wjrmes-20years08

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THE 3D MANAGERIAL EFFECTIVENESS SEMINAR (MES):TWENTY YEARS OF TRANSNATIONAL EXPERIENCE

W.J. Reddin

Abstract The Managerial Effectiveness Seminar (MES) has been used in many countries including

those of the Third World. The identical seminar, with its precise timings and identical design, is used in

any country. It is six days in length, residential and has 50-100 hours of prework. The seminar design

is explained and related to how the design allows the seminar to be transnational. Key design features

include its underlying theory, its emphasis on effectiveness not profit, rigorous staff training, unusual

role of staff and control of the environment.

Some Evidence of Transnationality

The MES has been conducted in these countries: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada,Eire Ethiopia, Finland, Germany, Guyana, Jamaica, Kenya, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway,Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Trinidad & Tobago, United Kingdom, United States ofAmerica and Venezuela.

The first MES was conducted during May 1963 in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. Theparticipants were the top management structure of a 3,000 person power utility. The resultanteffects of that early seminar are well documented by the then CEO (Tweeddale, 1967), andreprinted (Reddin, 1970; pp. 317-25) and again reprinted in abbreviated form (Reddin, 1985; pp.

170-3).

One of our staff members, this year, conducted two MESs back to back in Ethiopia. They wantedtwo, and back to back, because of the overwhelming response to prior ones there. The seminarwas attended, in the main, by the most senior government and military officials of this Marxistcountry. About a month later the absolutely identical seminar, was conducted by the same staffmember for the CEO and supervisors of the largest cattle ranch in Texas, which is almost acapitalistic country in its own right. Both seminars were very well received as suiting the specificneeds of participants.

One of the worlds largest electrical equipment manufacturers with over 300,000 employees,

recently bought the rights for this seminar for use within their company worldwide. The companyoperates in over 30 countries.

The point to be made is that a management seminar can be made truly transnational. The argumentis not that they all should be, only that some can be.

Design Issues whic h have helped the MES become Transnational

There are several design issues which have helped the MES become transnational.

W.J. ReddinConsultores en Efectividad Gerencial, S. A. de C. V.Prohibida su reproduccin


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The theory: The theory surrounding managerial effectiveness is non-ideological. It does not pushfor one style rather than another or, even implicitly, push for one political philosophy rather thananother. It is a transnational theory of managerial effectiveness.

Managerial effectiveness first : The concept of managerial effectiveness, not necessarily profit, isthe starting and ending point of the seminar. This is clearly a common interest worldwide.

The detailed design: The seminar has been tested and retested over many years in manycountries.

Control of seminar environment: Most trainers believe in the concept of cultural island. Webelieve in it very much and take it very seriously. We aim for virtual complete control of theseminar environment.

Staff role and quality of training: We put enormous effort into teaching staff their role on thisseminar and improving them as trainers, generally. Too many have said to us that it is the besttraining experience they have ever had. This is from experienced trainers. What we say, basically,is Please get yourself out of it and let the participants get into it.

Introducing seminars in translation: There is a fairly simple method of introducing seminars intranslation as long as a few know the English language. They normally do.

Editing of seminar material: We make a very careful edit of seminar material so it does notreflect sexual differences, particular currencies, time frames, the value of effectiveness vs. profitsand status difference in organisations. All this obviously helps transnationally.

The Theory

The approach on which the seminar is based involves effectiveness, situation and style asrepresented in Exhibit One. Surely this idea is transnational.

Exhibit 1. The Route to Effectiveness

This can be read in either direction. Management style, essentially management behaviour, is aninput to a situation and if the style matches the situation, then effectiveness will result. Looked atanother way, effectiveness arises from the situation if the right behaviour is used. This generalapproach is referred to as the 3-D Theory of Managerial Effectiveness.

EFFECTIVENESSSITUATION STYLE


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Five situational elements: It is relatively easy to specify a variety of managerial styles and it is alsorelatively easy to be clear about effectiveness and its definition. What is much more difficult is to beclear about situation so that it is accepted transnationally. The 3-D Theory assumes that there arefive main situational elements each of which exert influence on a manager and each of which themanager may have to manage (see Exhibit 2). How well the manager responds to these situationalelements or how well the manager changes their demands will have a direct bearing on themanagers effectiveness.

