Focusing Change To Win Series – How Can You Lead to Thrive?

Posted on January 20, 2015 by agincourtarcher

Series Introduction

This is the eighth in the series of highlighting contributions from 1072 Business Leaders and Consultants from 80 countries in 19 Industry Sectors detailed in our book Focusing Change to Win. Each blog gives some of the key findings and a sample of useful tips. In this blog we are focusing on How Can You Lead to Thrive? Here are the other book sections we are highlighting:

8. How Can You Lead to Thrive?

Clearly from this survey, leadership skills that focus change to win are at a premium. Today, change is the norm. It is neither random nor regular but hovers somewhere between. How these interrelationships arise and how they challenge organizations is not well understood (IBM & KMPG Surveys endorse this)

Why should leaders focus on their organization’s essence?

An organization’s essence is the amalgam of mission, vision, values, intent and ethics. These components should be the focus of aligning and realigning people rather than delivering the corporate directives after a strategic planning retreat. Sustaining an organization’s essence is a dynamic that requires everyone’s engagement to define and redefine under changing situations.

It’s only by leaders “inter-reacting” that they can develop people’s shared clarity about the organization’s essence – “what we stand for!” From shared clarity comes confidence, from confidence comes cohesion and from cohesion comes the freedom to decide and act. That’s how organizations will stay on track today. Many people making many decisions true to their organization’s essence.

It’s also expected that some employees (including some executives) will not “buy into” an organization’s Essence once it is clearly defined. Leaders should then be ready for those employees and managers to transition out of the organization. This will benefit them and organizational cohesion

What are the dangers of using technology to increase control?

Technology increases the illusion of greater control which can feed a leader’s “Control Addiction”. More measurement equals more control. But measuring what is easy to measure can have the very opposite effect. The problem is that most of what is easy to measure has already occurred. What is difficult is dealing with the factors that are difficult to measure and with forecasting what is likely to happen down the road. We can’t spend more time looking through the “rear view mirror” when we have a winding road ahead of us. Technology’s cheapness and speed feeds this addiction with the past and “looking in the rear view mirror” by access to ever more data and information at the cost of acquiring knowledge and wisdom.

This condition is worsened by technologists clinging to largely sequential design and deployment processes which are not fully user or client inclusive, e.g. “Waterfall Process”. Contrast this with agile processes which are fully supported by our contributors. See the link to comparing the Waterfall Process with Agile Methodologies.

Why do we have difficulty developing leaders that can thrive in today’s conditions?

Today’s conditions are not good proving grounds for the leaders we need. More of doing more with less, multi-tasking and the growing doubt that we may be doing the wrong things means that decision-making, and expectations are now more compressed. Consequently, entrenched expediency leads us into solving one problem so quickly that we find we have now created five more problems. We are so busy trying to solve problems there’s no time for “Where the hell are we going?” These conditions are not good for selecting or developing leaders who can work well under fluid and complex conditions.

How do we develop leaders that can thrive?

The tension between what Leaders want to achieve and their current culture prevents traditional leadership training from making a significant impact. For example, many leaders’ previous training has left them feeling that they could do a better job doing it themselves. Of course, too often this has not happened together with little sign that they have addressed their own or their junior leaders’ performance issues. The consequence is that leading up to a change they lack confidence and skills to handle the natural uncertainty that change creates. Consequently, they default to avoidance and expediency and as a result staff resistance rises morale suffers.

The conclusion is that Leaders need to develop a better framework to assess their competence to lead people, make the next and later changes more effectively.

In this section we outline how leaders can be developed to increase their chances of achieving both measurable short- and longer term results than traditional leadership training. It is based on approaches:

Aligning People – Getting people on the Same Page
Action Learning – Solving Difficult Problems while developing leaders’ skills

A Final Thought

Our position is that it’s only by energizing people and harnessing technologies better than anyone else that organizations can survive and thrive. Genuinely aligned, empowered and collaborative people will outperform the competition every time. A leader’s role is to create successful change that fulfills people and avoids human casualties. Leaders need to create working relationships that are rewarding not just superficially productive.

Action Points 7: Leading to Thrive

A Leader’s greatest impact is when they motivate their followers to action by appealing to their shared sense of their organization’s essence. Use these questions to rate your leaders’ abilities:

To what extent do your leaders focused on developing rewarding not just working relationships?
How reliant are your leaders on “command and control”?
How well do they really engage those they lead?
How well do they foster a culture of collaboration? Consider both internally and externally.

Leading to the Essence

Do your people know what your organization stands for? Specifically:

How well understood is the organization’s essence? (mission, values, intent and ethics)
How well aligned are my people with the Organization’s Essence and where it’s headed?
To what extent do leaders use the essence to guide and coach their people?

Developing Leaders

To what extent are you distributing and empowering leaders at all levels.
What evidence do you see of true “inter-reaction” where success and failure are openly discussed?
To what extent do they then take lessons learned and use them to repeat success and avoid failure.
How well do they use processes to help people stand back, objectify problems and make people’s thought processes transparent?
To what extent does the urgent drive out the important and mask how things accumulate, misalign and make each subsequent more difficult?

Problem Solving

How often do your leaders try to solve complex problems with processes geared to “benign or simple problems”?

How often do leaders face complex or wicked problems?

Leading Learning

What expectations do we have of people to develop shared knowledge from similar situations?
How much effort have you put into helping people express being puzzled or misunderstood?
How well do they lead people on tackling problems and solutions by sharing understandings, resolving differences and producing agreed courses of action?
How well have leaders, especially senior leaders, consistently expressed their expectations of learning to all levels across the organization?

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Developing Leaders for Effective Change

Posted on January 6, 2015 by agincourtarcher

Leading in times of transition is at best a significant and complex challenge. At worst it can be a leader’s darkest nightmare. The tension between what leaders want to achieve and their organization’s culture often means that traditional leadership training has not equipped leaders to effectively lead the organization through major changes.
Too often previous leadership training and a history of failed change contribute to the tension between the forces for change and those for maintaining the status quo. Unfortunately, as each attempt to use training to improve leadership competence fails so do the chances of successful change decline.

One reason leadership training lacks impact (no matter how good) is the lack of rigorous and continuous linkage between advancing change and advancing competence. Consequently, leading up to a change, those expected to start the change become part of the problem, not the solution. Too often they are unable or unwilling to tackle rising uncertainty and resistance.

How can you re-engage managers and develop their leadership competence?
This blog looks at how you can develop both measurable short- and longer-term results based on:
1. Getting People On The Same Page by Aligning People and then;
2. Making Better Use of What You Have by using Action Learning to help managers solving difficult problems while developing their leaders’ skills.

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Focusing Change To Win – How Effectively Are You Communicating Change?

Posted on January 6, 2015 by agincourtarcher

Series Introduction

This is the seventh in the series of highlighting contributions from 1072 Business Leaders and Consultants from 80 countries in 19 Industry Sectors detailed in our book Focusing Change to Win. Each blog gives some of the key findings and a sample of useful tips. In this blog we are focusing on How Effectively Are You Communicating Change? Here are the other book sections we are highlighting:

7. How Effectively Are You Communicating Change?

The following is based on 684 contributors who chose to add comments on communicating change. Unsurprisingly, contributors see their people at the heart of any successful change process. They see gaining stakeholder commitment as a force multiplier of powerful change ambassadors. Essential to creating that commitment are leaders taking their people into their confidence with honesty and courage.

Surprisingly, however, our analysis also sheds light on some blind spots. Overall, contributors focus more on technique than systemic or strategic issues when communicating change. For example:

They (Leaders) lack the ability to motivate or hold people accountable….they do a poor job at this…..lots of saying nothing….People are told, not asked.

Change Communication Blind Spots

How do communicate change. Zone of Concern Chart

Real change requires authentic communication and dialogue across all organizational levels. Although, employee’s resistance and disagreement are unavoidable, contributors show how it can be managed through multiplexed and constant communication. They stress that this only happens when change communication is centered on establishing and retaining trusting relationships. If employees feel fairness, they will trust more and trust is the glue of success.

So, what role does communication play in reducing change mistrust and cynicism among employees? Frequently, it’s people’s sense of fairness. The communication timing, involvement and sequence impact their sense of justice.

Where’s the Requiring Environment?

There seems little focus on improving alignment and change success. Issues like change management, communication, and change measurement were under 6% of contributors’ comments on communicating change.

Looking in more detail, a third of contributors said that they didn’t know of any change related communication or that their leaders don’t communicate enough.

For most contributors, real change is the outcome of authentic communication. They show how change can be managed through constant communication. Contributors often commented that trust in management was the only variable that significantly impacted change resistance.

However, comments on authentic communication and building trust seem to collide with those related to top down led change. Critical contributors point out that top down rests too often on leaders clinging to the belief that power, privilege and success lie in their core group. Whatever blend of top down and bottom up it is clear – one should be intentional and as one contributor said:

Being solid in the values you hold as a leader that needs clearly articulating and solidifying with your change management team before you start planning.

Our contributors are clear. Lay the groundwork for successful change before trying to carry out the next change. This starts with putting the change management team together before a specific change is planned. Then develop a shared governing set of values and design the change measurement framework.

Implementing Effective Change Communication Processes – A Questionnaire

This 38 question instrument was developed from 755 contributor comments on implementing an effective communication change process. It is designed to engage those involved in change management and leadership in selecting relevant questions and then reaching a consensus on improvement areas.

Analyzing Change Impacts
Set-up Change Program with Metrics
On-going Communication & Training

Action Points 6: Implementing an Effective Change-Communication Process

Based on your answers to the questionnaire above, use the following questions to develop your plan for developing effective change communication.

Have you established an explicit set of shared governing values?
How are you getting people ready for the inevitable change?
Have you engaged stakeholders and change agents?
Have you put the change-management team together?
How do plan to align the team’s values of change and their expectations of one another?
How are you going to improve leaders change communication skills?
Who is going to ensure that real change will be the outcome of authentic communication?
How are you going to ensure that all your people know and understand your change rationale?
How are you going to monitor employee’s sense of fairness and trust? (Remember: trust is the glue of success.)
How are you going to establish dialogue between groups and individuals, in often tense situations?
How are you going to establish and monitor your change’s requiring environment? Is there a set of aligned change expectations between leaders and each individual?

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Focusing Change To Win – Is Your Organization Thriving or Just Surviving?

