Ability is only one factor that influences performance, says Donald H Taylor. Motivation and opportunity also play their part – and that's where decent management comes in.
Andrew Mayo recently wrote an Opinion piece on TrainingZone.co.uk in which he asked for less leadership training, and more decent management. The practical business of management, he argued, was more important than the general emphasis on leadership:
"I am not saying effective leadership is not important. But what distresses me all the time in the UK is awful management," he said. "It's a good strategy in determining learning needs to look at everyday simple things that have gone wrong in the organisation and with its customers, and to work backwards as to what the cause or causes were. We'll find time and time again that it was some area of poor management."
This crucial role of managers in making an organisation effective is often overlooked. Executives naturally like to emphasise their own role as leaders pursuing a grand vision, while employees just get on with the job as best they can. In between, charged with making the vision happen, are the managers.
A large part of their role is ensuring that employees do what they should (and not by micro-managing them). Managers have to develop their line reports so that they do the right thing when the manager is not around – that means their engaging in what is called 'effective discretionary behaviour'.
To do this, managers have to ensure that their direct reports are able to do their jobs, want to do their jobs, and work in an environment that gives them the opportunity to do their job.
"Train one employee and you have helped them do their job better. Train a manager well, and not only have you helped him or her do their job better; you have also helped all their direct reports do the same."
These three factors – ability, motivation and opportunity (AMO) – are identified as core to effective working in the AMO model. The model was notably applied to the workplace by Eileen Appelbaum and others in their 2000 study 'Manufacturing Advantage: Why High-Performance Work Systems Pay Off'.
This methodical study examined a great deal of data from three very different industries and concluded that productivity in these industries (steel, clothing and sophisticated instrumentation) could be correlated to ability, motivation and opportunity.
Appelbaum et al found that organisations with vocational training programmes and incentive schemes in place were more productive – provided that certain organisational structures were in place (i.e. that employees had the opportunity to participate). Because the three industries studies were so different, the authors concluded that the results probably held true for other industries.
This research carries a strong double message to learning and development professionals. Clearly, it shows that an L&D focus on building employees' abilities – their job-related knowledge and skills – can indeed have an effect on organisational performance. We know that already, of course, even if those who hold the training budget may sometimes doubt it.
But the AMO model also reminds us that training alone is not enough. An individual's ability to do their job is only one factor influencing their final performance. The other factors (motivation and opportunity) will mostly be influenced by their managers, those managers who Andrew Mayo points out have a particular job "to achieve results and solve problems, day in and day out".
"There is another way that the L&D department can help with building both employee motivation and opportunity: sometimes it should refuse to carry out training."
What should L&D's response to this be? Should it simply be to build employees' abilities, because we know that we can? Surely it should go beyond that. Given the importance of managers, surely the L&D department should be focusing on building their 'competence at getting the task achieved' as Mayo puts it. After all, train one employee and you have helped them do their job better. Train a manager well, and not only have you helped him or her do their job better; you have also helped all their direct reports do the same.
This multiplier effect surely means that organisations should focus development resources on managers. Not necessarily in formal classroom sessions alone, but also by developing alternative approaches, including mentoring and the support of informal dialogues between peers, an approach that has been found effective in organisations as diverse as B&Q and the US Army.
But this is more than just a repeat of Andrew Mayo's plea for more, better, management training. The AMO model also clarifies that a person's motivation and opportunity to participate may be as important as their skills.
Does the L&D department have any role to play in the area of motivation and opportunity? Traditionally, no, but in practice, it does, in two ways. The first – as described above – is by working with managers to ensure that they have the skills to increase the motivation of the people who report to them. The training department can also build employees' opportunity to participate – again, by training managers, formally or informally.
The AMO model, then, clarifies what we already know: the L&D department can help with organisational effectiveness by developing both employees' skills and by developing their managers to use these skills better.
But the model also suggests something else. There is another way that the L&D department can help with building both employee motivation and opportunity: sometimes it should refuse to carry out training. More about that in part two of this article.
Bennet Simonton , 15 August 2008 @ 15:22 PM Less Leadership and More Decent Management?
Less Leadership and More Decent Management?
That makes no sense since 95% of all employees are followers, more or less, and they follow the leadership of their bosses whether or not the boss wants it. If the boss' approach to managing employees leads in the wrong direction, performance suffers.
Leadership applies to people and denotes the sending of value standard messages to people which most of them then follow/use. Thus we say that they have been "led" in the direction of those standards. Leadership is one side of the coin called values, the other side being followership.
Leadership in the workplace consists of the value standards reflected in everything that an employee experiences because these standards are what employees follow by using them to perform their work. Most of what the employee experiences is the support or lack thereof provided by management - such as training, tools, parts, discipline, direction, material, procedures, rules, technical advice, documentation, information, planning, etc.
Leadership is not a process any manager can change. It happens inexorably every minute of every day because of how followers respond to management actions. The only choice available to a manager is the standard (good, bad, mediocre or in between) which he/she transmits to employees.
Because of these characteristics, "followership" turns out to be a major force in managing people. Those managers who take advantage of it can become extremely effective at "managing" their human capital.
Managers are at a disadvantage today since the advice they are being given is so bad.
To further understand good and bad leadership and how to do each, please google the article "Leadership, Good or Bad" and read it.
Best regards, Ben Author "Leading People to be Highly Motivated and Committed" Bennet Simonton
Andrew Miller , 03 April 2008 @ 07:18 AM P=AMO
Hi Donald
Thanks for the calrification on that. As an aside would not behaviour be in this equation somewhere? (P=AMBO). A persons behaviour drives what they do just as much as ability, motivation and oppotunity? Just a thought.
However, I don't believe that he originated the AMO model, which as far as I know comes from a 1989 paper by MacInnis and Jaworski, which used the model to explain user behaviour in reaction to advertising. Donald H Taylor
Andrew Miller , 01 April 2008 @ 19:06 PM AMO
I thought the 'AMO' concept was first devised by prof. John Purcell; then of Bath University; he defined performance as being P=AxMxO.
I must do some more research on this to find the correct source!
Ability is only one factor that influences performance, says Donald H Taylor. Motivation and opportunity also play their part – and that's where decent management comes in.
"Train one employee and you have helped them do their job better. Train a manager well, and not only have you helped him or her do their job better; you have also helped all their direct reports do the same."