FIVE SITUATIONAL ELEMENTS

Exhibit 2. Five Situational Elements

The situation is defined in terms of five situational elements: Organisation Climate, Technology,Superior, Co-workers and Subordinates. In order for a manager to be effective, it is necessary to beable to sense what each element requires. This is clearly transnational.

Common sense: The only problem with common sense in management is that it is not verycommon. Surely, one of the enormous strengths of Peter Drucker is that he writes common sense.His work is probably more widely transnational than that of any management writer. The 3-D Theory

attempts to apply common sense, as Drucker does. It is supposed to be common sense that appliesin any organisation at all levels in any country.

Beliefs inherent in 3-D: There are some beliefs which arise clearly from the basic structure of the 3-D Theory. These are:

Managerial effectiveness is the central issue in management.Behaviour must match situation needs for effectiveness to occur.

Style flexibility is the key to effectiveness.Unambiguous indicators of effectiveness must be developed and be under constant assessment.

Co-workers

Subordinates

Manager

Superior

Climate

Technology


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It is more effective to provide an opportunity for people to use what they already know than toteach them more.

Participative methods are advisable when the quality of the decision is likely to be improved or ifcommitment to implement the decision is likely to be improved.

Managerial Effectiveness First

One of the main reasons for acceptance of this transnational seminar is that the seminar itself doesnot put profit first. This must be left to the organisation as a function of organisation type andphilosophy. It might be a church or voluntary organisation. Marxist countries are quite willing to arguethe virtue of managerial effectiveness. For some political systems profit is obviously a virtue, forothers it is an anathema. But, all can accept managerial effectiveness.

It is apparent that managerial effectiveness is not a one sided concept; it is a value all countries canembrace. Whatever our personal values, objectives, moral philosophy, or political orientation,managerial effectiveness is a life-line. It says Use resources productively, waste less, and makework enjoyable and worthwhile. The question is not Should I be nice to people?, or on the otherhand, What rules should be followed?, but What does it take to be effective here? It says nothingabout More power to the workers or keep the workers down. It does not argue for higher profit. Itsimply says Measure managers by the extent to which they achieve the output requirements of theirpositions.

Potential for profit improvement: It is not the main intention of this article to indicate the potentialfor profit improvement by using the MES: However, in profit making organisations this is, of course, a

central concern. In one country, 1 of 10 divisions of Westinghouse, the Switchgear Division decidedto use the MES. All 10 divisions were of roughly, equal size, with about 1,000 employees each. Tostart, only one used the MES. At the start all had about a 6% return on investment. The one using theMES had a 36% return on investment about three years later while the others remained about wherethey were.

A large bank was actually embarrassed by its $ 100 million profit. It started using the MES. Five yearslater the profits were over $350 million. A small brewery of about 100 employees decided to use theMES. Their profits doubled over three years. Their sole competitor virtually went out of business andeventually sold out to a national chain. For some organisations, in some countries, profit is theorientation. In other types of organisations in other countries it has nothing whatsoever to do with the

effectiveness of the organisation. Profit is easy to measure, quality of client service is much harder tomeasure. This is the main reason that these indicators of profit improvement have been mentioned.There are, of course, dozens of other indicators of improvement.

The MES has not yet been conducted in any iron curtain country. Obviously, we hope it will be andbelieve it will be and see no reason why it should not be. The seminar deals with people andorganisations not with politics in any of its aspects. Peking is interested and a potential sponsoringnational institution asked whether the 3-D Theory and the MES would be a good way to improve themeasurement of the effectiveness of production managers. We thought this was a rather narrowexpectation but that may be where they are at the moment.


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The Detailed Design

The MES is a six-day, residential, instrumented laboratory. The seminar starts at 5.30 p.m. on the

first day, and ends at 12.30 p.m. on the sixth day. This time span normally covers Sunday evening toFriday noon. Hours are long. Each morning starts promptly at 8.00 a.m. in the main room. Teamsfrequently work from then until past midnight. About 80% of the seminar takes place in team roomswith five to eight managers, which approximates the usual span of control. Participants with closeworking relationships, such as superior to subordinate or co-worker may attend the same seminar,but are not placed together on the same team.

