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.
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:
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
Real change requires authentic communication and dialogue across all organizational levels. Although, employee’s resistance and disagreement are unavoidable, contributors show how it can be managed through multiplexed and constant communication. They stress that this only happens when change communication is centered on establishing and retaining trusting relationships. If employees feel fairness, they will trust more and trust is the glue of success.
So, what role does communication play in reducing change mistrust and cynicism among employees? Frequently, it’s people’s sense of fairness. The communication timing, involvement and sequence impact their sense of justice.
Where’s the Requiring Environment?
There seems little focus on improving alignment and change success. Issues like change management, communication, and change measurement were under 6% of contributors’ comments on communicating change.
Looking in more detail, a third of contributors said that they didn’t know of any change related communication or that their leaders don’t communicate enough.
For most contributors, real change is the outcome of authentic communication. They show how change can be managed through constant communication. Contributors often commented that trust in management was the only variable that significantly impacted change resistance.
However, comments on authentic communication and building trust seem to collide with those related to top down led change. Critical contributors point out that top down rests too often on leaders clinging to the belief that power, privilege and success lie in their core group. Whatever blend of top down and bottom up it is clear – one should be intentional and as one contributor said:
Being solid in the values you hold as a leader that needs clearly articulating and solidifying with your change management team before you start planning.
Our contributors are clear. Lay the groundwork for successful change before trying to carry out the next change. This starts with putting the change management team together before a specific change is planned. Then develop a shared governing set of values and design the change measurement framework.
Implementing Effective Change Communication Processes – A Questionnaire
This 38 question instrument was developed from 755 contributor comments on implementing an effective communication change process. It is designed to engage those involved in change management and leadership in selecting relevant questions and then reaching a consensus on improvement areas.
Analyzing Change Impacts
Set-up Change Program with Metrics
On-going Communication & Training
Action Points 6: Implementing an Effective Change-Communication Process
Based on your answers to the questionnaire above, use the following questions to develop your plan for developing effective change communication.
Have you established an explicit set of shared governing values?
How are you getting people ready for the inevitable change?
Have you engaged stakeholders and change agents?
Have you put the change-management team together?
How do plan to align the team’s values of change and their expectations of one another?
How are you going to improve leaders change communication skills?
Who is going to ensure that real change will be the outcome of authentic communication?
How are you going to ensure that all your people know and understand your change rationale?
How are you going to monitor employee’s sense of fairness and trust? (Remember: trust is the glue of success.)
How are you going to establish dialogue between groups and individuals, in often tense situations?
How are you going to establish and monitor your change’s requiring environment? Is there a set of aligned change expectations between leaders and each individual?
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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
There are 69 questions to select from divided into seven categories to help as you develop your plan for building a more vibrant and competitive organization.
Leadership in Thriving Organizations
Change Management in Thriving Organizations
Planning to Thrive
Agility to Thrive
Thriving People
Communicating to Thrive
Learning to Thrive
Action Points 5: Developing the Thriving Organization
Based on your answers to the questionnaire above, use the following questions to develop your plan for developing a more vibrant and competitive organization.
Leadership in Thriving Organizations
What is the one thing you can do to improve your leaders focus for your current change?
What is your strategy for building leadership capacity and competence in the longer term?
Change Management in Thriving Organizations
Which aspects of change management do you need to address now?
What are you going to do differently in managing change in the longer term?
Planning to Thrive
How can you improve planning for change for the next time?
Thriving People
In terms of the current change, what can you do to focus people on making this change successful?
What is your focus going to be in improving peoples change readiness and agility?
Communicating to Thrive
Where do you need to focus in terms of improving communication?
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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:
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 imitatorsrelies 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
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?
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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:
Most of our contributors do measure change, but 37% either don’t measure change or they don’t know if they do or feel measuring change is too difficult. So, here’s some evidence why this is worth struggling with. For example, learning is the most mentioned benefit of measuring change (27.1%). Yet, if this is so important then why the lack of focus on vehicles like coaching, mentoring and training to capitalize on this learning.[3]
Another striking disconnect is the low numbers of those who see benefits of measuring change’s impact on marketing and customers. This is curious, as our contributors’ most common reason for losing customers is not price but poor quality (92.2%), poor follow-up by sales people (76.5%) and making the wrong assumptions about customers (64.5%). After detailed analysis, it would seem that the relationship between change and competitive advantage is not as clearly visualized as one might think.
In addition, the use of employee metrics including personal performance, resistance to change, improvement to company culture and understanding our purpose, are low compared to satisfaction surveys. Most concerning is the lack of focus on individual behavioral change and tracking pay-related rewards. This is further evidence of little focus on accountability and establishing a requiring environment
Even when metrics are agreed upon, the next challenge is creating greater transparency so that they are used to create and sustain change momentum.
What Questions do Change Metrics Need to Answer?
Overall, there needs to be more focus on developing effective change metrics. The challenge is: How well do your change metrics accelerate learning, problem solving and decision making?
