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?

To Buy a Copy of Focusing Change To Win:

Rate this:

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.

Continue reading →

Rate this:

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?

To buy a copy of Focusing Change To Win click:

If you would like to contact Nick, please fill out the form below:

Rate this:

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?

To Buy a Copy of Focusing Change To Win:

If you would like to contact Nick, please fill out the form below:

Rate this:

Focusing Change To Win – How Can Change Gain Competitive Advantage?

Posted on November 25, 2014 by agincourtarcher

Series Introduction

This is the fifth 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 Change Gain Competitive Advantage? Here are the other book sections we are highlighting:

5. How Can Change Gain Competitive Advantage?

Even after 30 years, the connections between change management and gaining competitive advantage are not well articulated. The disconnects between commitments to change and actual competitive behavior are a major factor in change failure. Getting beyond imitators relies on understanding and measuring behavior that distinguishes competitive behavior from other activities.

As one contributor said

Learning keeps us ahead of the competition by getting us closer to selected customers

to gather competitive intelligence

Focus on the Customer Survey Results - Stats Table
The seriousness of these ratings is underlined by the fact that, many studies show that it costs six times more to get a new customer than it does to keep an existing one. Acquiring new customers is costly, and in many cases, the money earned on the first sale doesn’t even cover the acquisition costs.

For example in the table to the right, only 70% of contributors say they measure customer satisfaction effectively. Worst still are the low percentages for the benefits of measuring change related to customers (3%) and their feedback when it comes to change success (12%)

These findings have uncomfortable resonance with the lack of customer focus we see in other parts of this report. Change drives these leaders, while customers and competitive advantage are apparent afterthoughts.

We conclude that there are practical ways to avoid these pitfalls. Overall, contributors comment that managing change for competitive success is a continuous, systemic, repetitive and uncertain process. They recommend five areas to improve competitive advantage through change.

Action Points 4: Implementing Change to Gain Competitive Advantage

Market and Competitive Sensing

What do managers do at present to maintain awareness of your competitive environment?
How well do managers use this information to make more competitive decisions?
What should managers do to improve awareness and agility to the competition?

Leading Competitive Change

What changes should managers make to develop a competitive culture?
How are you going to build more leadership capability to bring about successful change?

Integrating Change into Operations
Building Competitive Human Capital

What should managers be doing to link competitive change to day-to-day operations?
What performance metrics are needed to track this integration?
What performance management measures should you be using?
How do you see learning being managed both individually and collectively at present?
What should managers be doing to improve both individual and collective learning?

Developing Competitive Agility

What do managers do to reshape and adjust strategies?
What should be done to manage strategic change and the emergence of threats and opportunities?

To Buy a Copy of Focusing Change To Win:

If you would like to contact Nick, please fill out the form below:

Rate this:

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?

To Buy a Copy of Focusing Change To Win:

If you would like to contact Nick, please fill out the form below:

Rate this:

Focusing Change to Win Series – Why do people resist change?

Posted on October 28, 2014 by agincourtarcher

Series Introduction

This is the third 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 Why Do People Resist Change. Here are the other book sections we are highlighting:

3. Why Do People Resist Change

Here’s the reality, Leaders need employee support and trust if their change is going to stand any chance of success. Our contributors underscore this. If people are cynical about a change, pessimism will set in, and failure is assured. Our contributors show that there are no simple remedies, no sound bites or grizzly 7 step plans. Yet, at its core there are fundamental values that, if believed in, will offer a sound basis for planning and executing successful change. Change failures have left their mark on our contributors over the last eight years. Through their eyes, resistance is a brownfield site where change is synonymous with downsizing, doing more for less, and treating people poorly.

Accelerated change demands more of everyone. Such change has major consequences for employees. Accelerated change failure creates cultural toxicity. Crucially, leaders need to separate the symptoms of change resistance from the stress that causes it. If they don’t, they are just like bad sales people trying to overcome objections and not realizing 60% of those objections are of the salesperson’s own creation. These contributors, they are saying that change resistance is natural, but you don’t need to make it more difficult if you do some things profoundly well. The chart below gives a sense of the avoidable.

Change Resistance Factors

Once you recognize that Change Resistance causes stress then you can be more effective in reducing it. Our contributors say that, if leaders create clear and consistent frameworks, you help most people make informed decisions about committing to a change or not. Here’s what our contributors are saying:

Align Expectations between leaders and people
Set Clear Direction: Leaders clarify their change’s What, Why, How and WIIFMs (What’s In It For Me) for different groups and people.
Develop Accountabilities: by developing the rewards and consequences that assure expectations of both leaders and their people are met.

These are sound practices for reducing and managing people’s stress, but only if leaders realize the importance of Walking Their Own Talk.

Action Points: Managing Change Stress and Resistance

All these contributors are saying that change resistance is natural, but you don’t need to make it that difficult if you do some things profoundly well.

This starts with recognizing that change resistance is caused by stress. So why not treat the cause and not the symptom? Stress is natural and good if managed. Stress is reduced if leaders create clear and consistent frameworks that help people make informed decisions about committing to a change or not. Here’s how we interpret what our contributors are saying

Clarifying the Direction:
Leaders clarify their change’s what, why, how, and WIIFMs¹ for different groups and individuals. What does this mean for me? This leads to aligning expectations.

Aligning Expectations:
This is a process flow in two directions between leaders and each individual.

Developing Accountabilities:
This step develops the rewards and consequences through performance measurement, management, and rewards that ensure expectations of both leaders and their people are met.

To buy a copy of Focusing Change To Win click:

If you would like to contact Nick, please fill out the form below:

Rate this:

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

To buy a copy of Focusing Change To Win click:

If you would like to contact Nick, please fill out the form below:

Rate this:

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

Rate this:

Tracking Expectations to Avoid IT Project Failure

Posted on March 5, 2014 by agincourtarcher

(Abstract from Take Control of Your Project – Using Expectation Alignment to Avoid IT Project Failure by Terry Merriman, PCO Associates LLC)

Whether large or small, IT projects are complex change events. They need cross-functional collaboration between two or more departments or teams. Their success or failure reverberates throughout the organization and often impacts customers. Countless studies and papers on reasons for IT Project Failure cite two critical factors:

Poor interpersonal communications
Lack of professional project management

Numerous studies have shown that up to 70% of IT projects fail. Over 20 years, Terry Merriman and the other contributors to the White Paper – Using Expectation Alignment to Avoid IT Project Failure continue to uncover the usual cast of suspects like:

Customer requirements not being adequately defined
Customer requirements kept changing
Acceptance testing was slim to non-existent

These failure statistics are fully in line with the findings of the survey of 1072 business leaders and consultants summarized in my book Focusing Change to Win which I wrote with Kelly Nwosu.

How can that happen with professionals on both sides of the design effort? Weren’t they in the same meetings? What happened to the agreed requirements? testing regimens? and change request process?

Of course, they did all those things. What they didn’t realize is what they believed they understood of each other was at best misaligned. The IT professionals and the business professionals each assumed that the other understood the precise meaning with each communication; each assumed specific activities were part of the other person’s normal routine in a development project. So, projects failed to achieve the desired results due to::

Expectations not being made specific to the project or explicit to each other
Tasks not done as expected
Delivered Functionality did not meet expectations
Requirements weren’t met

If you are interested in having the authors speaking to your organization fill out this form.

Continue reading →

Rate this:

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 →

Rate this:

Rebuilding Trust is Productivity’s Cornerstone

Posted on September 20, 2012 by agincourtarcher

Globally there is a slow erosion of those binding forces for people to “go that extra mile” . The employee-employer psychological contract is degrading. The degree to which people identify with their job and consider job performance as important to their self-worth is slipping .In our recently published survey Focusing Change to Win identified the main culprits:

Poor Planning
Lack of Leadership
Inconsistent leadership
Poor Implementation
Lack of Adaptability
Lack of Communication
Lack of Control

More than ever, we need to repair, build and protect the trust people have in their employers.

In North America, our evidence from 8 expectation alignment projects ranging from Royal Bank of Canada through Nature Conservancy to Turner Construction shows a clear trend. Leaders consistently under-estimate the gap between what they expect of their managers and what people think is expected of them. In all studies, leaders had 65%+ more expectations than their people were aware.