Posted on December 9, 2014 by agincourtarcher

Series Introduction

This is the sixth in the series of highlighting contributions from 1072 Business Leaders and Consultants from 80 countries in 19 Industry Sectors detailed in our book Focusing Change to Win. Each blog gives some of the key findings and a sample of useful tips. In this blog we are focusing on Is Your Organization Thriving or Just Surviving? Here are the other book sections we are highlighting:

6. Is Your Organization Thriving or Just Surviving?

This in-depth analysis shows the wide range of factors that go into developing the Thriving Organization. Our intent in being comprehensive is deliberate. We want leaders to select which questions are most appropriate to them.

Our reasoning is that there are no simple solutions or steps to follow. What we urge is open debate in leadership teams to reach a commitment to those few things which can make a difference between being ahead and just playing catch up.

Thriving or Surviving Questionnaire

Enabling Factors

There are 69 questions to select from divided into seven categories to help as you develop your plan for building a more vibrant and competitive organization.

Leadership in Thriving Organizations
Change Management in Thriving Organizations
Planning to Thrive
Agility to Thrive
Thriving People
Communicating to Thrive
Learning to Thrive

Action Points 5: Developing the Thriving Organization

Based on your answers to the questionnaire above, use the following questions to develop your plan for developing a more vibrant and competitive organization.

Leadership in Thriving Organizations

What is the one thing you can do to improve your leaders focus for your current change?
What is your strategy for building leadership capacity and competence in the longer term?

Change Management in Thriving Organizations

Which aspects of change management do you need to address now?
What are you going to do differently in managing change in the longer term?

Planning to Thrive

How can you improve planning for change for the next time?

Thriving People

In terms of the current change, what can you do to focus people on making this change successful?
What is your focus going to be in improving peoples change readiness and agility?

Communicating to Thrive

Where do you need to focus in terms of improving communication?

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Focusing Change to Win Series – Why Bother Measuring Change?

Posted on November 11, 2014 by agincourtarcher

Series Introduction

This is the forth in the series of highlighting contributions from 1072 Business Leaders and Consultants from 80 countries in 19 Industry Sectors detailed in our book Focusing Change to Win. Each blog gives some of the key findings and a sample of useful tips. In this blog we are focusing on The Why and What of Change. Here are the other book sections we are highlighting:

Why Bother Measuring Change?

Most of our contributors do measure change, but 37% either don’t measure change or they don’t know if they do or feel measuring change is too difficult. So, here’s some evidence why this is worth struggling with. For example, learning is the most mentioned benefit of measuring change (27.1%). Yet, if this is so important then why the lack of focus on vehicles like coaching, mentoring and training to capitalize on this learning.[3]

Another striking disconnect is the low numbers of those who see benefits of measuring change’s impact on marketing and customers. This is curious, as our contributors’ most common reason for losing customers is not price but poor quality (92.2%), poor follow-up by sales people (76.5%) and making the wrong assumptions about customers (64.5%). After detailed analysis, it would seem that the relationship between change and competitive advantage is not as clearly visualized as one might think.

In addition, the use of employee metrics including personal performance, resistance to change, improvement to company culture and understanding our purpose, are low compared to satisfaction surveys. Most concerning is the lack of focus on individual behavioral change and tracking pay-related rewards. This is further evidence of little focus on accountability and establishing a requiring environment

Even when metrics are agreed upon, the next challenge is creating greater transparency so that they are used to create and sustain change momentum.

What Questions do Change Metrics Need to Answer?

Overall, there needs to be more focus on developing effective change metrics. The challenge is: How well do your change metrics accelerate learning, problem solving and decision making?

In Section 4, we distilled contributor questions on what they need change metrics to answer into a questionnaire. We ask readers to go through and rate their current metrics under three sections:

Navigating during a Change
Reviewing a Change
Planning the Next Change

Our contributors suggest establishing a change scorecard with their leadership team and key stakeholders. For example by:

Agreeing on those questions which the team needs to answer
Deciding what current metrics could be put to good use
Assessing during the change process how well they cover the risks of losing customers through poor product or service quality and poor sales follow-up.

And finally……Asking how well your scorecard helps you sell this and subsequent changes?

Action Points 3: Developing More Effective Change

Metrics

Protocol

Three themes were referenced in contributor comments about change metrics and how to test their overall effectiveness.

How well do your change metrics accelerate learning, problem-solving, and decision-making?

Establish Your Change Scorecard

It is strongly suggested that you go through this process with your leadership team and key stakeholders. (See section 7 for more details.)

Review the table Contributor Questions.
Agree on those questions your team need to answer when you are doing the following:

Navigating a change
Reviewing a change
Planning the next change
- What current metrics could be put to good use?
- How well do they cover the risks of losing customers through poor-quality sales follow-up during the change process?
- How well do they inform you that the organization is reducing assumptions about customers’ view of the change and how the change responds to their needs?
- To what extent do your selected metrics allow you to preempt or least respond quickly to competitors
- How well do these metrics allow you to gauge and track employee stress around the change?
- To what extent will your metrics allow you to respond quickly and effectively to employee stress before it hardens their change resistance?

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Focusing Change To Win Series: How is your “What” connected to your “Why”? – Setting-Up Change For Success.

Posted on October 14, 2014 by agincourtarcher

Series Introduction

This is the second in the series of highlighting contributions from 1072 Business Leaders and Consultants from 80 countries in 19 Industry Sectors detailed in our book Focusing Change to Win. Each blog gives some of the key findings and a sample of useful tips. In this blog we are focusing on The Why and What of Change. Here are the other book sections we are highlighting:

How is your “What” connected to your “Why”?

We take an in-depth look at how our contributors improve their chances of thriving, by communicating in ways that build trust and engage people. For these contributors, communication must constantly focus on the Why of Change & What is Expected and what the change is not about. This is the Change Expectations Framework. It engages deeper understanding and helps everyone manage stress more effectively.
Note: You may think everyone does these three steps, you are probably wrong at least 70% of the time according to studies over the last 10 years. Here’s why it is even more important today. Most contributors (89%) say that their organizations change at least every 12 mths . These changes are driven by 3-4 simultaneous reasons for change . All these changes should have three things in common. What you expect people to:

Stop doing, (so that they can start doing new things)
Start doing, and
Continue doing

How often does your organization initiate change

Yet, this survey’s findings show that contributors rarely mention all three in the same contribution. Why is this important? It creates increased stress and potentially change resistance. It works like this.
Assuming we are always managing change with limited resources like people, money, technology and time, leaders have to manage the tension between these three elements of stop, start and continue. Then, after deciding the commercial need for change, leaders need the Emotional Intelligence to identify which groups and individuals are likely to experience unhealthy stress and resistance.
This underscores the need for leadership consensus on why are we changing. For many contributors, leader inconsistency fuels people’s natural resistance . The ever-increasing rate of change demands that leaders give clear and compelling reasons for employees to overcome their feelings of here we go again . Unfortunately, we conclude that too many leaders either ignore, or are unaware that change will be stressful for their peers and employees.

Contributors readily see the need for change to adapt, survive or improve. The world’s ever-increasing pace demands that leaders give clear and compelling reasons for employees to overcome their feelings of here we go again. That response begs the question: What can leaders do about this condition. What follows are some thoughts.
All those implementing change know in advance, to some extent, that a change will be stressful and that not everyone will be willing to engage. For example, people often work well under certain stress to increase productivity. But, under other circumstances, they are surprised at the stress that another aspect of change can induce. So, stress can be negative, positive or neutral. For example, passing in an examination can be just stressful as failing. The problem occurs when people are under excessive or prolonged stress – Unhealthy Stress. The challenge for change leaders is that stress is unique and personal. A situation may be stressful for someone, but the same situation may be challenging for others.

Action Points: Reducing Employees Stress to Manage Change Resistance

Most contributor responses indicate that their organizations change anywhere from daily to annually. These changes are often unique to the organization, the triggers for change, and how change is managed. Yet all change has three things in common.

The Three Common Elements of All Change

Defining your own change and how it is managed starts with the following:

Identifying what you expect people to stop doing, so that they can start doing new things
Specifying what you expect people to start doing
Confirming what you want people to continue doing, while continuing to coordinate and keep the organization running.

Focus on communicating constantly the why of change and what is expected for your change to be effective and communicate what the change is not about. This is the change expectations framework, which engages deeper understanding and helps everyone manage stress more effectively

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Our Corporate Ebola is Failed Change

Posted on October 7, 2014 by agincourtarcher

Just like the disease, corporate change has a 50% mortality rate

Boise, Idaho, 10/07/14 – Local management and organization specialist publishes a fascinating new book Focusing Change To Win. It provides a prescription for combating the risks inherent in organizational change. Risks like poor revenues, lost opportunity, competitive vulnerability, increased employee cynicism and fear. The endemic nature of these risks led Nick Anderson and his Nigerian co-author Kelly Nwosu to ask:

Why do some companies thrive on change while other just survive?

Answering this question led to a global study of 6000 comments from 1072 business leaders from 80 countries in 19 industry sectors with over 10,000 years of change management experience provided some powerful and practical advice and tools.

To reach this point, you have to go back to Nick’s experiences with failed change. The list, many of us can relate to includes:

“Am I going to have a job tomorrow?”
“Why did they let Sue go?”
“How am I going to tell Bill he hasn’t got a job?”
“What am I going to do?”
“We tried this before…”
“This (change) is only for them …..not us?”

Since those early days, his work with organizations across the business and public sector encountered a litany of failed change. His ongoing research shows survey after survey reporting that “People are the problem” (as the main reason). Percentages of failed change continue to this day ranging from 40% to 80% and many commentators agree that more changes fail than succeed. Only last September the Project Management Institute’s 2014 Report found that 56% of projects fail to meet their goals.
What is really thought provoking is that Nick and Kelly’s book show that there are those who do get it right.
But, really, isn’t comparing failed change to Ebola ridiculous? Nick Anderson doesn’t think so. The cost of a failed change can be staggering. Organizationally failed change can be fatal to both the organization and their people. Individually the stress of failed change permeates people’s lives, emerging as cycles of addictive behavior, broken relationships and financial hardship. For example, one Swedish study showed increases of heart disease was linked to poor leadership. Job insecurity has been linked to several different outcomes, such as:

Negative attitudes towards work
Turnover intention
Health complaints.

Data from 400 nurses at a Swedish acute care hospital showed that job insecurity affects stress even after taking account for individual characteristics. (Naswall,Sverke & Hellgren)
A 22 country European study concluded that while job loss is traumatizing, it is not common. In contrast, the fear of job insecurity is widespread and its health impact is as bad as losing your job (Mathilde Godard). Or, how about a German study which concluded that after the 2008 recession

“People fearful of losing their jobs are 60% more likely to develop asthma”.

