Freedman Re Interpreted

A COMMENTARY ON FREEDMAN’S CROSSROAD MODEL Introduction In 1997, at the annual meeting of American Psychological Association, Arthur M Freedman presented a structured model of organizational growth of an ambitious individual, from lowest rungs up to the highest ones, through an article titled “Pathways and Crossroads to Institutional Leadership”. The model gained quite an amount of weight-age amongst the leading organizations across the globe and many of them have implemented the basic concepts described in it, mostly tailored to their own structures and systems. As the model describes, the process of growth passes through four 135-degree “crossroads” or shifts and five pathways or levels. “These critical career crossroads”, in the words of Freedman, “consist of discontinuous and unprecedented changes in the role responsibilities and accountabilities to which managers in transition must respond. At each crossroads, people are confronted by a triple challenge: letting go of the anachronistic responsibilities and competencies, preserving those that continue to be useful, and adding new, discontinuous responsibilities and consequences. Mangers in transition can cope with these demands by making adaptive changes in their preferred activities, behavior patterns and style.”

Institutional Leader I

Executive Manager of Several “Businesses” III Manager of a single “Business” II

Supervising Manager I

Individual Contributor

Figure 1

Add On Preserve Succeeding Developmental Phase

Let Go Preceding Developmental Phase Figure 2

Commentary on Crossroads 1st Crossroad: It’s a shift from you as an “Individual Contributor” to your promotion to what Freedman calls as the “Supervisory Manager”. The “Individual Contributor’s role”, though typically is the entry level position for a fresh graduate, this can mean the “only position” for many! At this level, you are doing a specialist’s job and many people want to stay specialist! That’s why Freedman uses the phrase “Ambitious and Upwardly Mobile Person” again and again. Only such person would like to make a shift. In many organizations, there is an honorary position called “consultant”. Normally, this is a senior person, almost retired, but is required to be retained in case of some advise on some critical issues. Such a person, as per Freedman’s Model can be positioned as the “Individual Contributor” only. In the normal hierarchical structure, when an individual contributor is supposed to be promoted to a higher position*, it should not mean just to handle more special jobs himself, but rather “get them done” mostly through other people. These “other people” can be a few level down or up or equal to his newly acquired position. The method can be either to command or collaborate, depending on the situation and work content. Moreover, he himself must undergo some behavioral as well as functional transformations. For him, the work is now a complex chain of people and processes in which he is one of the links. Functionally, he looses visibility of the activities at the micro-level; so he has to devise indirect ways to control them. My experience is that no ready-made supervisory skills are useful. The person himself has to develop them based on his own behavioral traits and the company culture. Again, the man is luckier if he gets promoted in his own area where he was working until then, else, there are several cases when the person finds himself elevated in an unknown area! These shifts can be from R&D to Marketing, from Production to Stores or from Servicing to Sales. In this case, the “let-go” and “preserve” components of Freedman’s 135-degree shift are nothing to do with the functional skills but only with the behavioral skills of the person.

* How to identify such a person amongst his peers? Freedman has given some guidelines, but as per me, it has to be left to the next level bosses and their own judgments!

2nd Crossroad: This is the shift to what is conventionally called as the “middle management”. The psychological aspects of the person start playing a vital role for all the levels hereafter. Ambiguity tolerance, Judgment, Perseverance and Integrity, are the few as listed by Freedman. This is the level when many people start reading Stephen Covey’s “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”! This is the level when people get interested into figures(though not develop authority on it), such as “profit loss” calculations, “Performance Index” measurements and so on. For the first time, the need is felt to understand and get aligned with the organizational vision. A sense of diplomacy gets developed. At the same time, this is the position where many people suffer from sever frustrations and boredom. The work-life balance may get disturbed. To some extent, attrition is more in this zone. In a way, this position is similar to what psychologists call as the “mid-life” crisis for men and women. That’s why, this is the stage, where extensive and periodic training and executive coaching is necessary. 3rd Crossroad: This is a transition from the middle to the top management level. The person has to work directly under the chairman or corporate board or the owner. This shift can be (and many times, is) cross-organizational. The position is more or less “exposed” to the outside world, public interests, government, stake holders etc. In a way, you have all chance to become famous! One of the significant prerequisite competencies at this stage is to develop nonlinear, intuitive thinking, as Freedman mentions. Now, this is a tough job! The question is whether such kind of thinking be “learnt automatically” through experience and contemplation or “taught deliberately” through training? Illogical as it may seem, the first alternative is more realistic. There are a few methods, tools and techniques which help to learn to “think intuitively”. But they may turn out to be ineffective if the person has not internalized the lessons of real life. The elements which are counterproductive to such kind of intuitive or free thinking are pressures from all directions and the anxiety about the consequences of the decisions taken. 4th Crossroad: It is the peak of the pyramid. Here is the chairman or CEO of the company. As Freedman rightly says, the selection process is mostly political. At this level, however, a paradox exists. The position is actually concerned with people, whereas for many CEOs, it is “complained” that the company exists only on papers! And this must be true to some extent. At this level, one can and should be involved only to develop, review and calibrate or modify the strategies, policies, vision and goals. Then there are venture negotiations, branding and image building issues. Acquiring government supports, handling litigations, raising money, managing investments and controlling cash flow are as inevitable. Understanding future trends, judging the competition in the market, tapping new opportunities ( not necessarily for diversifications) and performing public roles are the other few work domains of this position. This way, the operations become more or less “abstract” at this level.