In the UK, managers need to do more if they want to earn employee trust , according to the latest survey into employee attitudes from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). Trust in senior management is declining, particularly in the private sector, with

Only 25% employees willing to place a lot of trust in senior management to look after their interests and
Only 41% placing little or no trust in them to do so.

Essentially, new research suggests that many employees are losing faith in their management yet it seems leaders have don’t connect this condition with losing ground competitively. Continue reading →

Rate this:

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 →

Rate this:

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.

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.

Rate this:

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 →

Rate this:

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 →

Rate this:

What’s changed in Key Account Management in 15 yrs?

Posted on December 15, 2011 by agincourtarcher

Back in 1995 I worked with my client Peter Barlow then VP Global Account Management and Major Projects for APV (Food Process Engineering Company) on developing a Major Account Management System. Now over 15 years on I ask:

What’s changed in Key Account Management 15 years on?

Building and maintaining profitable relationships with your most important customers is more challenging than ever. The stakes are even higher of investing reduced resources on a few customers (accounts) with that nagging doubt of “backing the wrong horse”

“… (Managers) often don’t realize or understand how markets change and believe sales to be just how it was fifteen years ago.” (TACK Sales Leadership Survey 2011)

“Doing business with and actually making money from your largest strategic ‘partners’ has never been more difficult….Only a few corporations are getting it right.” (Richard Ilsley, SMCG 2010)

This blog takes a hard look at strategic, key or major accounts (KAM) and why many senior executives remain concerned 15+ years on. To do this retrospective I have drawn on several current experts in the field including a paper by Richard Ilsley of SMCG, TACK International and Mercuri.

Continue reading →

Rate this:

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 →

Rate this:

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 →

Rate this:

Complexity, the New Normal 4: Improving Sales Performance – Are you ready for the Challenge?

Posted on May 17, 2011 by agincourtarcher

This is the forth in a leadership series – Complexity the New Norm. This series is looks how we implement successful change that fulfills people and avoids human casualties.

Our question is, how do we create working relationships that are rewarding? (Rewarding not just productive). Why?

It’s only by energizing people and harnessing technologies better than anyone else that companies can thrive.

Genuinely aligned, empowered and collaborative people will outperform the competition every time.

This month I consider probably one of the most difficult areas is sales, especially complex sales.

What makes sales complex?

Classically, “Many to Many” Think of it like a bow tie. On the left side you have the selling organization and on the right Complex Sales. Typical characteristics:

Many decision makers
Team selling
Proposal or tender based selling (RFP)
Post sales support requirements like after sales service
Needs tailored solutions
High value, e.g often needing board approval
Long sales cycles
Technical/knowledge based elements
Consultative selling requirements
Customer relationship focus

So, more people across the company need to communicate with customers and prospects before, during and after the sale. This increases complexity and the difficulty of “Keeping Everyone On The Same Page”

Continue reading →

Rate this:

Complexity, the New Normal! 3: Listen to your guts – Are they really on the same page?

Posted on April 17, 2011 by agincourtarcher

This is the third in a leadership series – Complexity the New Norm.This series is looks how we implement

Seeing the Wood for the Treessuccessful change that fulfills people and avoids human casualties.Last time, I asked how we create working relationships that are rewarding. (Rewarding not just productive). 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.Many surveys show executives say that their people aren’t ready to handle this “new norm” So, what’s getting in the way?When the urgent drives out the important, many leaders ignore what their “guts” are telling them, even when they sense people aren’t on the same page. They’ve sensed it before and seen the results. Yet, complexity and urgency mask how things accumulate, misalign and make each change more difficult.You know that feeling yourself. We’ve all worked in dysfunctional work places. You pick up on people’s differences (often unstated in team meetings) and how they use their experience to justify their positions. They are oblivious of others views. Worse still they believe that their views are shared by everyone.If leaders are aware of these things, why don’t they do something?I think it’s like how people put up with physical pain and stress – take the pain killers and go on. And I am not implying they’re weak but their strength to persevere can be a two-edged sword. Here’s some examples of what leaders ignore and don’t realize their effect:It’s expecting things to be done and repeatedly being disappointed.It is the lump in your stomach when they are handed yet another impossible deadline.It’s feeling that they have to be a mind reader to figure out what is expected.It’s that welling anger they get when important decisions fall apart (because there really wasn’t any buy-in).These are all misalignments. People not being on the same page. It’s costly, pervasive and accumulates.Now, add increasing complexity and we need to say – we can’t go on like this anymore. The busyness of complexity masks misalignments especially when wicked problems get into the mix.You’ve mentioned wicked problem solving before….But why is it so important in leading in complexity?Wicked Problem Solving

Horst Rittel coined the term Wicked Problems as he found traditional approaches to design and planning were not effective. It’s how we solve benign or simple problems.

Gather data
Analyze data
Formulate Solution
Implement Solution

This apparently very reasonable approach starts faltering when you:

1. Don’t understand the problem until you have developed a solution.

You can’t search for information without having some sense of what a solution looks. Rittel said:

“One cannot first understand, then solve.”

And what ‘the Problem’ is depends on who you ask – different stakeholders have different views about what the problem is and what constitutes an acceptable solution.

2. Don’t have a nice neat ending.

If there is no defined ‘Problem’, there can’t be a definitive ‘Solution.’ So you can’t solve the problem with the ‘correct’ solution. Herb Simon, called this ‘satisficing’ — stopping when you have a solution that is ‘good enough’

3. Don’t have right or wrong solutions.

Solutions are simply ‘better,’ ‘worse,’ ‘good enough,’ or ‘not good enough.’ How “good” they are will vary widely and depend on different stakeholder values and goals.

4. Can’t draw on past experience

There are so many factors and conditions that no two wicked problems are alike.

Here are a few examples of wicked problems:

Whether to route the highway through our city or around it?
What should our mission statement be?
What features should be in our new product?
How should we respond to a competitors new…fill in the blank?

The point is managing complex and wicked problems shifts the center of gravity toward peoples’ relationships and interactions. It shifts from relying on expertise and pride in accumulating knowledge to learning with and from fellow learners, honestly disclosing doubts and admitting ignorance.

I am thinking leaders who are listening will be saying: OK, I get, it but where do I start?

As I said last time, complexity and misalignment is best handled by those directly involved. So, leadership should be devolved to the lowest level. This means expectations you have of your leaders need to be clear, agreed and tracked. There are several alignment areas that senior people need to address with lower level leaders, which I will cover in later programs. But, I will start with a key competence that leaders need improve in their teams and activities. It’s a bastion against the confusion that comes from poorly managed complexity

Leading Learning

Leaders have to shed their prejudices and bad experiences of learning at school, – like cramming or memorizing, and that learning by doing is good enough. Many leaders will have to unlearn, and then learn about Leading Learning. There are five criteria you should expect your leaders to evidence in their learning expectations: Are they …..

Planned?
Action-Focused?
Constructive?
Social?
Time-Bounded?

Using these criteria, leader expectations need to specify what they expect of their people and draw out what their people expect in return.

What do you see as the main areas for leaders to think about when it comes to leading learning?

Here are four things to reflect on about your organization. Ask yourself:

How do we really match-up when it comes to leading learning?

Learning team-based sense-making process.

1. Learning is team-based sense-making process.

What expectations do you have of your people to develop shared knowledge from similar situations?

Why?

Shared situations builds shared sensing, which builds common frames of reference.
Positive shared experiences strengthen organizational culture.
Shared situations builds shared learning and reduces the exclusivity of individual experience

Can you find expectations that say it’s OK for people to express feelings of being puzzled or being misunderstood:

Why?

Such expressed feelings are often the tender shoots of learning and if subject to making people feel stupid will stunt learning before it has even got going.
Sharing puzzlement develops learner ownership because there’s “gas in their tank” to do something about it.
You don’t know how many others have the same feelings until they are expressed.
Getting people on the same page only happens when people’s feelings are transparent to others. It takes the guesswork of where people are coming from. It reduces assumptions about people’s intention, motivation and agenda

2. Learning is a socially negotiated

Leader expectations need to specify that making sense of problems and their solutions needs to be negotiated with the intention of reaching understanding, resolving differences and producing an agreed course of action.

Why?