In Section 4, we distilled contributor questions on what they need change metrics to answer into a questionnaire. We ask readers to go through and rate their current metrics under three sections:
Navigating during a Change
Reviewing a Change
Planning the Next Change
Our contributors suggest establishing a change scorecard with their leadership team and key stakeholders. For example by:
Agreeing on those questions which the team needs to answer
Deciding what current metrics could be put to good use
Assessing during the change process how well they cover the risks of losing customers through poor product or service quality and poor sales follow-up.
And finally……Asking how well your scorecard helps you sell this and subsequent changes?
Action Points 3: Developing More Effective Change
Metrics
Protocol
Three themes were referenced in contributor comments about change metrics and how to test their overall effectiveness.
How well do your change metrics accelerate learning, problem-solving, and decision-making?
Establish Your Change Scorecard
It is strongly suggested that you go through this process with your leadership team and key stakeholders. (See section 7 for more details.)
Review the table Contributor Questions.
Agree on those questions your team need to answer when you are doing the following:
Navigating a change
Reviewing a change
Planning the next change
What current metrics could be put to good use?
How well do they cover the risks of losing customers through poor-quality sales follow-up during the change process?
How well do they inform you that the organization is reducing assumptions about customers’ view of the change and how the change responds to their needs?
To what extent do your selected metrics allow you to preempt or least respond quickly to competitors
How well do these metrics allow you to gauge and track employee stress around the change?
To what extent will your metrics allow you to respond quickly and effectively to employee stress before it hardens their change resistance?
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If you would like to contact Nick, please fill out the form below:
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:
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 Expectationsbetween 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:
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:
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
Yet, this survey’s findings show that contributors rarely mention all three in the same contribution. Why is this important? It creates increased stress and potentially change resistance. It works like this.
Assuming we are always managing change with limited resources like people, money, technology and time, leaders have to manage the tension between these three elements of stop, start and continue. Then, after deciding the commercial need for change, leaders need the Emotional Intelligence to identify which groups and individuals are likely to experience unhealthy stress and resistance.
This underscores the need for leadership consensus on why are we changing. For many contributors, leader inconsistency fuels people’s natural resistance . The ever-increasing rate of change demands that leaders give clear and compelling reasons for employees to overcome their feelings of here we go again . Unfortunately, we conclude that too many leaders either ignore, or are unaware that change will be stressful for their peers and employees.
Contributors readily see the need for change to adapt, survive or improve. The world’s ever-increasing pace demands that leaders give clear and compelling reasons for employees to overcome their feelings of here we go again. That response begs the question: What can leaders do about this condition. What follows are some thoughts.
All those implementing change know in advance, to some extent, that a change will be stressful and that not everyone will be willing to engage. For example, people often work well under certain stress to increase productivity. But, under other circumstances, they are surprised at the stress that another aspect of change can induce. So, stress can be negative, positive or neutral. For example, passing in an examination can be just stressful as failing. The problem occurs when people are under excessive or prolonged stress – Unhealthy Stress. The challenge for change leaders is that stress is unique and personal. A situation may be stressful for someone, but the same situation may be challenging for others.
Action Points: Reducing Employees Stress to Manage Change Resistance
Most contributor responses indicate that their organizations change anywhere from daily to annually. These changes are often unique to the organization, the triggers for change, and how change is managed. Yet all change has three things in common.
The Three Common Elements of All Change
Defining your own change and how it is managed starts with the following:
Identifying what you expect people to stop doing, so that they can start doing new things
Specifying what you expect people to start doing
Confirming what you want people to continue doing, while continuing to coordinate and keep the organization running.
Focus on communicating constantly the why of change and what is expected for your change to be effective and communicate what the change is not about. This is the change expectations framework, which engages deeper understanding and helps everyone manage stress more effectively
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If you would like to contact Nick, please fill out the form below:
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
This seminar series features Nick’s new book Focusing Change to Win which he co-authored with Kelly Nwosu.
These sessions provides business leaders with insights into critical areas to help focus their businesses and align their people for competitive advantage. Each seminar helps you answer a fundamental question:
Seminar 1: How Clear Are You On The Why & What Of Change?
Seminar 2: Why Do Your People Resist Change?
Seminar 3: Why Do You Bother to Measuring Change?
Seminar 4: How Can You Implement Change & Gain Competitive Advantage?
Seminar 5: Is Your Organization Thriving or Just Surviving?
Seminar 6: How Effectively Do You Really Communicate Change?
We take a deep-dive into a change issue that you face. You will come away with an understanding of where your expectations with key employees are aligned and not aligned, and how critical that alignment is for successful change. You will learn how to clarify and specify your own expectations as to well how you can check if they are understood. Each session helps executives assess their performance in terms of:
How well have you communicated your expectations to your people?
How well do you understand what your people expect of you?
What are the likely gaps between expectations and assumptions?
What are our options for planning and implementing success change competitively?
A tool, the Four Blocker Alignment Analysis, to identify misalignment
A method to help set the right expectations and get people on the same page
An understanding of how to align agreed expectations effectively
An example of an aligned expectation relevant to your situation
An improved chance for successful change in your organization
What preparation is needed?