Closer to home, studies from Texas A & M and University of California add weight to the endemic nature of this corporate virus.

So, what can we do about this disease?

Clearly, the last 20 years demonstrates:

Current Theories and prescriptions are not working or user friendly.
The reliance on imported change processes alone are less effective.
Leaders are facing greater complexity, accelerating change, greater competition and more knowledgeable customers.

The critical point of staving off failed change is to recognize that there is no “cookie-cutter” “quick-fix”. Importing new theories from outside an organization increases people’s natural resistance. It truncates thinking about “why will this change work for us?” and creates divisions between the “Importers” from the rest of the organization.
So, this book advocates using facilitated discussions, questionnaires and other tools to engage people in creating their own change approaches, processes and protocols. You may be thinking.

“Why not use what’s worked from outside” “It’s cheaper and faster etc.”

Here’s what the authors concluded. Excluding people from deciding how their organization handles change risks creating greater resistance and less sustainability. Fundamentally, it excludes middle level leaders so they cannot develop to their leadership skills and risks their resistance to the point of ensuring that change will fail.
Those who thrive on change really understand this. They recognize that so many “imports” are too often seen as disrespectful of people’s skills and expertise, especially when those people have experienced failed change. Importing prescriptions needs far more thought on how to reduce the toxicity of past failures. So, why is this book important for leading successful change?
As Bill Connors, President & CEO, Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce) said:
“Focusing Change to Win is a must read and reference for business people regardless of their company’s size. Whether you run a family business or public corporation, this book has thought provoking tools and questionnaires you can use immediately. Nick Anderson and his co-Author Kelly Nwosu have done a masterful job in distilling over 6000 business leaders’ comments into such a practical set of tools. If you want your next change to be successful, this is essential reading.”
To find out more go to focusingchangetowin.com or amazon.com. Also Nick will be at the Boise Chamber of Commerce for a book signing on Wednesday 29th October from 8 am to 10 am.

For more information,
Nick Anderson
(616) 745-8667
nanderson@thecrispianadvantage.com
For more information on 10/06/2014:
http://focusingchangetowin.com

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Using Behavior Analysis to Impact Sales Revenues

Posted on March 3, 2014 by agincourtarcher

How can sales trainers and managers use BA to boost sales?

Observing and assessing what people to say and do in given sales situations is not new. It can have a powerful impact on sales effectiveness when done well. From sales ranging from inside to field sales, from direct to indirect, from simple to complex it is not so much which is the best system but which is most appropriate for the job you need to do. What follows is an overview of the case for BA in improving sales performance.

Why measure what people say or do?

Many of us are unaware of how skilled we are and, more importantly for development purposes, we are very often unaware of exactly how we produced such skilled purposes. We could, of course, ask skilled performers how they have reached their level of ability. Unfortunately, many of their highly skilled performances are by now unconscious with apparently little effort or planning. In fact various research studies of expert performance skills – music, sport, selling has shown such analysis can be really misleading. The prize though is worth it. Moving Your Bell Curve If we can analyse top performers and are able to develop those skills in others the pay-offs are often double digit sales revenue increases. For example, in my own sales productivity projects, with a range of clients, have produced sales increase ranging from 25% to 100% using a BA based approach.

Clearly, if we want to illuminate why some people are more skilled than others we need to measure what is going on. A crucial factor is to make sure there is a balance between sales outcomes (Lagging Indicators) and the sales behaviors/process used to achieve such results (Leading Indicators). This balance shifts as the complexity and length of the sales increases. It becomes crucial to know how more skilled sales people achieve sales progress, such as:

Get invited to bid
Gain customer’s agreement to visit a reference site
Help the customer develop their RFP

If you are interested in having Nick speak to your organization fill out this form.

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How do you ensure New Hires can develop Sales Mastery?

Posted on January 29, 2014 by agincourtarcher

Being competitive comes from people who are well aligned with their organization’s intent and mission. If you take that extra care to recruit and select such people, my question is:

How easy is it to waste the opportunity you have created?

Certainly, having faith that “they will get it” is not a strategy. Without real investment of your time, onboarding will be hit and miss. So, let’s look at that investment and how best spend time with New Hires. Continue reading →

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So, You give them $1000 per head for sales training and a month later the give you $130 back – What!?

Posted on July 25, 2013 by agincourtarcher

Crazy as this seems, surveys and research show this is a common outcome.

There’s got to be a better way to ensure sales executives get a return from their sale training projects. We need to raise the bar in how we select Sales Training providers?

A poor investment?

What follows is my personal quest for improving the outcomes of such projects

Three reasons kept surfacing in conversations with sales managers:

1. How Much People Forget.

No matter how well we train sales people and they say they get it, typically most value gained erodes inside 30 days (80%+ is typical)

2. How hard people find it to change their natural behavior

They get frustrated easily, after seeing the value of change and experiencing progress during a training program, they slip back to their default behavior – their comfort zone.

3. Even when trained well, coaching is too little and too-outcome focused. And again people revert to their default behavior pattern.

Our experience is not unusual. All those trying to gain competitive advantage for their companies recognize these problems.

So, we discussed

Why aren’t things improving?

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Realigning Schools for the New Normal – The Administrator’s Challenge

Posted on August 30, 2012 by agincourtarcher

Introduction

At school and district levels, managing scarce resources to sustain or improve results has never been more Multiple Choice Testing challenging. Striving for consistency and efficiency builds tensions between those who care most about equipping children for an uncertain future.

Increasingly critical eyes on the education system advocate blunt instruments like “stronger management”, more top-down management, tighter controls, and simple incentives. This is surprising since such methods are failing the private sector by dispiriting and limiting people’s contribution. So, why should we expect anything different in education?

This is aggravated by the economy. We simply don’t know what jobs will be there in twenty years. Today, apart from a few core skills we cannot know what knowledge or skills will be needed in the future.

The consequences are that teachers complain that their jobs, while rewarding, are getting harder because of too few resources, too much paperwork, crowded classrooms, students with emotional problems, low pay and high-stakes standardized tests.

Isn’t time to realign administrators, unions, teachers, parents and students? The realignment is from teaching a curriculum more efficiently, to one of inspiring lifelong learning to thrive in a rapidly shifting economy.

Here’s the case for realignment Continue reading →

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Change Management Fallacies – Survey

Posted on June 19, 2012 by agincourtarcher

The continued high failure rates of implementing change owe much of their origins to the fallacies of change management and how people view research (based on Korzybski). We would like to know how prevalent these fallacies are in your organization’s leadership team.

Please read the following and then click on the link to complete the survey.

Complete the survey

1. Over-Simplification: The belief that complex organizations mirror what their leadership think .

“I think we have a pretty good handle on what people think, we don’t need a survey to tell us what we already know”

2. Re-definition: A propensity to cast strong sub-cultures as sources of weakness when they may in fact contribute to the organization’s identity.

“It’s the field technicians that’s the problem. They are still resistant to the newer products ans systems”

3. Missionary zeal: The belief that a complex community can be converted to a single purpose that overrides its fractional – often factional – interests and perspectives.”

“I am sure when the see the case for this change they will come along”

4. Displacement: the attribution to cultural causes of structural weakness. It is not the values but the organisation or control system that is faulty.

“You know if we had a fully integrated reporting system I think we could overcome many of communication problems”

5. Scapegoating: The attribution of group’s values to responsibility for failure.

“It’s sales responsibility to ensure good customer follow up but they just don’t seem to care and want to go on to the next deal”

6. False Attribution to one cause what is due to many causes. E.g.

“they didn’t adopt the new technology because they weren’t computer savvy”

7. Discounting: Concluding that because one factor plays a role, another does not; the fallacy of drawing negative conclusions from positive observations. E.g.

“Our exit interviews show that people are leaving for higher pay and so it’s not anything that management can do differently”

8. Myopia:The idea that change management can divorce the individual from their working environment. E.g.

“People are change resistant because they don’t like the new curriculum”

9. Gut over Data: Drawing conclusions on implied assumptions that when explicitly stated are rejected. E.g

“Yes, I know that’s what your findings say but I think it’s really a recruitment issue”

“You can prove anything with statistics”

10. Politics: Many assumptions influencing reasoning are of the hidden, unconscious type. E.g.

“When we presented our findings only Joe and Lisa said what they felt, the rest just looked uneasy”

11. Hereditary: Demonstrating that a characteristic is hereditary and not alterable by the environment E.g.

“We found that traditionally main land Chinese expect a “thirteenth month’s pay before Chinese New Year, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“We wouldn’t have any of these problems if we could get more mid-westerners with their good work ethics”

12. Environment: Demonstrating that a characteristic is altered by the environment and claiming that it is not hereditary. E.g.

“We are getting more quality problems since we installed the new line. It’s the new displays they don’t understand”

Since all important human characteristics are environmental, therefore environment is all-important, hereditary unimportant, in human affairs E.g.

“It’s not so much their experience that matters it’s how they are led. We need our leaders to lead not shilly-shally around having more team meetings”

Great, but how can this help me?

This is probably the first thing on your mind after reading this Blog.
How about asking us? The first call is free! Just email me to set it up.
Don’t wait, get The Crispian Advantage working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching improve bottom line results.
If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.

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_________________________________________________________________________
For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page
Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage

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© Copyright All Rights Reserved, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds, [2010-2012]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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Why do people resist change? Leadership Survey Findings (1072 managers, 510 CEOs, 80 countries)

Posted on March 15, 2012 by agincourtarcher

Here’s the first findings from research conducted jointly with New Catalyst.(http://changeisessential.com)

Click Video link to view Nick Anderson position the upcoming publication of the full research report – Stategies for Managing Change and Winning in Todays Competitive Environment

Since change management came into fashion, a litany of failure has left its mark and our respondent’s echo what many have gone through in the last 8 years. It seems through their eyes, resistance has to be viewed as a “brown field” site. Gone is the naiveté of “a job for life” and an enduring contract between leaders and other stakeholders. Now, change is synonymous with downsizing, doing more for less, etc. For these respondents, they paint a picture of failed change, broken trust, fractured communication and poor leadership. We summarize their comments into the following:

Cultural Toxicity of Failed Change
“If people don’t trust you, what change do you stand?”
“People can’t be bothered”
“What’s in it for me?”
“Not knowing the purpose of it all” – a litany of communication failure
Poor Leadership embeds and accelerates resistance

Continue reading →

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Avoiding the Pitffalls of Strategic Planning

Posted on January 26, 2012 by agincourtarcher

Introduction

Getting people focused and committed on implementing a strategy has never been more difficult as von Moltke said:

Strategic plans do not survive first contact with the enemy, and hence must be always open to revision.