What’s agreed is far more likely to stick
Stakeholder and team member interests of are more likely to be respected and served
Better alignment leads to growing trust and openness which leads to people being less guarded

3. Learning is multi-level sense-making

Leaders, especially senior leaders, need to ensure that their expectations of learning are expressed to all levels both vertically and horizontally across the organization. The belief that knowledge is only in one person’s head went out with the craftsman and his apprentice. Knowledge and reasoning need to be used for collective sense-making.

Why?

It’s the social process that bonds people together. As we engage with others we influence and are influenced by our working community their beliefs and values.
This type of participation is how we absorb and grow a healthy culture.
This is how we grow as individuals and develop rewarding relationships

It’s crucial that leaders understand that activity constrains and defines the learning that can occur, so the last point

4. Learning is a product of activities, systems and processes

Learning through Activities

The blend of people, their experiences, values and beliefs are not reducible to individual actions in complex situations. So, leader’s expectations need to shift from the individual to the team.

Why?

It’s not about you; it’s about us – “Leave your ego at the door!”
Information isn’t any good if it is not shared, in ways that others can understand
If you don’t interact with others your chances of building trust, respect and other relational glue is remote

If I am a leader or business owner listening to this today I might be saying that’s all very well but I have a business to run. What advice would you give them?

Do what you’ve always done, get what you’ve always got! – Not!

1. Hire people who evidence lifelong learning – if people aren’t curious they are not for you.

2. Make sure you pay people for doing different things not just doing what we have always done – cos if you don’t you will get what you’ve always gotten.

3. Ensure you make sure all people know learning is a priority and it’s not something left to chance or the competition

Name

Email

Website

Comment

Δ

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page
Nick Anderson, Senior Partner, PDS Group LTD

E-mail I Web I Linkedin

Listen to the Radio Show of this Blog

© Copyright All Rights Reserved, PDS Group LTD 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.

Rate this:

Complexity, the New Normal 2: Leading to the Essence

Posted on March 20, 2011 by agincourtarcher

Listen to the Radio Program – 15mins

In my last blog I introduced my new leadership series – Complexity the New Normal.

It’s time we had a debate about how we develop rewarding working relationships today. (Rewarding not just productive). It is the competitive core – energizing people and harnessing technologies better than anyone else.

The ultimate standard for such rewarding relationships is a leader’s ability to sustain superior results over an extended period. The debate should focus three

The Gordian Knot

questions:

What does it mean to lead?
What does it mean to follow?
When do you choose one from another?

Why is this debate needed for us to climb out of this recession?

People have lost trust. Many business leaders, too many unfortunately, are seen as self-serving and subservient to shareholders.

What happened? “Org Chart Thinking” increasingly doesn’t work. Knowledge workers respond to learning not “command & control”. Plus, young people don’t want to wait in line to lead. Most important, people are searching for genuine satisfaction and meaning. For example, “restoring people to full life and health.” Medtronic.

Continue reading →

Rate this:

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.

Rate this:

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.

Rate this:

Paying For Sales Performance – A Myth?

Posted on September 19, 2010 by agincourtarcher

This blog’s topic looks at a cherished belief of many executives that pay for performance compensation schemes motivates people to higher performance. Yet, pay is just one thread in a tapestry that covers the state of motivation in organizations today.

(Listen to Walk the Talk – Radio for Agile Minds – The Pay for Performance Myth )

In this piece, I want to challenge manager’s over-reliance on paying for sales performance to stop relying on this apparently sensible idea and. Let’s rethink what effective management has to offer in creating a Motivating Environment.

Just to give you how addicted US Companies are to pay-for-performance; here’s a couple of statistics:

Average incentive income for US Salespeople is 40% of their total compensation.
Overall, 85% of this group work under some type of pay for performance compensation plan.

W. Edwards Deming (1982) “Pay is not a motivator” He called the system by which merit is appraised and rewarded:

“The most powerful inhibitor to quality and productivity in the Western World”…..”it nourishes short-term performance, annihilates long-term planning, builds fear, demolishes team work, nourishes rivalry and…leaves people bitter”

“Money can nevertheless be a demotivator” Frederick Hertzberg

Pay for performance advocates obsess about “How should people be paid?” But it is not as important as managers think and is in fact a distraction from the things that really matter.

The real issue is how do people become motivated to produce competitively superior results:

Managers ask: ‘How do you motivate people? – Answer is ‘You Don’t’ (Douglas McGregor)

So, if you see books like “How to Motivate your work force” “Making People Productive” can be safely passed over because the enterprise it describes in wholly misconceived.

Of course, you can get people to perform using rewards, punishments and operational controls. But, the desire to do it well, simple cannot be imposed. It’s a mistake to talk about motivating other people. All Managers can do is set up conditions that can develop an interest in what they are doing and remove constraints to their improvement.

What are the ways of creating The Motivating Environment?

Probably one of the best authors in this field , Alfred Kohn, stated three Basic Principles.

Pay people generously and equitably – Do your best to make sure they don’t feel exploited. Then, do everything in your power to help them put money out of their minds! Problem with incentives is not that people are offered too much. It’s that money is pushed in people’s faces and offered transactionally, e.g. “You do this and you will get that” Getting rid of conditionality is the first step in fixing what’s wrong

The trouble with money is not itself per se but with the way people are made to think about money and the way it is use to control them.
We need to decouple the task from compensation

“For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil… (People) craving money have wandered from the truth and pierced themselves with many sorrows… (1 Timothy 6:10)

OK. So, how should you pay people, other than well and fairly?

A good starting point is asking yourself:

What makes some people more valuable to the organization that most will see as fair and achievable? (e.g. not based on being a family member- LOL) Examples:

Time employed
Special skills, professional qualifications

Deming, most Japanese and other countries follow this philosophy and now a minority of US Companies – the gradual realization that pay-for-performance is an inherently flawed concept.

But, what do you do about paying people if they perform better than their peers?

Well, it leads to another common practice of linking pay to the outcome of the dreaded annual performance appraisal. This is typically a stressful annual ritual and should have been retired long ago. OK. So what do we replace it with?

Let’s look at a second principle to creating the Motivating Environment, let’s Refocus Evaluation. An obvious question:

Why are people being evaluated? Possible answers:

“Performance Evaluation persists as a effective tool for controlling employees…(that) should not be confused…with motivation of employees”
It allows supervisors to shift the responsibility for solving problems to their subordinates

“Using Performance appraisal of any kind as a basis for reward is a flat out catastrophic mistake” (Peter Scholtes)

It is “foolish to have a manager in the self-conflicting role as a counselor (helping improve performance) when at the same time, he or she is presiding as a judge over the employee’s salary…”(Herbert Meyer)

The Insight is that the entire process of providing feedback, assessing progress, and developing development plans ought to be completely divorced from salary determinations. Such sessions must have no rewards or punishment hanging in the balance.

So, how do you get genuine motivation?

It’s a good question How do you create conditions for authentic motivation?

Significantly Alan Binder pulled all available research on this subject, Paying for Productivity: A Look at the Evidence and concluded:

“Changing the way workers are treated may boost productivity more than changing the way they are paid”

Or to put it another way:

The Pay Cart is in front of the Motivation horse. Motivation produces results not pay.

In surveys there is a broad consensus on what managers should do to create the Motivation Environment:

WATCH: Don’t put employees under surveillance; look for problems that need to be solved and help people solve them.
LISTEN: Attend seriously and respectfully to workers’ concerns
TALK: Provide plenty of informational feedback as opposed to judgmental feedback. People need to reflect on what they doing right, to learn what needs improving, and discuss how to change
THINK: why do you use power they way you do?

What do managers need to be careful of when dealing with performance improvement?

The main failing we see in our work is the extent to which rewards are not made contingent on some specific desired behaviour change that impacts business performance. Many clients are concerned about the very subjective nature of rating performance and therefore allocating performance related pay equitably. Often we start by comparing the client’s existing competencies with how they rate performance with those selected from the PDS Competency Library. Candidly, the Client’s Competencies are a mixture of Competencies and Attributes. “So what,” you say. Bottom line, you hire attributes and develop competence! Typical definitions:

Competent: “The ability to do something successfully or efficiently.”

Competency: ”Having the necessary ability, knowledge, or skill to do something successfully:”

Attribute: “A characteristic or quality of a person.”