Even, the money becomes “virtual”! So, it’s no surprise that the people element of the organization practically gains a kind of “paper existence”!

What it means to us So these are the main crossroads which almost everybody needs to “negotiate” at each level shift. Conceptually, Freedman is not proposing something fundamentally new. But the core agenda of his presentation is to develop the understanding that there are discontinuities of functional and behavioral skills at each level, that it is important to identify what is to “let go” , what is to “preserve” and what is to “add on”, and that the organizations should develop and implement a practical and well defined system and process for the growth of their people in the benefit of the organization. One of my friends in KPIT Cummins was telling me the other day that they made it compulsory for the team managers NOT TO DO ANY TECHNICAL JOBS! Every such activity was to be delegated to the sub-ordinates and the managers ought to do only the managerial part of it! Now, this sounds quite in line with the Freedman Model. Of course, before one goes even for consideration of adopting the Freedman’s Model to some organization, it is very much essential for that organization to ensure that its own structure is in place and if not, to establish a new one. Many a times, the virtues as expected by the Model may appear to be quite idealistic or theoretical. But then, it’s not all impossible to find a few of them inherently in an individual, then nurture the ones which are missing but are necessary, through training , mentoring or hands-on interactions, and lastly , to compromise on the ones which are highly impossible to expect with the understanding that they may really be impractical. One of the benefits reaped by implementing the Crossroad Model is to establish a fairly just system of rewards, recognition, promotion and reprimand. One can then evaluate his subordinates more objectively and on the grounds of previously agreed and mutually shared understanding of role responsibilities and expectations at each level.

A small variant of the Freedman Model The model can also be applied to the domains and areas other than the industries or businesses. But to do that, it may be helpful to introduce a few key parameters which will provide the basis on which each Freedman-level can be saliently distinguished. They are as below: •

Visibility Level of the End Process or Work Activity(V) The more one traverses towards the higher levels, the lesser is the visibility of the micro-level activities. To operate at higher levels, therefore, one needs to derive some indirect ways to manage the things.

•

Time Vs Impact Criticality of Decision Making (T)

Time to take a decision depends upon the span of “Impact-Space” occupied by the implementation of that decision. At lower levels, you have more Time-Impact space to take decisions. At higher levels , it may appear that the decisions are taken very slowly, passing through meetings after meetings. But when you understand the “ImpactSpace” occupied by its effect, then it becomes clear how little decision time was available at the time of taking the decision. •

Risk Involved in Decision Making (R) As is clear from above, the risk involved will be in proportion to the impactspace. It is more at the higher levels.

•

Liability(Responsibility) of other people (L) With more people depending on you, the more is the responsibility carried by you.

•

Intuitive Thinking Ability Required (I) The higher the level, lesser is the visibility of the actual situation on the field and lesser is the information available for taking a decision. In that case, one has to take the decision based on his intuition or judgment.

The above parameters can be applied on a scale of 1 to 10 as per their relevance at each level . Let’s call this system of rating as VTRLI system. Now let’s consider 2 cases. First, a Family System. You may find it interesting to know how we can categorize our traverse through this system, as below:

Institutional Leader

Now Children have Children. You are a total Family head

Executive Manager of Several “Businesses”

Manager of a single “Business”

Supervising Manager

Individual Contributor

Now Children Get Married . Staying with you.

Married, and having a child

When earning, Now Married, No child

When earning, but Unmarried

Now the VTRLJI rating at each level can be as below:

LEVEL LEVEL LEVEL LEVEL LEVEL

5 4 3 2 1

VISIBILITY 1 3 5 6 7

TIME 6 6 7 7 8

RISK 9 8 7 5 3

LIABILITY 8 5 3 2 1

JUDGMENT 9 8 7 5 3

INTUTION 9 7 6 4 2

This is just a sample rating. You may have your own views.

Second, consider a Transport System.

Institutional Leader

When driving an Airplane Transport carrying many people

Executive Manager of Several “Businesses”

Manager of a single “Business”

When driving a Public Road Transport carrying many people

When driving a 4wheeler carrying 4 persons

Supervising Manager

When driving a 2wheeler carrying a person

Individual Contributor

When Walking

Now the VTRLJI rating at each level can be as below:

LEVEL LEVEL LEVEL LEVEL LEVEL

5 4 3 2 1

VISIBILITY 2 4 6 7 9

TIME 2 4 4 5 9

RISK 9 8 6 4 1

LIABILITY 9 8 4 2 1

JUDGMENT 9 7 5 4 1

INTUTION 8 6 4 3 1

Again, this is just a sample rating and you may have your own fun!

The above two examples and the new system of rating the Freedman levels are developed primarily to understand the crossroad model. They also indicate that the Freedman model can be open to it’s own variants to make it suitable to your own organization.

Written by : Shirish Kulkarni Proprietor ,TRANSFORMAN CONSULTING, Pune (The writer is having a 16+ years of Industrial Experience. He has worked as an employee for 12 years in a Consumer Electronics Company , in various capacities from a Design Engineer up to a Project Manager. He had been to the countries such as Japan, Singapore, Hongkong and China while handling the responsibilities of Product development and Project Management . Presently , he is active as an entrepreneur in the field of Embedded Systems Development and the Corporate Training and Mentoring at various organizations.)