In today’s competitive environment every action has many reactions that aren’t easily anticipated. This is probably a major factor why 60% of change initiatives fail in North America and why something is going wrong with strategic planning.

One area that many executives either ignore or only pay lip service to are the cynicisms that previous initiatives strategic planning have accumulated in the organizations psyche. Here are some that you ignore at your peril

Crucial to understanding your people, as Peter Senge describes, is identifying where people are on the apathy-commitment continuum. He identifies two areas of personal need that they want satisfied in their working lives:

personal benefit which comes from compensation, benefits, position, recognition, or other non-tangible benefits
personal sense of fulfillment of their life’s purpose, vision, or calling.

Leaders need to grasp how well each person’s attitude and their contribution is met directly by company goals or objectives. Then they can assess where people sit on the apathy/commitment continuum. Any misalignment between personal needs and your strategy will generate unproductive or counterproductive behavior, if not actively managed

Continue reading →

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Getting Competitive in Turbulent Times

Posted on January 19, 2012 by agincourtarcher

Introduction

The avalanche of data at ever increasing speeds creates greater corporate ADHD. The result is decision making suffers from “24×7 news cycle” thinking where now is better than later. Competitively, it means increased market stress and rapid cycles of wicked problem solving. So, what can we learn about remaining competitive?

It’s 20 years since I produced my Masters Thesis on managing change for competitive success based on Pettigrew & Whipp’s research of the later 80s and 90s. Since that time, strategic planning was reborn in the 1990s. New approaches for strategy focused on growth through mergers/acquisitions and joint ventures, generation of innovative ideas through decentralized strategic efforts within the company, emergent strategy, and the leveraging of core competencies to create strategic intent. By the start of this century the focus shifted to strategic and organizational innovation, including reconciling size with flexibility and responsiveness. New alliances mean cooperative strategies, complexity, changes in commitments of corporate social responsibility, etc. Today’s strategic planning and execution requires new models of leadership, less formal structures, and more commitment to self-direction.

Unfortunately, both strategic planning and implementation’s effectiveness leaves a lot to be desired with 60% of all change initiatives failing. Sydney Finkelstein summarizes areas of most strategic planning failure: launching new ventures, promoting innovation and change, managing mergers and acquisitions and responding to new environmental pressures. So in this era of dramatic change, global alliances, and a variety of environmental pressures, the potential for failure is very real.

This blog looks at what leaders need to consider to avoid being another survey statistic.

Continue reading →

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If people don’t trust you, Change will Fail?

Posted on January 9, 2012 by agincourtarcher

On both sides of the Atlantic, the employment compact is fracturing along the lines of manufacturing outsourcing, poor change communication and inconsistent leadership. The bottom-line is that “doing more with less”sounds macho in closeted executive strategy sessions. The reality is that those who get the work done feel the stress of over-work and unabated insecurity is eroding trust in their leaders.

How close are we getting to the “old lie”?

Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori.( Translation: “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”

Wilfred Owen – Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori – it is sweet and right to die for your country. In other words, it is great to work your butt off and then a get a pink slip

North Americans grow more cynical of being asked “go the extra mile” with even fewer resources. As a result, change resistance is increasingly more complex and individualistic.

This fracturing eats away at competitiveness. The leadership challenge then is to repair, build and protect the trust people have in their leaders and other functions.

In North America, over the last ten years I have conducted expectation alignment projects in very different organizations like Royal Bank of Canada, Qwest Telecommunications and Turner Construction. In every project, leaders consistently under-estimated the gaps between:

What they expect of their people and what the people actually think is expected of them.
What they think people expect of them and their people actually expect of their leaders

In all projects, leaders had 65%+ more expectations than their people were aware. As you read on you will see that my findings are disturbingly endorsed on both sides of the Atlantic.

Continue reading →

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Key Account Management Series: Why are Sales Compensation Hydraulics Still Leaking?

Posted on November 29, 2011 by agincourtarcher

1. Introduction

I developed this as a discussion paper for a client’s European Sales Management Effectiveness Project. The interesting perspective is how the issues raised in the early 90’s are still validated by Deliotte’s 2010 survey of 250 Sales VPs. It begs the question:

Why are Sales Compensation Hydraulics Still Leaking?

1.1. How do you design a good sales compensation plan?

Specifically, a good plan:

Uses performance metrics that drive the company’s overall strategy;
Ensures roles, skills, selling, processes, internal culture, etc. are consistent with the overall sales force strategy
Are mechanically sound ; and
Can be administered efficiently.
Fits for your sales organization?
Can be administered with existing people, processes, data, and technology

(The following is based on Frank Cespedes book Concurrent Marketing, The Management of Major Sales (Neil Rackham) and 2010 Strategic Sales Compensation Survey by Deloitte & Varicent)

1.2. Compensation Hydraulics springs a leak

Since the mid 90’s the great bulk of literature still emphasizes what might be called

“Compensation Hydraulics”: Push this pay lever and get this kind of behavior.

This type of thinking fails to recognize that sales compensation is dependent upon, data analysis, strategy, values and human motivation. Many forget to ask:

How should we pay our customer facing people? (Which inevitably involves a range of business issues?)

Continue reading →

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Developing Sales Coaching Expertise: Learning from the Masters

Posted on November 4, 2011 by agincourtarcher

(Journal article by George M. De Marco, Byan A. Mccullick; JOPERD–The Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, Vol. 68, 1997)

I like this article as it challenges some of the more superficial approaches to training sales managers to coach. It is a challenge that so many duck and as I wrote in Quality Sales Managers Matters:

#1 High-performing sales manager’s impact reps engagement and financial performance. Reps reporting to great managers report high job satisfaction with four times more revenue than those working for poor managers.

#2 Coaching Is King—The manager activity most linked with sales rep success is coaching. However, their coaching ability to coach individual sales reps is the weakest.

#3 Who they coach is selective— Coaching low or star performers does not statistically improve performance. Core performers, the 60% center of the performance Bell Curve make significant improvements with coaching.

#4 Effective coaching hits the bottom line. Core sales reps receiving great coaching reach on average 102% of goal in contrast to sales people reporting poor coaching who achieve only 83% of goal. Good coaching can improve core performance by 19%. This is lower than with PDS’s and Huthwaite’s sales productivity projects (18%-30% sales increases)

#5 Great Coaching Is a Learned Skill—Quantitative analysis shows that five elements account for 77% of coaching effectiveness. Armed with this information, we can develop great coaches by focusing them on specific activities such as emphasizing the importance of targeting the best opportunities and spending at least three, but no more than five, hours coaching each rep per month.

The characteristics of coaching expertise, research into coaching effectiveness, coaching expertise, and expert performance in other domains, a profile of expert coaching has emerged. – Five distinct Characteristics

Characteristics of Expert Coaches

1. Extensive, Specialized Knowledge

All around understanding of the internal and external sales environments

2. Organize Knowledge Hierarchically

The ability to store and organize information as learning patterns which allows them to compare idealized performance standards with the present performance of their people.

At its core the experts are superior planners and evaluators. E.g. expert gymnastic coaches used a model to determine and plan for their athletes potential developing short- and long-term goals being set and periodically reset according to the athlete’s progress.

Another study compared 10 expert and 10 novice basketball coaches. The results indicated:

“..experts had more in-depth and detailed planning protocols, with more augmentation, sub goals and anticipated problem statements than novices. They planned practice sessions in bigger chunks, taking into consideration more components of the problem at one time” (p.215).

3. Highly Perceptive & Superior Problem Solvers

Experts are uniquely capable of accurately perceiving stimuli in game situations. They can sort important clues from other “white noise” and then generate superior responses. They can see how all the pieces fit together to help their athletes to plan, diagnose and strategize more effectively. The experts solve problems more methodically

4 Accurately assess and prescribe performance

This positively impacts the quality and quality of coaching during practice. Basketball experts spent 42% of their time in instruction In another study, expert coaches gave significantly more feedback.

Expert coaches are able to detect what people need to know and then find ways of supplying that information.

5. Exhibit Automaticity During Analysis & Instruction

Several studies on coaching effectiveness showed that coaches of less satisfied high school teams often interrupted the flow of practices to instruct, whereas coaches of satisfied teams typically provided instruction as they played.

Commentary of Summitt’s coaching:

“provides succinct and rapid-fire instructive and prescriptive feedback during play”

6 Self-Monitoring Skills

Experts are more self-aware, analytical, evaluative and corrective of their performances. They are driven by the desire to improve their own coaching performance

Developing Expertise in Coaching

Gain More Knowledge
Study successful coaches
Identify the important. Organizational skills are critical to effective coaching. Keep yearly, monthly, personal records
Stay perceptive, recognize problems early and solve them quickly.
Concentration is a must – focus on the task at hand and don’t let yourself be interrupted or distracted. When analyzing a skill performance, focus only on one aspect of the performance, not the whole skill.
”The sooner the coach can analyze skill problems, the sooner the will move to the expert level”
Identify & solve problems in a rapid, complete and correct manner demands skill that continually needs to be developed
Increase short- and long- term Memory – A great distinction between the experts and others
“the ability to acquire, retain and apply knowledge”
Make it Automatic – develop practice routines, warm-up drills, pre-game activities
Regularly monitor and evaluate your own coaching

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An Approach to Solving People Problems

Posted on October 23, 2011 by agincourtarcher

INTRODUCTION

People problems are very varied; they can also be complex. There is no all-embracing theory for
understanding them and no magical formulas guaranteed to solve them. The problem-solver, where people problems are concerned, must be an experimenter. There are, however, a few guidelines which, if observed, will help to save the problem-solver from wasting time and effort on ultimately unprofitable activities.

Continue reading →

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Vision: The Guidance System for Partnering

Posted on October 23, 2011 by agincourtarcher

Introduction

Developing successful partnerships can only be accomplished if there is a strong and shared sense of vision. It is the cornerstone, and launching point for successful partnering efforts.

Visioning in a partnership if different form other uses of the word. It is much more than a defined set of shared goals and aspirations. It exists to offer a tangible guidance system which provides direction to both parties and helps them carry out their larger goals. Such a system enables partnerships to overcome obstacles and achieve results. When they lack vision they tend to drift around, or fall apart.