Frequently, Competencies often contain a mixture of attributes which should be part of the recruitment and selection process, around which you choose a path of development for each individual. Relying on attributes as a basis for incentives naturally leads to the problem of subjectivity in performance ratings. Too many times people are swimming around in a sea of ink and rhetoric when it comes to recognizing and developing leadership and other competencies? Is more being written and discussed than applied to create the Motivating Environment?

Many authors of Competencies are not clear as to what a competency really is. (Is it a skill? Is it a behavior? Is it knowledge? Or, is it a value?). For example: A competency that deals with diversity has been described this way; “sensitivity to different races, cultures, nationalities, sexes and disabilities”. Many would agree this competency is more of a value (attribute). However, if that is the case, developing this competency presents a formidable challenge, since values tend to evolve over a lifetime.

The difficulty we have in agreeing on what competencies are required is practically dwarfed by the complexity of the motivational and therefore, the competency development challenge. Of course, the beliefs and customs of a culture play an incredibly significant role in influencing beliefs, attitudes and values. We have to recognize that behavior can be adapted, but attitudes and values are relatively rigid.

What we now know about competencies shows that matching behavior patterns and attitudes of people to the demands of a position is crucial to creating the Motivational Environment

This knowledge can also assist organizations to understand the challenges in trying to get people to adapt their natural behavior patterns and attitudes to accommodate organizational needs. Recognizing that competencies are configurations of behavior, attitudes, beliefs, knowledge, intelligence and skills are essential in the people evaluation and development process.

It is a truism that if individual talents are matched with the most important job requirements it can create optimal motivation and therefore superior performance. People whose natural behavior matches the requirements of their jobs and are rewarded for their true aspirations and passions naturally:

Perform better
Enjoy the intrinsic rewards of their work
Are loyal and enthusiastic
Often need to be told to go home

The main responsibilities in managing these people are to:

1. Keep them informed to align their efforts with changes

2. Make sure the building is open

3. Make sure they have the resources to do their job

4. Encourage them to maintain balance with activities outside of work.

As a rule, a “hands-off” leadership style tends to work best with people who are well matched to their positions. Micro-management or command and control techniques may drive these people to the competition. Although this kind of a “hand-in-glove” fit between people and positions may be difficult to maintain in the face of continuous change, the effort promises to return rich dividends in terms of self-directed performance, positive morale and commitment.

The matching process starts by identifying position requirements in terms of the competencies required for superior performance (built on and around attributes, whatever they may be). Every effort must be made to ensure this process is objective. Position requirements must be analyzed in terms of:

Behavior
Competencies (including soft as well as hard skills)
Attitudes (attributes)
Knowledge or experience.

An objective process for analyzing position requirements is needed whether the focus is leadership or management, technical, professional or driving a truck. What does this mean in terms of assessing the context, skills, competencies, attitudes and experience?

Summary

Creating the Motivation Environment and produce competitively superior results relies not so much on pay for results but these key factors:

Build a firm foundation for your organization based on values, principles, servant leadership,
Create and reinforce a “needs-driven” purpose or mission that is consistent with potential employees philosophy and values.
Skip incentive pay and pay people fairly or even generously for the position,
- Hire good life skills (attributes) and teach job skills (competencies).

It is crucial to properly matching peoples’ gifts, talents, expertise and passions to the job.

Hire the “right” person for the “right” job,
Coach positively for improved competence, and avoid annual performance appraisals which are linked to pay
Develop servant leadership that clears away the barriers to people’s success and avoids command and control leadership

Tip of the Blog

Ask yourself:

Do you have competencies for those positions which are crucial to your organization’s performance?
How well do they separate the Knowledge, Skills that are developable vs. those attributes that you need when hiring or promoting?
Honestly, how well are these attributes used to objectively anchor the recruitment process?

(Listen to Walk the Talk – Radio for Agile Minds – The Pay for Performance Myth )

Great, but how can this help me?

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, personal and executive performance that improve the bottom line. If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.

© Copyright All Rights Reserved, The Crispian Advantages, [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, The Crispian Advantage with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Creating a virtuous loop in pay-for-performance (sarahdillard.wordpress.com)
What Is The Difference Between Pay for Performance and Accountable Care Organizations (diseasemanagementcareblog.blogspot.com)

Rate this:

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.

Rate this:

Top Down or Bottom Up Approaches to Successful Change

Posted on August 15, 2010 by agincourtarcher

Ideally your approach to change would be personal! You make sure your team members buy into it, own it, implement it, and are rewarded for it in their work relationships. Yet, today we still see many leaders using Top Down Change as the default approach without considering the impact on productive relationships.

Why is building productive relationships so important?

As somebody once said, “Performance is Personal Before it is Organizational”. None of us work in a vacuum. Improved workplace performance requires productive relationships with peers, bosses, subordinates, customers, clients, vendors, suppliers, and the community.

What is the essence of productive relationships?

In our survey of 1072 business leaders – Focusing Change to Win contributors indicate that their organizations change at least annually. These changes are often unique to their organization from the triggers for change to how it’s managed. Yet, all change has three things in common.

The Three Common Elements of All Change

The Expectations Change Framework

It starts by defining your change in terms of :

Identifying what you expect people to stop doing
Specifying what you expect people to start doing
Confirming what you want people to continue doing

Then, focus on communicating constantly:

Why Change
What is Expected and
What the change is not

This is the Change Expectations Framework which engages deeper understanding and helps everyone manage stress more effectively.

Just in case you think everyone does these three steps, you are probably wrong at least 70% of the time, according to studies over the last 10 years.

The crucial step, and often missed step, is facilitating feedback from your stakeholders. What they want you to start, stop and continue doing in return. You have the responsibility to set the Expectations Framework but the what and how of change comes down to aligning expectations. Then people can:

KNOW WHAT MATTERS
DELIVER WHAT MATTERS
TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHAT MATTERS

What are the benefits productive relationships?

Greater clarity and trust
Increased competitive agility
Faster decision making
Progress metrics focus on what really matters
Greater confidence in doing the right things right
Accelerated performance towards people’s potential
Improved extent and quality of delegation
Better motivation as people know what success looks like

How do you reconcile this approach with a top-down approach?

Continue reading →

Rate this:

Quality Sales Managers Matters

Posted on July 19, 2010 by agincourtarcher

The focus of this blog is the first of two on Improving Sales Effectiveness. The first is the Quality of Sales Managers Matters. It is based on findings from the Conference Executive Board, PDS Groups and Huthwaite Research Group studies on sales management and coaching. All three agree on 5 Main Factors: (Listen to the Radio Show)

#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 Bottom-Line Impacts—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.

What difficulties do firms face in getting Sales Managers coaching to impact results?

Continue reading →

Rate this:

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

Rate this:

Managing Alignment Challenges (Part 3 of 3) – Improving Performance

Posted on May 25, 2010 by agincourtarcher

Introduction

During many consulting engagements we identified that organizational misalignment as a major factor in organizations and individuals were not achieving goals

Today I want to cover the second in a three part series on Managing Alignment Challenges to improve the odds of bringing successful change to the listeners’ organizations.

Last month we covered, Managing Conflict and Relationship Tension. This month I will cover…

2. Managing Complexity and then next month

3. Improving Performance

What are the signs of problems with Performance Improvement?

Here are some familiar problem statements we here from our clients about this third area of Alignment Challenges

We could be better at identifying problems and their solutions before they actually occur. We are too reactive and this slows us down
The way we allocate resources and feedback on their performance compounds problems in managing progress
People get so absorbed in what they are doing that Key Stakeholders are not actively involved. This has led to tension between them and the project team
We are reactive and respond too quickly to changes to understand the implications and impacts on other elements and groups
We don’t reuse what has been done before – “Reinventing the Wheel” is costly and takes time
Measuring the impact of what we do is too subjective and lessens our ability to stay within budget.
Cost overruns and missed milestones are too common and compounded by finger pointing.

What are the criteria for successful performance
Improvement?

Build on existing language.If there’s no common language, you are confused and competitively blind. But, you need to start where you are!

Change is hard, real change is real hard.Companies routinely initiate change but never seem to “really” change. We focus on avoiding those common “change traps”

Change is not about making time, it’s about releasing time.Executives must “create” time for change by reducing the distractions to getting work done.

Coaching cascades reinforce change.Managers must coach and be coached.

Create an accountability environment. Support, compensation, and other directional systems must be integrated.