The MES confronts the teams with a wide variety of problems to solve, generally related to methodsof achieving managerial effectiveness through the recognition of the reality of a situation and the bestapproach to it. Teams solve problems in their team rooms, then meet with other teams in the mainroom to report on their decisions and to compare their effectiveness in making them and in reaching

them.

The objective of the MES is to internalise the skills, knowledge and beliefs of the 3-D Theory ofManagerial Effectiveness in such a way that they become part of the managers day to day worklife.The participants are provided with one central objective for the seminar in the opening minutes. It isThe objective of this seminar is to help you become more objective about your situation so you canengage it better and therefore become more effective. In short, overcoming distortions to engagereality.

The seminar is carefully designed so that while participants will perceive some of the issues raisedas mildly stressful, no participant will be unduly frustrated by the experience. No adverse effects have

been observed over the years the seminar has been conducted. The MES fosters independence.The manager is required to confront the situation and to decide to engage it. Staff are carefullytrained to avoid attempts by participants to transfer problems to them for solving.

In addition to being designed as transnational, the MES is specifically designed to be useful at allmanagerial and supervisory levels. In any organisation the identical seminar can be attended by theCEO and the lowest level supervisor. The absolutely identical seminar is used for CEOs, generals,admirals, high and low level civil servants, line crew supervisors, bottling line supervisors in abrewery, supervisors of cowhands on a ranch, PhDs and those with only a few years of anyeducation. One series of seminars was attended by the middle and top management of the largestweapon system designer in the world, about 3,000 employees and half had their PhDs. At this same

seminar were first line supervisors from a manufacturing plant. We believe they all learned a lot fromeach other. For reasons about which I am not quite clear the Jesuits have been interested in theseminar over a long period of time in many countries. The top Jesuit in Brazil has participated. TheJesuits in India wanted to take on the license for India. A few years ago I was giving a lecture at anAcademy of Management annual meeting and a priest entered the room; I said A Jesuit I presume?he replied affirmatively. The point is that the seminar is not simply transnational, it is translevel,transorganisation by types and, obviously, is transfunctional.


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Five Stages of Learning:

The seminar can be seen as having five stages in learning:

Prework: Each participant receives a prework kit. This consists of three texts, wall charts and aseminar workbook. The basic text is Managerial Effectiveness (Reddin, 1984). This explains the 3-DTheory and shows how it is applied to improve effectiveness. The general seminar workbookcontains questionnaires, style tests, effectiveness inventories, seminar tasks, case studies, teamdiagnosis instruments and other learning aids. Depending on the participants prior knowledge andindividual capacity and dedication, seminar prework generally takes from 50 to 100 hours tocomplete.

Days one and two: This is concept mastery. Participants work in teams to deepen theirunderstanding of the basic concepts relating to effectiveness, styles, situation and managerial

behaviour. Teamwork skills are also learned during this period. Regular reviews of individual andteam effectiveness are made.

Day three: This is case study application. Effectiveness concepts are applied to case studies sothe practical application is demonstrated and learned. This day transfers theoretical learning intopractical application. Team building skills are continually practised and reviewed.

Days four, five and six: This is application to self. The entire second half of the MES applieseffectiveness concepts to the participants actual work situation. Day four is spent on effectiveness,day five on managerial behaviour, and day six on situation management. The last three days arehighly involving for all participants. These three days end up with a detailed back home action planfor each participant.

Post seminar. This is on the job application. After the MES, managers use the conceptual andprinted tools the 3-D MES has provided. They may use them to redefine their position in output terms,to work with subordinates, co-workers and their superior on objectives and also to change their lesseffective behaviour, or they may decide to change their work situation.