Continue reading →

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Managing Change for Competitive Success – Questionnaire

Posted on October 21, 2011 by agincourtarcher

Managing Change for Competitive Success – Questionnaire

This interview structure is designed to help interviewees talk about their principles and core values about leading which guide their behavior at work. In each section, interviewees are asked about their proposals for change and how they should be implemented and then asking why they feel implementing such proposals are necessary. It is this “why” question which is the most important. It is the answers to these “why” questions that particularly should allow comparisons between each interviewee’s guiding principles and values of leading, in specific situations. It should then help us decide how we are going to develop a coherent sales strategy by understanding what people mean by:

“building a rich, engaging purpose”
“creating more effective management processes”
“developing their capabilities and broadening the way they look at the world of work”

Continue reading →

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Leading in Complexity – Discussion Starter

Posted on October 21, 2011 by agincourtarcher

Introduction

This discussion starter gets leaders thinking about leadership and help them move toward consensus before starting a major change initiative. (For more in-depth discussion please go to the Leading in Complexity Blog Series).

A critical issue is helping the team to “walk through” the range of relations they will meet managing change, dealing with the practicalities and intricacies
of people, departments, factions and geographies.

A large part of the task is not just ensuring leaders understand their change environment but that the organization can continue to learn and act on over time.

Continue reading →

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Effective Communication & Perception – Why is this so difficult?

Posted on October 18, 2011 by agincourtarcher

INTRODUCTION

Accurate communication can be defined as

“an idea transplant from one mind to another”.

Unfortunately, between two minds there is often a breeding environment for misunderstanding and distortion. It’s where phraes like “I don’t think we are on the same page”

originates. Many factors influence such distortions. These include:

style and structure of the communication
social climate between the sender and recipient of a message,
integration of the message with other experience and learning
motivation of the recipient to listen. Continue reading →

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Presenting a Persuasive Case – How do you sell an idea?

Posted on October 18, 2011 by agincourtarcher

INTRODUCTION

A frequent and often crucial situation in management today is one in which one person is seeking to persuade another to accept proposals for change. This situation commonly occurs when a subordinate presents a case to his or her boss.

Unfortunately, people usually spend a great deal more time and effort in collecting supporting facts and figures than in planning for the face-to-face interaction on which the success of the whole exercise usually depends. Careful consideration of interactive strategy at the planning stage can both assist in the selection of effective arguments and result in more persuasive interactions.

Feature Dumping

This discussion of the issues involved concentrates on persuasion in the boss-subordinate context; but the principles considered apply equally well to any situation in which one person is seeking to gain the co-operation or the consent of another.

Continue reading →

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Complexity, the New Normal! 1: Aligning Leaders for a Complex World

Posted on February 20, 2011 by agincourtarcher

Every one faces complexity driven by uncertainty and accelerating change. It is the “New Normal” making leadership more demanding and in demand.

Listen to the Radio Show

Leadership on its Head

Accelerating Complexity places extreme demands on leaders. The leader’s ability to relate, energize, and develop their followers is critical to empower them to act without direction. It’s a competitive imperative and requires a new balance of more effective and affective leadership. It’s the ability to produce results by being affective. That ability to influence people, in the way they think, feel and act is now paramount

As Peter Senge said Leaders “…cannot afford to choose between reason and intuition, or head and heart, any more than they would choose to walk on one leg…”

So, this month I deal with what leaders need to do – the easier bit. Next month, I cover the tougher piece on how leaders need to lead transformationally.

Continue reading →

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Getting People on the Same Page – Preparing for Change

Posted on February 2, 2011 by agincourtarcher

Listen to the Radio Show based on this Blog

In this blog I want to focus on Preparing People For Change by over viewing improving people productivity and it’s connection to gaining people’s commitment.

Why is this so important as we climb out of this recession?

It’s a good question…over the last 15 years the odds of making a successful change in North America haven’t changed appreciably. Two thirds of change initiatives fail, including family businesses trying to pass on their company to the next generation. Number 1 reason executives surveyed said “People”

What is your take on the reasons for such a high failure rate?

The performance challenge is greater than ever. How you rebuild and lead an organization to perform near its potential is even more difficult today.

As Tim Kite of Focus3 Consulting says:

It’s challenging because an organization is the sum of its parts piecemeal improvement doesn’t address the organization’s system. To meet this challenge you need to be really clear on the difference between performance drivers vs. performance indicators. Too many people focus on the numbers and too little on Drivers:

20 Communication Channels to Get Aligned

• Key Drivers produce performance

• Key Indicators only measure performance (even well designed ones)

• You can’t manage indicators only drivers can be managed
There are Five Drivers that cover your business system

• People – Selection, Development & Retention

• Culture – Clarity, Consistency & Connection

• Strategy – Value Proposition, Marketing, Sales Customer Care, Financial Goals

• Processes – Work Flow

• Structure – Organizational Design, Role, Relationships

When you align these Five Drivers you need to ensure that:

Culture aligns and motivates people,
Strategy delivers in line with Customers needs,
Systems delivers high quality consistently,
Structure empowers people and smoothes workflow
People Driver recruits, develops and retains the right people.

How do you assess if these drivers are broken or needs repair broken?

Let’s take costs. To manage costs effectively across the Five Drivers you need clarity as to what are Core and Non-Core expenses or to put it another way what directly contributes to Top Line revenue vs. the cost of doing business which only indirectly contributes to revenue

Core Expenses are what drives Top Line Sales Revenue

So, Core and Non-Core Expenses first. You are likely to find functions which are internally misaligned present opportunities for improved productivity. Coupled with this is looking at inefficiencies when functions work collaborate with each other

Consider a company with nine functions, such as Production, Marketing, Finance. How many communications channels? You have 9 functions with 9 communication channels less 9 channels within each Function = 72 Communication Channels

Additionally, within one function say you had 50 people 2450 channels potentially.

As you look at these channels you find inefficiencies. Friction between Finance and Marketing is not unusual. So, what happens to communication flows? Communication reduces and fall back on being formal and response times get slower. We call these Expectation Gaps

Expectations Gaps Are like Pot Holes. Fill them quickly before damage occurs

It sounds like they don’t know “who’s on first” and even if they did no one is holding people accountable good starting point?

Exactly. It’s like many poor performing teams at least one of the following will apply:

•      Four Team members called Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody.

•      There was an important job to be done.

•      Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it.

•      Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.

•      Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody’s job.

•      Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it.

•      It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.

How expensive is that?

What signs should look for to see if think is going on?

“That’s not what I meant…”

“This is not what I asked for!”

“My colleagues don’t seem to do what I expect…”

“They never tell us the whole story!”

“I can never do anything right!”

“They never send us information; we’re always sending information to them!”

Sound Familiar?

Yes, I know several organizations where those examples would get a lot of nodding. Do you have any idea what misalignment costs?

60%+ of change initiatives fail in North America

70%+ of leaders expectations are
not understood by their people about a major change

In the last 12 years, 2 in 3 failure rate has not changed Harvard (1996) to McKinsey (2009)

Executives surveyed continue to say the number one reason for such failures is PEOPLE. It really goes into the millions and can close businesses. In one survey 134 public companies average cost of failed IT projects was $12.5m. This does not account for the cost to their cultures and people.

What are the human costs of misalignment?

With misalignment the first to go is Trust coupled to a Fear Of Conflict. When these two exist, a Lack of Commitment grows and its partner Avoiding Accountability rears its ugly head. Finally, silos are reinforced, people do what they have always what they have always done and improved performance doesn’t happen. As these dysfunctions grow over time you will find that the 8OOlb Gorilla feeding on what’s left of your enabling culture.

800lb Gorilla of Mislignmenton a rich culture of unstated expectations and assumptions.

How many of these are due to people not being on the same page?

In our projects 70%+ of leaders’ expectations of each other and those implementing a change have not expressed. Apart from unstated expectations, how do you identify poor expectations

The biggest culprits are the expectations are ambiguous, lack specificity which leads to disappointment, failure and bad feelings etc. here’s some typical language that predicts performance improvement failure:

• “Soon…….”

•      ASAP

•      “Right Away….”

•      “I’ll Try To Get To It………”

•      “Later….”

•      “By The End Of Next Week

So, Practically what can people do about this when they hear language like this?

First get key players get them to articulates and record expectations then apply:

“The three most important rules in creating accountability cultures are:

Specificity, Specificity, Specificity

Dealing with Expectations Gaps

1. Which expectations gaps are barriers to improving performance and reducing expenses?

2. Who do you need to gain agreement from?

3. Once agreed, ask them to tell you what evidence you will see that your expectation has been met?

4. Then, hold them accountable – “Inspect what you expect”

5. Then, what do you think others expect of you that is connected to these gaps?

6. Now, repeat steps 2,3 & 4

Have you done any projects locally where you have helped fill such expectation gaps?

Ken Genzink, Genzink Steel tried twice over the last five years to reduce his operational management of the Family Steel Fabrication business. On both occasions he had to reengage to save the business.

As says in his testimonial, “I realize now more than ever that many decisions and observations were assumptions”

This resulted in problems like:

• Job Shop Scheduling software didn’t work

• People were cynical about it ever being useful.

• Structural Steel side of the business was losing money due to poor estimating

• Difficulty in retaining skilled people

The Implementation consisted of the following activities:

• Developing a vision for change to reduce dependency on the

• Owner’s day-to-day management.

• Isolate key Alignment Components and their definitions which Ken Genzink saw as crucial to achieving greater market responsiveness and help him devote time to his other businesses

• AlEx™ was then configured specifically for Genzink Steel. AlEx™ is an Automated Accountability Tracking tool that identifies expectations gaps and monitors people’s progress in filling them.

Ken now works at another location devoting the time he needs to the other Family businesses. Gross Revenues have steadily increased from $20 to $30m, and

Genzink is now on the acquisition trail.

“104 jobs: Genzink Steel Supply and Welding Co., maker of metal wind turbines, and other fabrications”(GR Press Aug 2008)

Tip of the Month

If you are getting people ready for change

My Expectations of Others

• What I expect you to keep doing

• What I want you to start doing

• What I want you to stop doing

Others’ Expectations of Me

• What things I think others want me to keep to keep doing . . . .

• What new things I think others want me to start doing . . . .

• What things I think others want me to stop doing . . . .

Then meet with those who you need to implement your change and compare your answers – be prepared for surprises.