Do “different” things! Don’t just do “things” differently.Think “out-of-the-box” and do different things rather than trying to get a little better at what you’re currently doing.

“Everyone needs to walk the same talk.” Receiving inconsistent voices from various sources causes people to “do what they’ve always done”.

Measure the “hows” not just the “whats” of success.Move management’s focus away from what was achieved to how you can win – measure leading indicators, not just lagging indicators.

No one sales process is the “right” one.The “right” sales process is the one to which people are committed.

Paint the train – revenue and competency grow together.Too often such training is disconnected from “real jobs.” Revenue and competency growth are dynamic concurrent processes not static sequential ones.

Sales and marketing people learn when they realize their collective ignorance risks losing a specific deal.It’s not what you know, but what you don’t know that creates competitive vulnerability.

Speed, intensity and momentum are critical.Move with “speed” to swim above cultural inertia. Move with “intensity” by focusing on a few new things. Build “momentum” by promoting early successes.

White Noise can’t be ignored. The background “hum” of distracting cultural legacies- “white noise”- drags change and must be overcome FIRST.

For more go to PDS Groups web site

The Heart of Performance Improvement – Effective Delegation

At the heart of Performance Improvement lies in Manager’s being required to delegate responsibilities for those people who have been identified for promotion

A Working Definition

Enabling others to do a job for you while ensuring that:

They know what you want
They have the authority to achieve it
They know how to do it.

By communicating clearly:

The nature of the task
The extent of their discretion
The sources of relevant information and knowledge.

Each task delegated should have enough complexity to stretch – but only a little by including:

Agreeing criteria and standards by which the outcome will be judged.

Agreeing first how often and when information is needed to monitor progress

Avoiding making decisions for the delegate when they are capable
Not making a decision unless provided with clear alternatives, their pros and cons, and the individual’s recommendation.

Not judging the outcome by what you would do, but rather by its fitness for purpose.
Delegating the task and its ownership so that it can be changed or upgraded, if needed.

To get to the state where effective delegation can flourish needs people to be aligned.

What is alignment?

Clear Expectations

– Validating & agreeing statements about what two people expect of each other

– Agreeing measureable deliverables that will evidence fulfillment of each expectation.

Mutual Accountability

– Accepting responsibility & authority for agreed upon expectations between two people, for tasks performed & results achieved

– Accepting positive or negative consequences of that performance.

Real Alignment

Performance Improvement ranges from the formal to informal yet for any effort to stick, managers and leaders have to constantly reinforce the need for effective delegation which inherently involves coaching. The basis for this condition is that when expectations relating to effective performance are made explicit, it is the responsibility of the originator, usually the Receiver’s Manager, to gain agreement to the expectation and the Receiver giving the evidence they are going to provide to meet the expectation. This is a very effective way of reaching mutual understanding so that the rating of performance and coaching is objective.

Great, but how can this help me?

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

E-mail I Web I Linkedin

Rate this:

Managing Alignment Challenges (Part 2 of 3) – Managing Complexity

Posted on April 19, 2010 by agincourtarcher

Managing

Complexity

Introduction

During many consulting engagements we identified that organizational misalignment as a major factor in organizations and individuals were not achieving goals

This changed our focus to ground other work by aligning people’s expectations first before designing learning, coaching etc. Over the last 10years, the PDS team developed their expertise and alignment practice with AlEx™ by serving companies in Canada and the US.

(Listen to the Radio show)

Over the years we have learnt that anticipating and managing misalignment goes to the root of building successful change whether it’s a family business transitioning between generations, construction projects with many different companies involved or implementing electronic patient records.

Today I want to cover the second in a three part series on Managing Alignment Challenges to improve the odds of bringing successful change to the listeners’ organizations.

Last month we covered, Managing Conflict and Relationship Tension. This month I will cover…

2. Managing Complexity and then next month

3. Improving Performance

The Strongest Shape in Construction and in Managing Change

I chose the second as the need for change can seem deceptively clear yet being comfortable with complexity is something people want to avoid. Somehow “complexity” has become associated with ineffectiveness, something to be avoided.

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. Just consider this, in a KPMG (2002) survey of 134 public companies.

56% per cent of Companies wrote off at least one IT project in the last year,
Average cost of US$12.5M, while the highest loss was placed at US$210 million.
US$1.7 billion for this group alone.
67% said their Program management was “in need of improvement or immature“
44% rated project performance against any established measures.

In other words unless we must become better students of not only what to change but how to change the climb out your referred to will be longer and more painful.

In an earlier program on to hire or rehire people as companies recover prompts me to ask: How are the employees affected by such failures?

Jaundiced….Post recession employees reveal they expect far more than the status quo, which could have significant implications on company bottom lines, employee morale and turnover. In Q3 2009 Glassdoor.com conducted their Employment Confidence Survey of 1,195 employees conducted by Harris Interactive®.

57% expect a raise, bonus and/or promotion
35% expect hiring freeze to be lifted and/or more employees to be hired in
their department
24% expect health benefits and perks that were previously reduced to be restored
19% expect to look for a new job

These factors don’t sound like change isn’t getting any simpler. How do you see it affecting leaders managing change and this increasing complexity?

Martha Maznevski and her colleagues at IMD put it like this.

“Complexity” is today often considered the latest business buzzword – it reflects a current common reality but not a lasting one. Executives say, “Yes, complexity is the real leadership challenge that I face. How can I focus on my area when everything else is connected? How can I be held accountable when everything is interdependent? How can I sort this out?

It’s overwhelming.” Good questions with few answers. We think “complexity” is much more than a buzzword, but a reality that is here to stay.”

How leaders react to this inevitability is curious. Many see their world as complex so their organization should be complex. But, the key is to focus on what to simplify. Central to this is your purpose and values; core processes and decentralization; early awareness systems; and leadership. Once these are clear and consistent, managers in different areas of the company can respond to complexity according to their own needs and realities. Here are some examples of complexity issues leaders face..

“Our management structure and style gets in the way when dealing with complex and changing business environments.”

This is often not so much one of structure but style. The key lies in effective delegation. Delegating task and responsibility, i.e. enabling others to do a job for you while ensuring that:

They know what you want
They have the authority to achieve it
They know how to do it.

By communicating clearly:

The nature of the task
The extent of their discretion
The sources of relevant information and knowledge.

Each task delegated should have enough complexity to stretch – but only a little by including:

Agreeing criteria and standards by which the outcome will be judged.
Agreeing first how often and when information is needed to monitor progress
Avoiding making decisions for the delegate when they are capable
Not making a decision unless provided with clear alternatives, their pros and cons, and the individual’s recommendation.
Not judging the outcome by what you would do, but rather by its fitness for purpose.

Delegating the task and its ownership so that it can be changed or upgraded, if needed.

So, you are managing complexity at the coal face rather trying to do everything back in the office on the surface.

How do you then get an organization’s purpose across to people?

Second point is Creating Momentum for change by leaders modeling what it means to be, say, the Customer’s Choice. Including:

Defining what value you want to give customers
Challenging the status quo
Probing and testing teams’ understanding of the change in hand
Aligning people’s expectations and actions with corporate goals and “The Vision”
Persevering when “the going gets tough”
Making decisive, courageous and consistent decisions
Motivating others to reach higher goals
Encouraging others to effectively manage risk
Communicating verbally up, down and across the organization – not just e-mail or presentations
Most importantly soliciting feedback on actions taken

What other ways should leaders be mindful of in getting decisions taken earlier and at lower levels in their companies?

After delegation and momentum it has to be teamwork where the weight of complexity can be shared. Specifically, building and growing teams that delivers customer and stakeholder value by:

Identifying key stakeholders to lead partnering activities, e.g. suppliers, subcontractors, branch offices
Sharing common strategies and building solutions with customers and other functions within the spirit of “we are all in this together”
Focusing team effort on delivering value for both customers and other stakeholders
Making and delivering on commitments
Supporting and implementing team decisions
Resolving conflicting positions inside the team
Engaging others to improve solutions and decisions.
Developing external alliances to develop new and innovative solutions

It sounds like you are encouraging leaders to develop trust in their people to do the right thing, but to many that is going to seem risky especially if they have tried before and they have had to take back control

It’s an astute point. It’s down to leaders actively cultivating a climate to anticipate mistakes through praise for prompt action in dealing with the errors and avoiding risk. The last thing to do is to “reward the inactive and hang the innocents” – The Blame Game.

