WMBA 6020 Week 6 Leadership Practices Design Example

Four Leadership Practices a Title Insurer Could Start Next Month, Each Paired With the Number That Would Move if It Worked: Opening Questions, Conditional Answers, Learning Reviews and Credit for Exploring

Student Name

Walden University

WMBA 6020: Fostering a Culture of Innovation

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Four Leadership Practices a Title Insurer Could Start Next Month, Each Paired With the Number That Would Move if It Worked: Opening Questions, Conditional Answers, Learning Reviews and Credit for Exploring

From Diagnosis to Design

Earlier weeks diagnosed three problems in the culture of Ashgrove, the made-up insurer whose title and escrow offices this course studies. New ideas stop at a single review step where the reviewer is rewarded for avoiding risk (Week 1). The organization rates low on creating change and on learning from errors, which enter the system as claims and are paid but never studied (Week 2). And the last manager whose idea was stopped saw her review fall, which taught everyone watching to keep quiet (Week 3). The idea pipeline drafted in Week 5 gives ideas a path. This paper designs the leadership practices that would make people use it.

Each practice below is specified in enough detail to begin next month, with the person who does it, when and how. Each is paired with an observable, a number that would change within two or three quarters if the practice worked, and a note on what would show it did not.

Practice 1: Regional Directors Open Branch Visits With One Question

Each of Ashgrove's five regional directors visits every branch in the region monthly. Today the visit begins with a review of closing volumes and cycle times. Under this practice, the first ten minutes of every visit are given to one question, asked of the whole branch team, not only the manager: "What is one thing that slows down a closing here that you would change if you could?" The director writes down every answer, says which ones will go to the idea pipeline and reports back at the next visit on what happened to each.

Detert and Burris (2007) studied voice in a large restaurant chain and found that whether a manager seemed open to suggestions predicted speaking up better than a transformational style did, largely because openness made speaking up feel safe. A director who asks, records and reports back is practicing openness in the most visible way available.

Observable: the number of ideas entering the pipeline from branches each quarter, and the share submitted by people who are not managers. If the practice works, both should rise within two quarters. If ideas rise only from managers, the question is reaching the room but not the people in it.

Practice 2: Underwriting Counsel Answers With Conditions

Underwriting counsel will continue to review every proposal that touches a policy. The practice changes the form of the answer. Instead of approving or declining, counsel replies with a written "yes, if" memo: the conditions under which the proposal could proceed, such as a disclaimer, a limit on the number of customers in a pilot or a reinsurance check. A flat no remains possible but must state which risk cannot be bounded.

This practice does not ask counsel to accept more risk. It asks counsel to make the reasoning visible, so that proposers learn what a successful proposal looks like and can return with one.

Observable: the share of counsel's responses that include conditions, and the number of proposals resubmitted after a conditional answer. Both start near zero. If the practice works, most responses should carry conditions within two quarters, and at least some proposals should come back.

Practice 3: Learning Reviews After Large Claims and Stopped Pilots

Today a claim is paid and logged as a loss. Under this practice, every claim over $25,000 and every pilot stopped at the pipeline's third gate receives a one-hour learning review within thirty days. The review is led by someone outside the branch involved, asks what happened, what the process allowed and what should change, and does not assign blame to individuals. Its single written output is one recommended process change, sent to the operations director.

Cannon and Edmondson (2005) traced the scarcity of learning from failure to the discomfort of each step, finding the failure, talking about it and working out its causes, all of which people and routines tend to avoid. A short, scheduled review with a fixed output makes those steps routine.

Observable: the number of process changes adopted from learning reviews each quarter. If reviews happen but produce no adopted changes, the reviews have become ritual.

Practice 4: Exploration Credited in Annual Reviews

The annual review form for every manager and examiner gains one item: contributions to exploring new ideas, whether or not the idea was adopted. Credit depends on the quality of the exploration, the evidence gathered, the risks named and the clarity of the recommendation, not on the outcome. The rule applies to work done through the pipeline's exploration stage.

Amabile et al. (2004) found that employees' perceptions of their leader's support were related to their creativity, and that those perceptions were shaped by ordinary leader behaviors such as how leaders responded to and monitored their work. An annual review is the most consequential response a leader gives. If exploration counts there, the message of the poster in every office finally matches the message of the review.

Observable: the number of authors of stopped ideas who submit another idea within a year. This is the most direct test of the Week 3 problem. If people whose ideas stop never try again, exploration is still being punished, whatever the form says.

Sequence and Cost

The four practices can begin together, but practices 2 and 4 depend on decisions above the regional level: counsel's reporting line and the human resources calendar. Practice 1 needs only the regional directors' agreement and can start within a month. The direct costs are small. The main cost is time: about ten minutes per branch visit, about an hour per learning review and counsel's extra time writing conditional answers, perhaps two hours a week.

What Would Show the Design Failed

If, after three quarters, ideas from non-managers have not risen, counsel's answers still lack conditions and no author of a stopped idea has submitted again, the practices have not changed the culture, and the problem is probably higher than the practices reach, in what the executive team itself rewards. That would be a finding worth having.

References

Amabile, T. M., Schatzel, E. A., Moneta, G. B., & Kramer, S. J. (2004). Leader behaviors and the work environment for creativity: Perceived leader support. The Leadership Quarterly, 15(1), 5-32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2003.12.003

Cannon, M. D., & Edmondson, A. C. (2005). Failing to learn and learning to fail (intelligently): How great organizations put failure to work to innovate and improve. Long Range Planning, 38(3), 299-319. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lrp.2005.04.005

Detert, J. R., & Burris, E. R. (2007). Leadership behavior and employee voice: Is the door really open? Academy of Management Journal, 50(4), 869-884. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2007.26279183