Listen to the Radio Show

Great, but how can this help me?

This is probably the first thing on your mind after reading this Blog. How about asking us? The first call is free! Just email me to set it up. Don’t wait, get TCA working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching improve bottom line results.
If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.

_________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________
For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page
Nick Anderson, Senior Partner, PDS Group LTD
E-mail I Web I Linkedin

© Copyright All Rights Reserved, TCA and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds, [2010-2011]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nick Anderson, PDS Group LTD and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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Top Down or Bottom Up – Making Change Personal

Posted on November 22, 2010 by Terrance Merriman

By Contributing Blogger – Terry Merriman, PCO Associates

Implementing successful and sustainable change is tough, strategic change initiatives fail two-thirds of the time in North American business (Kotter, 1996, and McKinsey, 2009). How can your organization succeed? You can succeed by making change personal! Remember, performance is personal before it is organizational.

Isn’t this a truism, a matter of common business sense?

Since when was common sense common practice! It is common for many leaders to plan their change initiative, communicate it to their leadership team, tell the organization to watch for it, set some goals and measures, and incorporate the goals in their team and department objectives. Then, the change dies and the leadership team wonders why. The answer; the change was never translated into personal action!

If your people don’t embraced change and those in your value chain (including your customers and vendors) it will fail. Why? If your people do not understand the change initiative, buy into it, and integrate it into their daily activities, it will not work. Consequently, planned change and personal action don’t mesh as people are skeptical, don’t understand why, don’t see the need, and don’t know what’s in it for them.

So how do you make change personal?

Define, Communicate, Delegate and Track change related expectations. We usually get the organization’s side of change, define and communicate, pretty well. Where we fail is in putting the personal side of change, communicate, delegate, and track, into play.

Define the change in terms of broad categories of activity to which everyone in the organization can relate, and specific results that benefit the organization and its people.
Communicate the change initiative, and include the message that leadership will be expecting everyone to participate by defining specific expectations of each other necessary to carry out the change.
Communicate More, by focusing on individual working relationships by:
- Get each leadership team member identify specific expectations of each other as to what they must do to successfully implement the change. Ensure the expectations are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time and budget bounded, Ethical and Recorded.
- Have each leader discuss their expectations of the receiver expected to execute, and ensure each accepts accountability for each other’s expectation. This helps to create a productive relationship and integrate the change into the business at the leadership level.
Delegate by cascading the above process to each leader’s direct reports, peers, and business partners to those teams that are considered key players in the change initiative.
- Ensure people delegate not only the responsibility and accountability but also the authority to execute each expectation. In this way people can develop ownership of those expectations other have of them. This step integrates the change throughout the organization as it becomes a part of each person’s work responsibilities and commitments.
- Ensure each expectation’s originator is held responsible for assessing the receiver’s ability to meet their expectations and coach them to develop their competence.
Track each expectation’s results. This means each person holding accountable the person who agreed to meeting and reporting progress to an expectation’s completion. So, the Accountability Culture is born. The expectations approach challenges leaders and their direct reports to get personal first perspective and serves to foster improved communications between them.

The Expectations Approach makes change personal by casacading accountability for implementing change throughout the organization in a way that helps people understand the reasons for and expected results from the change, and buy into it. We’ve found it one of the most effective ways of implementing successful and sustainable change in organizations. The side benefits of this approach are that it improves accountability throughout the organization, and encourages creation and development of productive relationships between people, leading to improved organizational performance.

Where has this approach been used succesfully?

This approach has been successfully employed in Fortune 500 companies and family owned businesses, from new selling strategies to management transitions (See Project Summaries) It has been shown to work in for-profit and non-profit organizations from large to small, and it also works in government organizations (it’s been used in the British Navy by its developer, John Machin).

“Change is Hard and Real Change is Real Hard!” If you want to be successful at change, you have to be prepared to tackle the hard part of change – making it personal.

Listen to The Radio Show

Great, but how can this help me?

This is probably the first thing on your mind after reading this Blog.
How about asking us? The first call is free! Just email me to set it up.
Don’t wait, get The Crispian Advantage working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching improve bottom line results.
If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.

_________________________________________________________________________
For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page
Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage

E-mail I Web I Linkedin

© Copyright All Rights Reserved, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds, [2010-2012]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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Who’s got the best mouse trap? or How do Consultants Differentiate?

Posted on October 13, 2010 by agincourtarcher

Listen to the Radio Show

This month’s topic looks at Competitive Differentiation in the Professional Services Sector. This sector typically includes accountants, lawyers, bankers and financial services, like planners etc. All these professionals offer very similar services due in part to regulations, certifications, disintermediation and the power of technology.

Go to any law firm’s web site like Varnum and Clark Hill, or large consulting firms and they look the same. They apparently have the same mouse trap.

Why did you choose your….attorney, accountant, financial planner etc?

So, how do professionals differentiate themselves?

On the basis of their expertise and their ability to develop Trusted Adviser status. David Meister asks: What benefits would you obtain if your clients trusted you more? For example, the more they will:

Treat you as you wish to be treated
Lower the level of stress in your interactions
Be comfortable and allow you to be comfortable
Involve you early on when their issues begin to form, rather than later (Open up)Share more information that helps you to help them, and improves the quality of the service you provide
Be inclined to accept and act on your recommendations
Bring you in on more advanced, complex, strategic issues ( Your are in the board room not waiting in the corridor awaiting instructions)
Refer you to their friends and business acquaintances

What characteristics would you look for in selecting your trusted adviser

Here are some of David Meister’s traits that Trusted Advisers have in common. Clients say they:

Make us feel comfortable and casual personally (but take the issues seriously)
Seem to understand us, effortlessly, and like us
Act like a person, not someone in a role
Are reliably on our side, and always seem to have our interests at heart
Don’t try to force things on us
Help us think things through (but emphasize that it’s our decision)
Criticize and correct us gently, lovingly
Don’t pull their punches: we can rely on them to tell us the truth
Are in it for the long haul (the relationship is more important than the current issue)
Give us reasoning (to help us think), not just their conclusions
Give us options, increase our understanding of those options, give us their recommendation and let us choose.
Are always honorable: they don’t gossip about others (we trust their values)
Help us put our issues in context, often through the use of metaphors, stories and anecdotes (they recognize that few problems are completely unique)

You said he listed “traits” as in a person’s character? So for example the adviser who is not honorable can’t be trained to be more honorable, right?

It’s a good point, in last month’s blog I made the distinction. Candidly, Meister’s list is mixture of Competencies and Traits. “So what?” you must be thinking,” I said, “Bottom line, you hire traits and develop competencies! Remember:

Competency : “The ability to do something successfully or efficiently.” ”Having the necessary ability, knowledge, or skill to do something successfully:”
Trait: “A characteristic or quality of a person.” (They are wired that way

For all intent and purposes professional advisers reading this should focus on what they can learn and develop to be competitive differentiated trusted advisers. But, here is the rub. Developing trust is not well defined. For example, research I did with Linda Marsh into Mortgage Loan Advisers we found that the customers trusted those who used more “Transitional Structuring” WHAT! (Some people call it sign posting). Like,

“We have now covered David’s Trusted Adviser traits and we are now looking at Adviser Competencies…

We and others have identified observable and trainable behaviors that impact those traits that David mentioned like making the client “feel comfortable”. Now, here’s the fundamental point about developing trusted adviser status:

How do you balance helping potential clients feel understood while ensuring they understand the issues and options available?

That’s difficult because if they don’t feel understood they aren’t really going to retain what they are told AND won’t likely see you as a trusted advisor. It takes me back to the most fundamental process of when people make a decision to change. They have to be sufficiently disturbed or concerned about their current condition that they look for a solution that enables them to resolve their negative condition. If Advisors, don’t know how to locate where a client is in this process and help them through at their pace any residual trust will be eroded.

What competencies have you and PDS identified to help develop competitive advisers?

In the world of Professional Services regulations dictate levels of certification – so the expertise playing field is level, for the new client looking for an adviser. So, we at PDS isolate “Competitive Competencies” which:

Make a disproportionate contribution to customer’s perceived value
Are “competitively unique” or superior
Are extendible: providing “gateways to tomorrow’s markets”

The Value of Effective Competencies

Greater objectivity – less biased by the manager’s interpretations of what happened but what actually happened
More Useful – less dependent on the manager’s judgment, more on the Adviser assessment (crucial if they are to learn)
More focus – less overwhelming as it encourages managers to match the feedback to the Adviser’s ability and their willingness to receive it
More quantifiable – greater understanding what of works and what doesn’t under defined conditions and allows people to compare themselves against a standard
More effective – less guess work about how outcomes are achieved. (How you Win and Lose)

It suggests that Advisers needs someone to coach them?

Yes, it is essential. All those firms we have worked with try to get people effective coaching to secure and retain clients from their competition, like, Ernst & Young, who I helped develop their Relationship Management Program, Watson Wyatt, Royal Bank of Canada, JP Morgan Chase

In your experience, what traps do advisory firms fall into?

To put our recent study in context, most professionals we work with love to do a great job. As one senior adviser said to me “I treat my clients as my children…”

But, being a trusted adviser today is not enough. We surveyed advisers to see how they were competitively differentiating themselves. In summary.

1. Most do not truly understand what a competitive Client strategy is.

2. People don’t understand the difference between Competitive Value Discovery and Differentiation.

3. They do not understand the difference between preparation and planning.

4. They do not understand the difference between offense and defense

5. Because any strategic plans were not common amongst the troops, the plan is not maintained or advanced.

Can you explain the difference between Competitive Value Discovery and Differentiation?

Competitive Value Discovery helps you increase value potential. The idea of finding value that Client’s had never thought of before is competitively differentiating. So, we can introduce clients to ideas they may never have thought of and help them see the competition as “not on the ball”. Whether it’s your client or you are trying to secure a new client, they always weigh your value against the competition. What we have more more control over is what they weigh, how they weigh it. Additionally, we need to plant what the competition plants in the client’s mind. Then, we have far better intel and a better sense of the client’s changing priorities to influence their Decision Guidelines both offensely and defensively – Competitive Differentiation.

“Given the same amount of intelligence… timidity will do a thousand times more damage than audacity” “The best form of defense is attack.”
Karl von Clausewitz

What else did you find out?