It’s crucial that Risk Managing and Planning are yoked together, back to an earlier program when I mentioned Clauswitz and Contingency Theory. This includes:

Scheduling, anticipating and alerting to avoid risk situations.
Reviewing plans from a risk perspective
Praising people for coming up with solutions
Ensuring every plan is reviewed from both the risks to subcontractors, suppliers (“respected friends”) as well as Customer’s perspective.
Developing options and contingencies with costed options at each project milestone
Engaging all appropriate stakeholders in a timely manner to get multiple perspectives on how the schedule is developed
Creating rapid feedback to alert when a task is delayed or accelerated

How would you sum up managing complexity?

Effective Delegation, Building Momentum, Developing Teams and linking Planning to Risk Management lie at the heart of navigating complex situations, but above all Leadership cannot be repetitive, but should be predictable. Permanent communication is therefore the leadership survival tool in complex organizations, but much more in terms of “storytelling”, interpreting context and meaning, and investing in relationships than in transferring dry facts or ultimatums.

Tip of the month

If you want to follow these three programs you will find an article “Eternal Triangle” in the resources section at pdsgrp.net/resources where you will see a summary of what I have covered today.

Here’s my tip.

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
T. S. Eliot

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.

Rate this:

Getting Committed People on the Same Page – Disturb First, Enable Second?

Posted on March 11, 2010 by agincourtarcher

Last month I looked at why so many changes initiatives fail. One thing that struck me after the program was the inability to gain others commitment lies at the heart of so many failures. This is often due to the lack of interest paid by those leading change for those who have to make the change.

Previously, one stat sticks out from our work in aligning companies for change is that over 70% of leaders expectations are not known or realized by those affected by a change. Their people are not on the same page!!

Now, add to that apparently unrelated data…

An estimated 247 billion emails are sent each day

“The number of worldwide email users is projected to increase from over 1.4 billion in 2009 to almost 1.9 billion by 2013. In 2009, 74% of all email accounts will belong to consumers, and 24% to corporate users.
Worldwide email traffic will total 247 billion messages per day in 2009. By 2013, this figure will almost double to 507 billion messages per day.
In 2009, about 81% of all email traffic is spam Source: Press release from The Radicati Group, 6th May 2009 Quoted by Digital Stats.com

Stats vary but most people seem to say each person gets 5000 ads per day.

Now here’s my point in both your personal life and at work how much time do you have to spend listening to somebody drone on about:

The latest, greatest, best, more, more…Their solutions for you….

How often, in your personal and work lives, do you have to spend listening to somebody drone on about the latest, greatest, best, more, more…their solutions for you….

So, How do you typically react? Why should it matter to Change Management?

It reminds me of a cartoon of a family sitting at a meal table (rare enough of itself) with heads bowed and the son texts mom to pass the fries! This would be funny if I had not enforced a “no device” rule at our family meals – me included!! So, my reflections as to why we get resistant to change are these:.

Firstly, People overall forget what it’s like to be in somebody else’s head, like the research I referenced two months ago. “There’s not enough time…they cry”

Second, instantaneous communication reduces people’s patience from more deliberate consideration – we drift into the white noise, the buzz of attention deficit….but Are we challenged to really think?

Third, access to the internet has produced the most mature and knowledgeable change audience in history.

Why should this matter?

In terms of influencing people to even consider buying into your change process, be careful you are not:

Doing what you’ve always done… not getting what you want …

Whether you are influencing people in your own organization or trying to sell your service or product you will need to be more skilled at understanding where people are in their heads about change than ever before.

Change in West Michigan has come in many forms….change leaders ignore at them at their per. For example, Gilder’s vision of the future of “Cathedrals of bandwidth” will affect how people see work and how they see change. trends of exponential growth in technology and application will continue as far as we can see into the future.

The Technology Horse has looong bolted and the “Control Door” is hanging off its hinges……

So let’s stand back and see if we can start being practical. As the snow melts, I am reminded of when it snows. Each snowflake has a similar structure, yet is infinitely complex, and as each falls leads to complex behavior. If each person is a snowflake we must treat them as similar yet unique. (This is Fractal Theory..if you’re interested.

When managing change I find it’s helpful to look at how people change in a rigorous yet flexible way. It can be used to locate where individuals, groups and you are in terms of seeing the world, state similarly. This snowflake or fractal is based on a series of questions which follow a sequence – often shown as a ‘U”. The “U” is one of the most fundamental concepts in the psychology of learning and change. Readerers may remember in the last program that we consistently think we are better than we actually are – in psychology it’s called “self serving bias”. For Example: 94% of men rate themselves in the top half of male athletic ability

Change Management’s Foundation

So, I am going to make a claim that I have never done before:

If you use the following six questions in your life, it will change your perspective of others and most importantly yourself:

Now let’s use this “U” Map to can locate yourself and those you are trying to bring to your point of view and be committed to the change

1. What is the problem?

Do you have one and others don’t?

2. How is it a problem?

Do they see the same linkage as you? Structure, recurrence, competitively weak?

3. What are the consequences?

Can they see the ramifications that you do?

Now, let’s pause and ask: If you’re at 3. and those you want to influence can’t answer 1 – What is likely to happen?

If they are OK, but are they disturbed to the degree they are willing to consider changing? If yes, we are at the bottom of the U at the Change Pivot when momentum or change energy starts to be

Now, let’s look at how people are enabled?:

1. Why solve this problem?

a. Do they see this change as a priority

b. Or, Do they think we should do something differently?

2. How to solve the problem?

a. Are your technical people see a solution in the same frame from those in other functions

3. What will be solved?

a. Does cost of the present outweigh the cost of change?

So, Let’s say you are at 3. and I am at 6. Giving you an ROI ?….

What is your likely reaction?

Resistance; which I have created!

So, now you have the U – Ask yourself how many times has a sales person “Crossed the U” with you? Ask yourself, How many times have we as change agents “Crossed the U”? with the leadership team? Only to find we left the group “not getting it!” “not on the same page” Yet it was us that left them behind

Great, but how can this help me?

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

E-mail I Web I Linkedin

Rate this:

Family Business Transition – Focus on Things You Can Control

Posted on March 9, 2010 by agincourtarcher

Listen to this Radio Show

I was reminded of the topics we covered two years ago through a number of conversations with Financial Planners. Two things stuck out in terms of their frustrations, especially with business owners.1. Clients don’t want to reveal all their assets the planner2. Clients will “dither” on the end game. Some listeners will be thinking, rather skeptically, about the self interest motivating such frustration. But, for a minute, most financial planners are well motivated and they can’t build a book of business by not doing two things really well:1. Know their clients really well2. Act in their best interests

Other related conversations with businesses owners about when and how to transition:

A fast expanding food broking business which is rapidly expanding and the founder is59yo and his son is 32yo have no transition plan
A printing company where the 52yo owner was returning to work after a major illnessand his 28yo son ran the business very well in his absence. The owner wants to retireat 60 yet thinks it is too early to plan his transition
A environmental remediation company’s owner got caught by the recession and had topull back control from his inexperienced management team.

So, Nick, what is your theme this week?

“May you live in interesting times” Old Chinese curse. Readers don’t want another recital
of the recession litany. Yet, there is opportunity in any downturn.Yes, conditions are unpleasant with loads of “turbling” BUT….

“If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; . . . If you can meet with triumph and disaster AND treat those two impostors just the same . . Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it.” (Kipling)

My message is for business owners in this blog is –

Don’t waste time worrying about things you can’t change – Direct things to things you can control: this choices on how are you going to move forward.

That’s easier said than done, in this economic climate

Oh, I am not talking about easy but I am talking about the need to be proactive…
Since the recession started, for Baby-Boomer business owners face the same dynamics of their condition.1. 78m Boomers of whose wealth is held in 12m privately owned businesses2. 70% will change hands in 10-15years3. Trillions of dollars will transferNow think of the business owner with 180,000 hours, say, invested in their business;
What are they thinking?

Will I be able to work less in next five years?
Consider leaving the business?
How do I get out?
I don’t know what the business is worth?
What is the best time to sell?

