Portfolio thinking

The best courses, the best HRD programs have not delivered on their promised breakthroughs regarding performance. The efforts have mostly been of the back-end or push variety when they should be front-end or pull. The dampers on back-end approaches include low self-esteem of employees and reluctance on the part of managers to judge or parent adults in the workplace. It's a new world of work, in which the traditional boss-subordinate model just doesn't fit anymore. McLagan points out that people such as Deming and Drucker have been saying for decades that performance appraisal systems and other systems and processes cause more quality problems than individuals do-and that organizations are, or should be, communities of volunteers. In fact, the traditional backend approaches of the past can discourage teamwork and complex thinking. McLagan proposes a new mindset: portfolio thinking. It's characterized by a personal awareness of one's own contribution, value, and responsibility. Portfolio thinking requires individualized coaching, technology-based knowledge management, and a context-creating communication infrastructure. Shaping the framework for portfolio thinking can be a new role for HRD professionals, and they must encourage continuous, dialogue-based communication about the big picture a focus on personal and team goals fear-free feedback, learning, troubleshooting, and innovation. HRD people can be the architects of change by working with leaders to establish a participative, high-performance philosophy for the people part of their businesses, by automating as much routine HRD work as possible, by eliminating old mental models and providing new simple tools for self-management, and by helping people make the transition.