1. Their language is predominately about reacting to clients’ needs with no language of competitiveness.

2. No sense of doing things in a relational way but with competitive intent.

3. They see the activity of competing as separate from looking after the client.

4. The idea of decision guidelines and working to putting value behind them is a language that is foreign to them.

5. They don’t have a competitively strategic context for their day to day client interactions.

6. Largely, they have a passive position without having a strategy to extend the services they offer outsourcing.

What did you say to them about these findings?

How much profit are you leaving on the table because you are not managing our relationships with competitive intent?
So why are you not purposely discovering client value that will allow us to “Differentiate the Firm?”
How much more intent and purpose can we build if we develop our competitive competencies?

Tip of the Month:

What can Advisers start doing to differentiate them?

Get Competitively Aligned. For example:

In your firm, are you Competitively Aligned?
To what extent does management understand how to think and act competitively . . . with competitive intent?
How well aligned are your competitive account strategies with other parts of your firm
How many of your top client plans have an offensive element to their strategies?
Where do you see the main competitive misalignments within your practice or firm?

Then develop Clear Competitive Expectations

Validating & agreeing about what people expect of each other competitively
Developing effective deliverables that will demonstrate offensive or defensive actions against selected competitors

Competitive Accountability

Accepting responsibility for agreed competitive expectations for tasks performed & results achieved
Accepting that Win/Loss Reviews are not personal but are a natural process of getting more competitive

Evidence-Based Change

Gaining & maintaining competitive differentiation must show measurable proof to the firm and its clients.

Proving differentiation requires constant change & must be “evidenced” to:

Management

Organization

Customers

What evidence of change do we show?

Listen to the Radio Show

Great, but how can this help me?

This is probably the first thing on your mind after reading this Blog.
How about asking us? The first call is free! Just email me to set it up.
Don’t wait, get The Crispian Advantage working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching improve bottom line results.
If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.

Name

Email

Industry

Feedback

Δ

_________________________________________________________________________
For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page
Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage

E-mail I Web I Linkedin

© Copyright All Rights Reserved, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds, [2010-2012]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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Leadership Challenges in Turbulent Times

Posted on August 21, 2010 by agincourtarcher

Leadership Turbulence

It’s a statement of the obvious ….. We live in turbulent times… I got to thinking what are the challenges of leadership in the times we are living in. Some years ago I noted this quote:

“Business is now so complex and difficult, the survival of the firm is so hazardous, in an environment increasingly unpredictable, competitive and fraught with danger, that their continued existence depends on the day-to-day mobilization of everyone’s intelligence” (Konosuke Matushita, founder of Matsushita Electric)

It struck a chord…to mobilize everyone’s intelligence… for regular readers you will recognize a theme in our work at PDS…releasing and focusing people is still a crucial ingredient to survival and sustained sucess

So, my focus this month is the Leadership Challenges in Turbulent Times

What’s the core to these challenges that leaders face….it’s Bravery…

Bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared half to death.
(Omar N Bradley)

The first step “walk and talk – – – the same talk” constantly. Alignment between attitude, philosophy and actions is key! Such consistency is hard to find, particularly since producing a payoff in change is often more about emotion and intuition than it is about analysis and logic. Where’s the bravery you ask? Try making emotional and intuitive decisions which may or may not be born out by analysis and logic!

Yet I like, Peter Senge’s viewpoint:

“high levels of mastery….leaders cannot afford to choose between reason and intuition, any more than they would choose to walk on one leg and see with one eye”

It’s that outward calm of seeing a swan glide across the water, yet below the water line…furious paddling..

It’s about not losing your head while those around you are running around like chickens with their heads cut off…..what are we going to d!….what are we going to do!

The bravery comes to challenge how your company operates, its implicit beliefs and philosophies (e.g., The unspoken creed…once in automotive always in automotive). Your culture can create its own distractions which interfere with what seems right, intuitive and obvious. Many times, discussing this tension is repressed so that “we don’t take our eye off-the-ball,” or so we don’t offend others. Consequently, leaders often focus on the seemingly “urgent” and let the critical issues slide. They take refuge in “safe” financial performance targets that can’t be easily disputed. These targets rarely support desired behaviors or intuitive outcomes.

Yet there are automotive dependent manufacturers in West Michigan that are wondering how to “keep it shiny side up!”

So in this fog of war, where do leaders look to survival?

If you look at successful companies, they have varied strategies, structures and systems. However, their leaders do have something in common. They share surprisingly consistent philosophies.

These successful leaders have moved away from over reliance on very formal ways of running their organizations (like articulating strategies, building structures and developing systems). They have moved toward using more organic ways of managing (like engaging people in defining a purpose, implementing through necessary and defined processes and developing people).

So what does this point out? It goes to the root of why so many change initiatives fail (60% +) even after overdosing on business re-engineering and other scientific management techniques. Many Leaders manage what is easy to manage (like managing numbers and not people). They’ve been trained in the scientific disciplines. They forget they are managing an “organism.” They dismiss the small and gradual steps associated with real change for grandiose strategies

So, let’s put this into perspective. Successful leaders recognize that an organization’s purpose is more important than short-term outcomes. Why? Outcomes change – their purpose does not! Their focus is on how they can create committed members of a purposeful organization. Putting purpose above outcomes, allowing new improved outcomes to take precedence and promoting different things to be done takes bravery.

Why is bravery so important?

It takes bravery for leaders and executives to address seven critical challenges. Without question, addressing them is about not acquiescing to “legacy tendencies” but about incorporating “what now works” into the development of “tomorrow’s legacies”! Bravery is about doing “different things,” not about making excuses as to why you can’t do different things.

Getting above the white noise of excuses is not for the faint hearted….getting up with clamor of resistances and fear

Where do we start with these challenges? Is there a sequence or are they inter-related?

They are interelated but a logical place to start is:

1. Embedding Purpose

Is your purpose Ill-defined or Conceptual Clear, well articulated & translated?

So, you’ve written and articulated the corporate purpose! But, do the troops actually understand what this means to their everyday behavior and actions? So often the organization states its purpose without regard as to whether or not it has created any ownership in that purpose.

Essential Questions:

How will you gain widespread organizational support for your purpose?
How will you ensure new activities, actions and behaviors invigorate your purpose?
How will you ensure your expectations are aligned with what people assume is expected of them?

2: Removing Distractions

Are your distractions unidentified or well identified and managed?

There are always distractions that deflect an organization from its “appointed” tasks. If these distractions go unidentified, they grow stronger. Distractions don’t just miraculously disappear. The longer they last the more they clog corporate arteries. Executives need to lead the “charge” in identifying and eliminating distractions.

Essential Questions:

How will you convince people to dismiss actions, operations and processes which stimulate doing old things?
How can you eliminate duplicate processes and reports that slow the organization down?
Who will oversee the distraction-elimination process; and, what authority will they have?

I can see how that would help but does this really get over the fog of war that we face today?

Not unless you integrate it with the next challenge…

3: Aligning Organizational Expectations

Are you expectations unstated or defused or well focused & aligned?

Over and over again, employees say, “I wish someone had told me exactly what was expected.” Have you ever considered that others’ assumptions of “what is expected” might be counter productive to your purpose or outcomes? Are people doing what you expect or what they think you expect?

Essential Questions:

What are the key components that reveal your organization’s direction and success?
How will you translate these words into actions, competencies and behaviors that can be managed?
How will you measure the degree of alignment with your purpose, and what evidence of alignment are you looking for?

Doesn’t this demand more from a leader than just stating the facts?

Yes. It’s about lt’s making clearer emotional connections. It’s alarming how one individual can undermine a change simply by being out of touch with intuition and empathy. One of the most overlooked yet common ways leaders fail, albeit unintentionally, is not to express appropriately, candidly and consistently what we feel as well as what we think. This is known as unintentionally ambiguous behavior. It gives mixed messages and next to aggressive behavior, ambiguous behavior can cause the most tension between leaders and others. (Adapted from Robert Cooper’s book, Executive EQ).

What is the context for well focused & aligned exepectations?

4 Creating Differentiation

How vulnerable are you to being seen as “same-o,same-o” or clearly differentiated from your competition?

If you feel like you’re the same in the marketplace, odds are that’s how the customer sees you. As a leader, you are responsible for creating a climate of differentiation.

Essential Questions:

How will you ensure that customer contact people and others connect with one another to develop differentiable approaches?
How will you measure the degree and profitability of differentiation?
How will you leverage differentiation to lead your market place?

I can see how these first four create a platform for success…but how do leaders get this to stick and not just be another “flash in the pan”

5: Coaching

How would you describe the coaching process in your organization…Isolated or Cascaded

We know, we know …. your people coach! The real question is, do your people coach with the right intensity and frequency to replicate successful behaviors? Or, is coaching infrequent, informal and isolated?

Essential Questions:

What will you do as a leader to establish your coaching cascade?
What is the right intensity and frequency of coaching needed under present competitive conditions?
How will you know that coaching is effective?

6: Replicating Success

How reliant are you on using Lagging Indicators as opposed to Leading Indicators?

The words, “best practice” seems to have permeated the corporate world. Your people undoubtedly have their own practices of choice, honed by years of personal experience. Often corporate rewards go to these people rather than to those who demonstrate the “best practices” that everyone can adopt and benefit from.

Essential Questions:

What will your real best practices look like?
How will you tie best practices to behaviors which can be evidenced and replicated without alienating the productive “lone rangers?”
How will you use your “language of leaders” to make managing easier and more measurable?

7: Rewarding Change

To waht extent does your reward system reflect what worked in the past rather then being liagned with your current direction?

If the recognition and reward systems of your company run on the “legacies of past success” it will only encourage doing things differently, not “doing different things!” To change, you need to consistently reward the new behaviors, not the “reward legacies” of the past.

It’s like traning people to use the longbow,used in the Middle Ages as a weapon of war.A trained army archer could shoot upwards of ten to twelve arrows in one minute, making him the world’s first “machine gun” in some ways. Today how ever, the fastest rate of fire a 36 barrell Prototype mini gun, and can shoot 1,000,000 rounds per minute

Essential Questions:

What proportion of people’s compensation should be tied to adopting the new behaviors?
How will you measure and reward those who support your purpose?
How will you “raise the bar” so that over time people demonstrate excellence in the new behaviors?

Where do you go from here?

Ensure that your “walk and talk” are consistent. This relates to your language, how you reward excellence, how you coach and how you react when things go wrong! Bravery means displaying an attitude of distinction.

Create a cascade of conversation and coaching that gets above the “white noise” of legacy…..that’s doing different things!