Surely, though, most owners are in survival mode and need to protect their business these days

Why not combine the two?Expand strategy to accomplish both – the reality is they are not mentally exclusive.
In fact, there are real problems if you don’t keep them integrated.Remember the quote “keeping your head”
This is not the time to abandon business planning.It takes at least 2-3years to successfully implement in NORMAL Times. You can argue now
is the right time to put in place tactics that will increase business value when the recession ends.

OK. So what can business owners do now?

Well, the business cycle is alive and well, there’s still timing when you business is at its optimal value.

If you don’t think ahead: you will be in the herd!
9 out of 10 owners who don’t get anywhere close to what they expected or want for their business, delay in making a decision and for mature businesses “dithering” erodes the transaction value.

The fact is that less than 40% of businesses successfully transition their business…. Yet,
84% say the need the proceeds to finance their retirement.

There’s been no change to owners lack of urgency:

58% don’t have any plan
33% informal
Only 9% have a formal written plan

Ummm, what’s the connection between 1 in 10 get what they want and 1 in 10 have a formal plan.

When are owners thinking of exiting their businesses?

28 % within 5 years, 52% plan on exiting within next 10 years.
Like retirement and personal planning, transition planning works best the longer the timeline to plan and
implement = optimal value.

With such compelling stats for just how much is on the line, what’s holding people back?

There are the three fears of transition:

Fear of Loss Wealth
Fear of Loss of Control
Fear of Conflict

What are the main reasons for not having a succession plan?

It’s a bit like Letterman’s Top Eight Reasons (Excuses) for not getting the right return on 180,000 hours of:

“Blood, Sweat, Toil and Tears! (Churchill)

Top 8

8. Too scary

7. Thoughts of the end

6. Family/Employee conflict

5. Don’t want to think of leaving

4. Can’t get adequate advice

3. Too complex

2. No Time

No. 1 – No time to plan!

In this recession why has transition planning become even more important?

Good question,There will be more market competition – fewer buyers than sellersWith downward pressure on business values a premium will be placed on well run businesses that stand out
from the pack and can differentiate themselves in the market placePlanners – IO Non-Planners – O Which team do you want to be on?

How does the Family put a brake on transition planning?

Well. Many owners consider passing their business on to their children,It’s one of the most challenging
decisions a parent-owner faces.Impartiality is critical in addressing these emotional family issues and the effects on the business

What are the main reasons for no or little planning?

Sadly, many family-owned businesses are shut down because the Family didn’t handle the succession issue: Why?

Parents stays on too long
Parent steps down too soon before successors are trained or sufficiently experienced in the leadership roles
Fail to face the realities that many children don’t want to be involved with the business or at very least shouldn’t be forced into working together

The reality is that the odds are not stacked in their favor:

30% – 2nd Generation survival

12% – 3rd Generation survival

3% – 4th Generation survival

My Blog Tip

Ask Yourself:What comes first? The Transaction?OR The Management of the Transition?OR The Strategy for the TransitionDon’t put the Cart before the Horse.Talk to your trusted advisor – CPA, Lawyer etc. and ask”Who do we need to create and implement the plan?

Great, but how can this help me?

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

E-mail I Web I Linkedin

Rate this:

Rewarding Change – A Conversation

Posted on February 16, 2010 by agincourtarcher

(Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage & Dr Larry Dugan, Precision Personality Plus on WGVU )

This is part of the series: Seven Challenges of Leadership which focuses on ensuring competitive success by:

• Getting the Right People
• With the Right Focus
• To produce the Right Responses

We are at the 6th stage. In our prior conversations we have covered the topics of:

• The Intelligent Use of Consultants
• The Leaders Responsibility to Embed Purpose
• Remove Distractions
• Align Expectations
• Differentiate from the Pack
• Coaching Strategically

All too often the failure to reward change is the pivotal point where change efforts fail—which is what makes it so regrettable. A company has gone through the necessary steps and just at the point where they are implementing the change, they misfire. Rewarding change lags behind the other processes. Thus a company can embed purpose, remove distractions, align expectations and coach. But if the recognition and reward systems of your company are based on lagging indicators such as sales revenue and profit margin, you will only encourage people to do things differently, not “do different things!”

To change, you need to consistently reward the new behaviors, not the “reward legacies” of the past.

What attributes do effective leaders need to meet this important challenge of Rewarding Change?

• High on Open-Minded
• Low on Security Minded
• High on Innovating

What evidence do you have to demonstrate what happens when leaders and managers do not reinforce change?

Probably the best illustration of this occurred when we analyzed IMS’s communication channels.

Peter, was the Director of the Toronto sales force. Mary Jo lead the Division of Customer Data Solutions. Peter wanted simple, quick sales of equipment.
Mary Jo—and the company leadership—were shifting to a process of leasing equipment and providing service. The sales force continued to be paid a higher commission for selling equipment than selling Service Contracts. They had no incentive to do different things. Another example is what transpired with the Sweet’s Catalogs in the construction industry. A Sales force accustomed to selling large bound texts for thousands of dollars and the resultant commission, were now being asked to sell a CD-ROM version for significantly less (and less commission). This added to the dilemma of overcoming Industry resistance to making the shift.

So if you are going to ask people to sustain change, How can you measure and reward those who support your purpose?

This is the core of the issue. If a company is to overcome resistance to change, they need to reward new behaviors.

You start by keeping the right data. For example, if I am striving to emphasize positive labor—management interactions I have employees and managers track the time spent in productive business-based interactions and general positive social interactions. Then I reward—both by public recognition of their efforts and by financial compensation—those who show the most significant change.
Or if my goal is to continually find productive employees, I reward managers who demonstrate that they are taking steps in that direction.

What recommendations would you have on Benefits and Compensation?

Compensate new behaviors to a higher degree than old behaviors. As far as benefits go, work with the employee to ascertain what benefits are important to them. Example: A bank that was growing and needed a cadre of experienced employees for their new branches. Several very qualified applicants had been rejected based on the fact that they were seeking special conditions such as leaving at 3:30 (so they could be home for children returning from school) and ad hoc days off—to attend to sick children. Instead of hiring 3 full-time people, the bank hired 5 part-time staff, pro-rated the benefits packages and achieved their goal. If they had not been open to “doing different things” and compensating the employees and managers who resolved this issue, no one would have taken their claim seriously that they were “creating new policies” this could not have happened.

Another example: We were engaged with a company called MenuFocus. The “benefit” they are offering employees is the chance to design their future with the company. Now, the company helps in this process by completing comprehensive surveys on every individual in the organization so they can better learn their interests, aptitudes and personality traits as suited to a given position. That is a fringe benefit.

What proportion of people’s compensation should be tied to adopting the new behaviors?

Overall, at least 25%. At least 50% of increases in salary and benefits need to be tied to adopting the new behaviors. People need to know you are serious.

What else is important in Rewarding change?

Again, we start with Purpose. Successful companies place less emphasis on clear strategy and more on building a rich, engaging purpose. It is not enough just to build that purpose; you need to communicate purpose to employees at every level. Make it succinct. For example, tell employees… strategies change, purpose does not. We still have the same purpose; we are creating new ways to achieve that purpose. To use the example cited above, our strategy now is to lease equipment and obtain service contracts rather than sell equipment which will be antiquated in nine months.

Create new and more effective management processes.

• 45% of all profit margin fluctuations are a direct result of employee attitude
• 55% of employees feel underutilized and under-appreciated
• Boredom as a single factor reduces productivity by 50%—whether in a Service setting or a Production setting

Put these statistics together and you can begin to understand how companies fail. Successful companies move away from trying to control employees’ behavior and placing more emphasis in developing their capabilities and broadening their perspectives. Successful corporations are moving away from the old doctrine of strategy, structure and systems to a more organic model of purpose, process and people. This has meant creating an organization with which people can identify, in which they share a sense of pride, and to which they are willing to commit-committed members of a purposeful organization.
A great example of many of the concepts we have cited here can be found at Monarch Hydraulics. Monarch years ago instituted a Gain Sharing program whereby employees at every level shared in whatever gains made over actual costs.

So how do you achieve strong, enduring attachment from everyone to a new direction?

Achieving strong enduring commitment from everyone to new strategies requires a straight-forward approach including:

Articulating the well-defined corporate ambition
in such a way that captures employees’ attention and interest rather than stating purpose in terms related to strategic or financial goals.

