic focus for the organization. A balanced team of full and part-time members was selected to form a Strategic Planning Unit which subsequently identified critical success factors needed to achieve the published Mission of the organization. These critical success factors became the goals for over ten task forces. The task forces were again composed of members who produced balanced teams but with learning towards the task being pursued.

The results over the last two years have been astonishing, and the organization has since received world-wide recognition for its successes.

Singapore

It is not often that companies manage to get their top teams together to reinforce the mission and how it can be implemented by working together. Reinforcement of the mission means that organizational members realise that they have shared goals and realise the interdependencies of individuals and teams on each other.

One particularly illustrative program is vivid in the mind. A small but long standing company realised that relations between the board and senior managers needed improvement. We met with them in an island resort where the minutiae of daily working life could be left behind for 3 days. Ostensibly we were there for a review of the strategy plan, but the first exercise caused a radical shift in the plan for the 3 days.

The crucial exercise was to ask each participant to write down in 60 seconds what the mission of the company was. As most managers know the criteria for an effective mission statement is that it should be concise, easily memorable and comprehensive. By definition it must be common to all organizational members. It should also have a component of "belief" as belief is far more motivating than objective analysis. A mission statement should be able to be recalled at a moments notice, because to be effective it must underlie every management decision and activity. It must also be meaningful in that it is relevant for all actions.

The 60 second recall exercise is a good test of the mission that underlies every practical strategic plan. One by one, the participants read out their responses. By the time the last member had spoken, it was clear to all present that there was no guiding mission principle. We then presented the mission statement as enshrined in the companies policy and procedures book. Again there was little agreement. Clearly a mission statement had to be developed that would be shared, understood, and acted upon by all, and this became a theme of the conference. ...But more of that later...

The Team Management Index profile's major benefit is that it provided feedback to a manager of their managerial style and the role they play in a team. In non-threatening and easy to understand 3000 to 4000 words it provided a thumbnail guide to the probable strengths of the respondents. The avoidance of psychological jargon and the false objectivity of numbers and statistics, means that managers were able to digest this information easily and share their profiles.

Managers from both the board and senior management teams were keen and comfortable in sharing their profiles, and the difficult first stage of conferences where participants are slow to open up was shortened dramatically. This provided a culture for the weekend of openness and trust. The board and senior management team then divided into two separate rooms and performed the first two stages of the strategic planning cycle..."Who are we" and "Why are we here", as demonstrated in the figure below.