Self Awareness

A key step in improving effectiveness is in facing ones own behaviour. If a manager believes that thestyle being used is relationships oriented when it is really task oriented, this distortion can only leadto lower effectiveness. The increased awareness needed is about ones own behaviour, ones own

situation and ones own effectiveness. The seminar accomplishes this by many techniques. Anobvious and fairly straightforward one is to provide a variety of tests which have good socialdesirability controls, so that it is a fairly easy matter to compare the managers own perception ofstyle with that of others on the seminar and with the reasonably accurate test itself. Anothertechnique is to review case studies, to decide on the styles being used and then to compare these

judgements with others on the seminar. The self awareness techniques are based very much ontested case studies and questionnaires and team discussion and agreement on results. In short, wethink the best way to lower distortion level is to encourage feedback from others on the reality of thesituation as presented. Obviously, this is precisely what we want to be used back home.


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Our Insistence on Design Integrity

Many of the worlds most sophisticated training centres are using the MES as designed. They felt noneed to redesign the seminar, that is, to add their egg to the cake mix. The reason they did not is thatthey were sophisticated. One user of the MES is the US Civil Service Commission who once spenthalf a million dollars on redesigning an appraisal form. They felt no need to redesign the MES but,rather clearly, they had the resources if they wished to do so. One of the longest users of the MES isthe highly sophisticated General Motors Institute at Flint, Michigan. It is essentially the G. M.University. They could have made anytime. They decided not to. They thought that the MES asdesigned was good enough. They have been our clients for over a decade. A worldwideorganisation, where 3-D was introduced by a team of PhD level occupational psychologists, decidedthat to buy was better. Obviously, they could have made. They thought on balance they would not.

Control of Seminar Environment

Many aspects of the seminar design, certainly including staff role, and the nature of hoteladministration, are deliberately designed to inhibit the manifestation of local cultural influences. Thereseems little point in attempting to convey what is meant by managerial effectiveness if there isabsolutely anything wrong with hotel administration, such as waiting for meals or if each day does notstart on the dot at 8.00 a.m., even though only one of the teams may be in the main room (you onlyhave to do it once).

Many key elements of seminar design serve to inhibit local cultural influences. These influences maynot be national but may be simply the differences between a steel mill and a bank in the same city.Some of these key design elements include that we insist on 100% detailed and complete control ofhotel administration. Our hotel guide is 14 pages long. We simply ask the hotel Can you deliver, ornot? We also ask them If things go wrong at any time of the day or night who do we call? Preferablythe owner. This tends to get their attention. Several individual hotels, and certainly hotel chains,have received over a million dollars in accommodation revenue directly as a function of the MES.This point, when made to new hotels really makes them co-operative. One hotel in the UK is in its16th year with us. One hotel in Canada is in its 17th year. We like them as long as we have completecontrol of the environment. We call the shots, not the chef, or the duty manager. A married team wereonce conducting the MES in a remote village in Argentina. As the seminar essentially runs itself, they

went shopping one afternoon. They went down the hill from the hotel. The shopkeeper saidsomething like Are you staying at the hotel? I understand the military has moved in and they will notlet anybody out.

Open-ended Hours

The seminar is deliberately and carefully designed to be open-ended in terms of hours. While italways starts promptly at 8.00 a.m., there is no formal close on any day except the last day at 12.30p.m. The evening tasks are designed to be relatively open-ended and somewhat difficult. This leadsto teams working very late, and we think, learning more. Teams have been known to work through


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the night, take a quick shower at 7.30 a.m., and be in the main room at 8.00 a.m. The staff knowwhen the team is in trouble when they observe an early close. That would be anything before 11.30p.m. There is, of course, no published schedule. There is little question that these design featureslead to teams learning more. They are asked to reach consensus and not stop until they do. Learningconsensus is very difficult and we think it is best taught by this type of method. Also, the long hourstend to fray nerves and sometimes this encourages openness much earlier in the seminar than mightotherwise occur.

In the early days we experimented at length with some nights off. It became pretty clear that therewas no learning on nights off. On incompany seminars what they do is to visit a participants roomand talk about their own problems incompany. Well, the seminar is designed to provide that anyway.In short, all of our staff believe that it is better to give no nights off and simply to work the groupthrough the whole experience with no spare time.

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