Align the expectations of the organization. Bravery is found in exposing misalignments and distractions for immediate correction.

Tip of the Blog

Look at your team/colleagues…whose up for a fight

“He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian.’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.’
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words”

(St. Crispen’s Day Speech William Shakespeare, 1599)

Great, but how can this help me?

This is probably the first thing on your mind after reading this Blog.
How about asking us? The first call is free! Just email me to set it up.
Don’t wait, get The Crispian Advantage working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching improve bottom line results.
If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.

Name

Email

Industry

Feedback

Δ

_____________________________________________________________________
For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page
Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage

E-mail I Web I Linkedin

© Copyright All Rights Reserved, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds, [2010-2012]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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Removing the Barriers to Sales Effectiveness

Posted on July 1, 2010 by agincourtarcher

Cogs of Effectiveness

The really effective sales organization has a number of characteristics, for example:

Skills and strategies suited to their market outstanding products or services
In-depth understanding of how these products can solve customer problems
Appropriate rewards and performance measures
Sales support system which actually helps to sell, not just administer
An ability and willingness to learn

Full effectiveness, however, can be achieved only if everyone:

Has a clear and shared vision of where the company is heading
Understands the strategy for getting there and their part in the process
Is rewarded for playing their part
Focuses obsessively on the customer

Some barriers to effectiveness are obvious – if the products are poor then no amount of sales skill can compensate sufficiently to build success. Many barriers are more subtle, and can sap the strength of the company over a long period without being tackled. Such problems usually fall under one the following three headings:

Misalignment
Inflexibility
Internal Focus

Misalignment

Feels like a bad back

There are many ways in which Misalignment is introduced into organization structures and processes; at best they generate unhelpful tensions and frustrations, at worst they lead to departmental rifts and sabotage. Common examples are:

Poor alignment of individuals’ expectations, departments and the company as a whole

E.g. the sales force seeks job interest by selling bespoke solutions, while the company is trying to standardize its offerings

Incentives for interdependent departments or people are not congruent

E.g. Sales force targeted on increased volume, administration targeted on decreased costs performance management process runs counter to company strategy

Sales management sets 30 day revenue targets, while company exhorts the salespeople to develop major accounts for the long-term

Salespeople are expected to cross-sell for other Divisions or countries, but are not rewarded for so doing

Sales management is “do as I say, not as I do”

E.g. Managers use a hard ‘push’ style, while advocating a ‘pull’ or consultative style with their people

Doing what we’ve always done what is going to be needed due to changing technology, markets and competition

E.g. When a monopoly supplier meets competition for the first time so the products no longer ‘sell themselves’

When new products address a different market – for example, printer sales force find themselves selling systems not peripherals

Gaps between stated values and actual values

E.g. “Our customers are our greatest asset ” while salespeople refer to them as “Buyers are liars”

“Our employees are our greatest asset”, while managers show little concern and even less investment

Inflexibility

Many markets are now more turbulent and unpredictable than ever before, and success comes only to those who are ‘quick on their feet’. Unfortunately many players suffer from at least one of the following:

Their sales organization structure and roles don’t match those of the customer

E.g. they offer multipoint direct contact with sales, service, technical support, while the customer wants single point contact

Geographical location of functions and authority doesn’t match the customer’s

Their organization is inherently unresponsive to change

E.g. in rapidly evolving markets, companies operating a traditional hierarchical and functional structure find it hard to compete with those successfully using a cross-functional team approach

• Their people are resistant to change

E.g. Salespeople who have been adequately successful for years have become “order takers”, and the entertaining approach to account development

Managers who find it hard to let go of their traditional, power-oriented style and allow staff the space and authority to really contribute

Technical people who are unwilling to take on the sales role and don’t believe in the new technology

Internal focus

True customer focus involves a lot more than ‘customer service training’; it means that no aspect of the organization should be free from an all-pervading concern with delivering what the customer wants, and a bit more. It means taking your cue from the customer in areas which traditionally have been internally focused, for example:

Company and/ or departmental structure

E.g. Split on arbitrary product/technical grounds, so that several sellers approach the same individual

Performance measures

E.g. Call rates, scrap rates, production volumes, instead of response times, satisfaction ratings, service call-outs

Perception of what is being sold

E.g. In terms of a product rather than the results of using it – a security system rather than peace of mind, a training course rather than increased sales effectiveness

Conclusion

There is no one best sales organization structure, incentive scheme, or strategic approach. If there were, we would not see the huge diversity which exists in the real world, and change would anyway render it obsolete.

The effective organization is never complacent, and audits itself rigorously and constantly, seeking out and remedying any instances of inconsistency, inflexibility and internal focus. It also never fools itself into believing that change=progress;. change follows cycles of learning of what works and what doesn’t, not from a fear of stagnation.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page
Contact: Nick Anderson, Senior Partner, PDS Group LTD
E-mail I Web I Linkedin

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Aligning Expectations in Construction Projects

Posted on February 23, 2010 by agincourtarcher

Your Line of Sight to Successful Projects

Aligning Expectations in Construction Projects

Getting & Keeping People on the Same Page

Clarifying and improving performance contracts between critical relationships, such as:

Architects and their Design Engineers
General Contractors and their Sub-Contractors
Managers and Subordinates
Leadership Teams
Cross-functional groups

Groups have successfully used AlEx™ to:

Improve competitiveness
Deliver more customer-focused solutions
Deliver a building on-time, on-budget and no legal

issues

Accelerate and build partnerships
Integrate new Architects
Streamline Change Order & RFI Processes

Potential Benefits of the Eternal Triangle: Owner, Architectural Design Team & General Contractor

The Goal: a perfect building with proper design, highest quality, constructed on time and last but not least, built within budget.

Introduction

What follows are three areas where AlEx™ can potentially help the “Eternal Triangle” of tension and mistrust that pervades many construction project relationships

1. Managing Conflict and Relationship Tension

2. Managing Complexity

3. Improving Building Performance

1. Managing Conflict – Benefits of AlEx™

Helps develop a healthy attitude to managing rather than hiding conflict.
Reduces the distracting and destructive products from poorly handled conflict situations.
Helps harness diverse views and experience in the project team for the good of the overall project and Owner.
Helps handle change as the project progresses and manages the constant flow of information between Owners, consultants and contractors.
5. Addresses the tensions in managing the dynamic and transient nature of the project life cycle process.
Recognizes that as work precedes the relative bargaining strengths of the parties are constantly adjusting. Standard approaches to contracting simply do not take this into account.
Overcomes, the inflexibility inherent in standard building contracts. For example, one contract assumes that the design is complete at the time of bidding and that the contractor employs most of the resources that will be required for the project. The fact is, design is rarely 100 % complete at the time of bidding and contractors subcontract most of the work.
Develops Project Teams while recognizing their different rules of engagement. AlEx™ recognizes and helps facilitate different project needs and rules of engagement, like:

Changing Owner demands
Rapid learning
Generating and maintaining effective interaction between team members so that they can exchange views and debate the consequences of their decisions in an open and honest forum.
Changing circumstances over the project’s life cycle.
Shifting relationship tensions between the major members of the project team.
Building trust for when things do not go as planned.

2. Managing Complexity – Benefits of AlEx™

1. Designs in flexibility in management structure and style that is essential in dealing with complex and changing business environments.

2. Deals with the reality that construction contracts are based upon industry-wide standards that often are hastily modified and executed during a hurried design and bidding process. AlEx™ picks up where the contracting process stops. Every project needs a legal contract and a guide to monument – AlEx™ is the formative process to get the contracting parties into alignment.

3. AlEx™ helps harness conflict that causes the distress and low productivity associated with escalating conflict. AlEx™ helps to develop open, skillful discussion that is needed to turn differences into synergistic gains rather than squabbling losses.

4. The use of AlEx™ helps project teams build Partnering, a process of building up long term business relationships that reduce the adversarial nature of construction. The expectations approach helps shift the emphasis from a contractual focus to a results orientated management focus.

5. AlEx™ takes the heat out of how to convert business deals into good contracts which produce lasting positive relationships.

6. Helps develop the close working relationships needed between all designers and contractors in order to produce an integrated building in which all building services, structural and building elements are fully planned, systematically organized and combined, and brought to fruition as required by an Owner. It really produces teams that actually communicate effectively with each other.

7. Helps develop the processes needed to cope with the growing complexity of design and Owner needs, e.g. as hospital buildings grow in size and complexity, building services also tend to be more sophisticated and difficult to manage from design to certificate of occupancy.

8. Helps develop coordination to ensure that services and other building elements are properly planned, managed and coordinated.

9. Develops protocols for coordinating multi-head Owner, changes of design, conditions of engagement of designers and contractors, division of design responsibilities, allocation of risks, early incorporation of specialty contractors/consultants, forms of contract and quality of design and construction management. AlEx™ can also have a positive effect on coordination of building services within the General Contractors office.

10. Examines ways in which Owners and various designers, contractors and equipment suppliers can work together as a team in line with the projects procurement path or strategy (The whole process of creation, communication, response and integration in the context of the project can be defined as procurement).

11. Helps develop Procurement Strategies by guiding decisions early in the project influencing risk allocation, design strategy and consultant/contractor hiring. This ensures that throughout the project the following are all consistent with the selected procurement route:

Roles and relationships
Project management approach,
Communication channels
Information systems,
Forms of contracts, and
Overall management of the project organization

3. Improving Building Performance – Potential Benefits of AlEx™

1. Identification of problems and their solutions before they actually occur. This is a proactive approach toward building solutions to performance issues.

2. Improved space utilization and feedback on building performance.

3. Improved attitude of building owner through active involvement in the evaluation process.

4. Understanding of the performance implications of changes dictated by budget cuts and scope changes, add-ons, contract extensions, and government intervention.

5. Built-in capability for facility adaptation to organizational change and growth over time, including

Recycling of facilities into new uses
Significant cost savings in the building process and throughout the building life cycle.
Accountability for building performance by design professionals and owners.
Long-term improvements in building performance:
Improved measurement of building performance through quantification.

Exposing and Expelling Pre-Conceived Notions

Project Owners believe Contractors to be _____________.

Architects believe Contractors to be _________________.
Contractors believe Architects to be _________________.
Contractors believe Owners to be ___________________.

Great, but how can this help me?

This is probably the first thing on your mind after reading this Blog. How about asking us? The first call is free! Just email me to set it up. Don’t wait, get The Crispian Advantage working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching on change, alignment, and personal and executive performance that improve the bottom line. If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.