Modified Career Path Appreciation

Speaker A What I'm going to do is talk about the total battery that we use in the total process. And our objective is development. At ICAF are dealing with senior Lieutenant Colonels and with very young colonels who are transitioning from level three to level four. And it is a huge transition to move away from hands on to hands at a distance.

Speaker B What we need to do is change.

Speaker A Their thinking styles, the way they see the world, and the way they make meaning, where meaning needs to be made in complex situations. So what we've learned, I think, about the MCPA comes from that context and from the total battery that we use. Go fairly quickly there. I'm going to talk about the self assessment instruments. These are some of them instruments we've made, like we made team roles. That mirrors Belbin's team rose model. We use the Gordon, which is a licensed instrument. And next one. Yeah, thanks.

Speaker B Good.

Speaker A I'll call for it. By and large, what we've done is a lot of analysis on the scores that we get from the various instruments and how they relate to one another. By using instruments that give us different measures of the same construct, we get several different looks at what the construct is supposed to be.

Speaker C Next one.

Speaker A When we factor analyze our battery, we have about 28 different measures in the self assessment battery. When we factor analyze that, we come out with five primary factors that we've labeled at the left, and they relate very well to the big five, which I've labeled on the right.

Speaker C Yeah.

Speaker B This is the graphic that we use for feedback.

Speaker A Now, that's a very complex graphic. We require that our faculty provide at least a one and a half to two hour, one on one feedback session to discuss the results and to discuss the meaning of the results within the developmental plan the student is supposed to develop and the student's further course. I'm primarily interested right now in that originality grouping because that's where the MCPA falls. That's labeled as the EWP best there, but that's the MCPA score.

Speaker C Next.

Speaker A The originality cluster is these variables here. The team roles detail is a negative indicator, which is to say, someone who is high in originality almost inevitably doesn't like to get into the trivial details of the work. And I've said a pejorative statement right there for which I apologize. Someone who's high on details typically is not particularly high on originality.

Speaker C Next.

Speaker A Now, I don't know if you can see these numbers in the back. Okay. What I have shown these for is simply to show the relationships between the MCPA and the other indicators of originality. Now, this is construct validation. It's asking, what is it that we're measuring? And here comes heresy. It has been assumed that the CPA and the MCPA measure capability, and I'm not dead sure that that's correct. So we will have the burning at the stake a little bit later. But in the meantime, look at the correlations between the MCPA and other indicators of information processing style. As for example the in preference in the MBTI or the profiler. And other indicators like tolerance of ambiguity from one of our other measures. And openness markers. Markers. Very strong correlations. And these are robust correlations. They'll occur time and again, one class to the next, one population to the next. That one merely says if you're planning to that complicated one there simply says that if you are doing talent pool work, it works. You can select individuals for developmental assignments and it works. But we already know that. But here are some conclusions that I'd like to talk about and it sort of gets toward what Theo is going to tell you later, much more professionally in better detail. I don't think the MCPA measures capability. It probably measures a proclivity. You can spot that anytime you look for it. This is someone who has intellectual curiosity, who's interested in wrestling with the bull. Where do I find the meaning here? And the understanding? And the meaning and understanding are intrinsically rewarding to the individual. So this is a self motivated process that leads over time to the development of a broader understanding of a broader range of things. In our general officer sample, what we found is that they were prolific readers. And you may very well find in your research with level Seven and level six executives that they also are prolific readers. They will range outside their discipline areas.

Speaker B In order to build their worldviews.

Speaker A They're making sense out of complex situations. Gary Klein developed a theory about recognition primed decision making. I develop a template which I apply to the situation and if it registers, then I know the situation and I know what to do. We think that works at the abstract level also. So your more senior level individuals have developed complicated templates which they then apply situationally to understand what's going on. If you interact with top level executives, one of the things that's always impressed me is how quick they are to understand a complicated situation. Maybe they have more horsepower than I do, but I think they also have broader templates. Now I also think that if you have a competent administrator, the CPA then can wind up measuring capability, or the MCPA either. But then I think the administrator is the instrument and not the instrument itself. So this speaks to the terrible importance.

Speaker B Of being sure who is administering these.

Speaker A Who'S doing the feedbacks, and how well they understand what they're doing with the tool they have at hand. Okay, next one and some cautions. What we have found in our work at ICAF is that it's possible for someone to be too high on a measure. Now, it seems almost counterintuitive that someone could be too high on capability, and I'm not sure that that is so. But on some of the other indicators, for example, we recently did an assessment of an individual who was failing in his very high level job. He was an extreme extrovert and had an extreme in preference. He lacked the fundamental personal discipline to make sure that means and ends came together and to discipline the innovations that he wanted to initiate in his organization. So that's a thought. It could be a disruptor frame of reference. Development takes a lot of time, so if you find someone with high potential, it's possible to move them up too fast. It's necessary to have the amount of time required for them to build a frame of reference that can serve as a template for handling the complexity of the level to which you're projecting them. And finally, the point that I've made before the absolute essentiality of a competent administrator who has sufficient grounding in the theory and sufficient experience, but also who has the sufficient cognitive complexity to be able to see the complexity with which he or she is dealing.