Example:

FedEx. Overnight Anywhere Guaranteed.

This is Purpose. This can capture the imagination of everyone in the company every single day. Not ROI…not a strategy to penetrate the market more deeply. Purpose. Overnight Anywhere Guaranteed. There is no way you can misconstrue the meaning of those three words.

Another example, we are consulting with a Printing and Promotional Product Firm called Dodson Inc. Their new motto: 24-5…meaning:
• a 24-hour response on all estimates.
• 5 days to deliver product.
It is the focal point of every activity in the company. This is Purpose.

A sidebar. With this company we have another interesting phenomenon. As they recruit salespeople, this company openly tells applicants, we want you to make more money than we do as owners. How many companies do you know that do that? Again, to that end, to insure the change they have striven for, Dodson created a liberal compensations package

• Engaging everyone in the company is in developing, refining, and renewing the ambition.

• Ensuring that the ambition, the Purpose is translated into measurable activities to provide a Continuous benchmark for achievement.

• Making it everyone’s responsibility to sustain a Sense of momentum—and a sense of excellence—every single day.

How does a company instill new organizational values?

By the ways it defines, measures and rewards performance”

To date many still follow traditional practice of focusing almost entirely on financial results. The old mantra has had its day. This is not to say- “remove all financial targets!” It is more a question of balance:

“It’s fine to emphasize what we must shoot for, but we also need to know what we stand for…”

This is more difficult than articulating a new strategy because it relies less on analysis and logic and more on emotion and intuition. For too long, I think, we have operated on a set of beliefs and philosophies which have remained implicit. Some would say we repressed discussion of these issues so that we didn’t take our eye off-the-ball or not to offend people who held difference views. We have tended to taken refuge in “safe” financial performance targets that can’t be easily disputed.How many such differences do we know exist in the rest of Organizations?

How could unresolved differences blow us off course?

There are three lessons for instilling new organizational values:

1. Build the new philosophy around the company’s existing value and belief system.
2. Maintain a high level of personal involvement (leaders) in this activity over many years.

“In the end managers are loyal not to a particular boss or even to a company, but to a set of values they believe in and find satisfying”-Goran Lindahl, ABB

3. Third, translate broad philosophical objectives into visible and measurable goals.

“Most businesses focus all the time on profits, profits. I think this is deeply boring. I want to create an electricity and passion that bonds people to the company; you have to find ways to grab their imagination. You want them to feel they are doing something important.”- Anita Roddick, Bodyshop

What has been your experience of building core values?

We can’t use the same methods for, say, driving down profit objectives and establishing new value sets…organizational cynicism brushes off such initiatives as “flavor of the month.”

We can’t instill new values through a crash program, so:

How can we build on the strengths and modify the limitations of our existing values without radical change?
Where we do have to confront values, how are we going to do that?
What sort of things would you advise in terms of rewards for people who try or actually do change?

Here are some thoughts…

Sowing the Message

Embedding values is obviously more than fine words. What lessons can we draw from research?

“talk, listen, and feel the atmosphere. Reiterate the new values at ever opportunity and tell stories that reflect their impact…” Jamie Houghton, Corning

Needless to say he supported such communication with concrete action to signal his seriousness of the change.

Measuring Progress

Many have found real problems in placing measures of progress on such things as value statements which don’t easily offer clearly defined goals. Unavoidably,

“the hard drives out the soft, and commitment to the desired values dissipates”

How can we avoid this? For Example-

Houghton’s approach was to publicize the new values (“world class company”) to the wider community repeatedly which contributed, overtime, to Corning being polled as “one of America’s most admired corporations.’ The result being that it could be measured by the extent to which employees identified with the standard- “world-class company”-and took pride in this achievement.

How do you do this in a rapidly changing world?

By giving meaning to people’s work-It goes to the heart of what will make or break the new structure.

Today’s world of work is rapidly changing. People’s loyalty continues to drift away from the Company and more toward activities they find intrinsically satisfying and congruent with their beliefs. This is especially true of consultancies, and ad agencies and other service organizations, etc. The more leaders have to rely on consultants and other specialists:

You cannot afford to have dissatisfaction due to a lack of such satisfaction or congruence.

The most successful companies’ studies, in this area, developed a new kind of relationship with their people.

• They translate big ideas down to a personal level
• They recognize people’s contribution and treate them like valuable assets.
• They ensure everyone understood how their roles fitted into the company’s overall purpose and how they could contribute personally to achieving it.
• They are committed to maximizing opportunities for personal growth and development.

How can we Recognize Individual Accomplishments?

Whilst international communications do help, the real core of recognition is not appreciated by many.

“Personal recognition must reflect genuine respect. People on the front lines are quick to recognize empty public relations gestures…”

In sum, any changes we make must improve the connection between the growth and development of organization with the growth and development of individuals.

Commit to developing employees

A clear message. Successful companies make a stronger commitment to personal development. Instead of simply training for job skills they develop their capacity for personal growth.

Anita Roddick said: “You can train dogs-We want to educate people and help them realize their full potential”

A large Consulting Group views the development of its people as a goal in itself and makes no proprietary claims to the skills and knowledge it develops. It’s recruiting brochure promises ‘after training with us, you could work for anyone…”

What else do leaders have to consider in releasing their people’s potential?

Fostering Individual Initiative

We have to develop a new momentum that improves recognition for individual initiative as the main source of growth. We have to find ways of institutionalizing this central belief in policies and procedures. For example:

“3M’s-15% Rule-which allows employees to spend up to 15% of their time on bootleg projects that they believe have potential for the company”

What conclusions do you draw on rewarding change?

Three steps:

1. Continually refocus on Purpose in a mutually inter-dependent-and collectively reinforcing manner. In short, have everyone involved. MOVIE: Stand by Me

2. Continually Demand Accountability involving traditional standards or measures and new standards/measures

3. Continually Gather Data.

The danger is that if we don’t address the issues companies become focused on narrow corporate self-interest. We will eventually lose the excitement, support and commitment of those people who are the very engines for change-our people. We have to find a way of defining, establishing and sustaining a set of values which:

• Creates a sense of identity
• Creates a sense of pride not only to those employed by to customers and others.
• Respects and gives attention to our people’s ideas and inputs
• Motivates and builds commitment to a shared sense of mission.

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.

Series Introduction

8. How Can You Lead to Thrive?

Why should leaders focus on their organization’s essence?

What are the dangers of using technology to increase control?

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

How do we develop leaders that can thrive?

A Final Thought

Action Points 7: Leading to Thrive

Rate this:

Rate this:

Series Introduction

7. How Effectively Are You Communicating Change?

Change Communication Blind Spots

Where’s the Requiring Environment?

Action Points 6: Implementing an Effective Change-Communication Process

Rate this:

Series Introduction

6. Is Your Organization Thriving or Just Surviving?

Action Points 5: Developing the Thriving Organization

Rate this:

Series Introduction

5. How Can Change Gain Competitive Advantage?

Action Points 4: Implementing Change to Gain Competitive Advantage

Rate this:

Series Introduction

Why Bother Measuring Change?

What Questions do Change Metrics Need to Answer?

Action Points 3: Developing More Effective Change

Metrics

Protocol

Establish Your Change Scorecard

Rate this:

Series Introduction

3. Why Do People Resist Change

Action Points: Managing Change Stress and Resistance

Rate this:

Series Introduction

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

Action Points: Reducing Employees Stress to Manage Change Resistance

Rate this:

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

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

Rate this:

Rate this:

Rate this:

Rate this:

Introduction

Rate this:

Great, but how can this help me?

Rate this:

Introduction

Rate this:

Rate this:

What’s changed in Key Account Management 15 years on?

Rate this:

Introduction

Rate this:

Rate this:

Rate this:

Leading Learning

Rate this:

Rate this:

Tip of the Month

Great, but how can this help me?

Rate this:

Great, but how can this help me?

Rate this:

What are the ways of creating The Motivating Environment?

OK. So, how should you pay people, other than well and fairly?

But, what do you do about paying people if they perform better than their peers?

So, how do you get genuine motivation?

“Changing the way workers are treated may boost productivity more than changing the way they are paid”

What do managers need to be careful of when dealing with performance improvement?

Summary

Tip of the Blog

Great, but how can this help me?

Related articles

Rate this:

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

1. Embedding Purpose