For each participant organization we have preparation guides that ask people to consider issues related to the question being posed for each seminar.
Who should you bring?
Please select up to five key people to join you who are important to successful change in your organization, such as:
Which colleagues will help you answer the seminar question posed?
Whose opinion do you value to help look at the question posed from different perspectives?
Whose commitment will you need to make improvements in tackling change competitively?
What will be covered?
Each session focuses on real-life scenarios within the framework of the research findings and assessment tools developed. As we say:
“There is no role-play only real-play”
Seminar Format
Seminars are customized for clients and depending on their needs. They normally run from half-day to full-day. They can be run fact-to-face or web-based, although experience suggest face-to-face gets the best results
Maximum attendance is 20 participants! Costs start at $150 per person per half day excluding agreed preparation time, travel and accommodation.
Why are these seminars important?
Failed change means lost opportunity, competitive vulnerability, poor revenues, lost employees, increased cynicism and fear. Its residue is a hostile and toxic culture, where change resistance becomes the norm. The cost of a failed change can be staggering, from lowering morale to losing key customers due to poor quality.
Focusing to Win and the survey on which is based confirms other studies
Too many organizations are still trying to do things differently not do different things
Survey Contributors realize that working relationships are increasingly stressed in the drive for ever-faster responses to competitive threats and opportunities.
So, what are the meaningful differences between those that thrive on change and those that just survive?
Many contributors seem resigned to resistance being unavoidable yet recognize that trust in management is the onlyvariable that significantly reduces change resistance. They seem to have little focus on improving organizational alignment to achieve change success.
For others, whatever the blend of top down and bottom up led change, it is clear – be intentional. This is invaluable to avoid being misinterpreted and mistrusted. These contributors are clear and details how to lay the groundwork for successful change.
Each seminar takes an aspect of the problem based on over 6,000 comments to give participants an assessment framework for their organizations. These cover analyzing change impacts, setting-up the change Program with Metrics and on-going communication.
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. Inall 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 →
At school and district levels, managing scarce resources to sustain or improve results has never been more 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.
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.
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.
_________________________________________________________________________ For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage
Today leading in a complex world is one of the hot topics being discussed across organization and conferences. Every one faces complexity both in a small or large-scale industry. This complexity is driven by uncertainty and accelerating change. For organizations to thrive in this rapid challenging business environment, leaders must learn to adapt and embrace the complexity, to see it as opportunity to achieve uncommon result. This chapter present valuable insights about KPMG study confronting complexity. It identifies factors that cause complexity. It also suggests ways through which a leader can address complexity and turn it into competitive advantage.
Authors Kelly Nwosu and Nick Anderson
1.0 Introduction
The challenge with managing complexity and leading in a complexity world has become an excuse for some business people to keep the status quo, to abandon thinking ahead and to push strategy to one side, because they don’t believe it can be flexible and responsive enough to help them in a rapidly changing world (ED, 2011). But, most organizations that succeed in the midst of complexity are those that think differently and turn the potential challenges into a competitive advantage. They also see it as an opportunity to make their company more efficient. According to the recent study confronting complexity conducted by KPMG International, the study reveals that more than 90 percent senior executives across 22 countries say their organization’s success depends on managing today’s complex business issues. Yet, less than half executives believe the actions they are taking to manage complexity have been very effective (KPMG, 2011). On the other hand, the IBM survey on global CEO’s also show that the language for reducing complexity has change, CEO’s are now talking about how to transform complexity into an opportunity to gain competitive advantage (Balkan, 2011). In our research, we were able to identify what complexity is all about, factors that cause complexity and actions to discuss the issues of complexity. In particular, this chapter covers three parts. Part 1 focuses on managing complexity while the second part focuses on leading to the essence then part 3 focuses on leading learning.
Since change management came into fashion, a litany of failure has left its mark and our respondent’s echo what many have gone through in the last 8 years. It seems through their eyes, resistance has to be viewed as a “brown field” site. Gone is the naiveté of “a job for life” and an enduring contract between leaders and other stakeholders. Now, change is synonymous with downsizing, doing more for less, etc. For these respondents, they paint a picture of failed change, broken trust, fractured communication and poor leadership. We summarize their comments into the following:
Cultural Toxicity of Failed Change
“If people don’t trust you, what change do you stand?”
“People can’t be bothered”
“What’s in it for me?”
“Not knowing the purpose of it all” – a litany of communication failure
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.
For 40 Years few have challenged Matrix Management’s viability. Most writers remain convinced that a matrix approach is superior to a hierarchy, but why hasn’t it been more successful? This blog looks at pointing the reader to answer:
How do ensure we get the promised rewards of the Matrix?
First, a definition for SHRM
In a matrix structure, an employee reports to two managers who are jointly responsible for the employee’s performance. Typically, one works in an administrative function, such as finance, HR, information technology, sales or marketing, and the other works in a business unit related to a product, service, customer or geography.
The matrix model is a network of interfaces between teams and the functional elements of an organization. As its simplest it is:
I developed this as a discussion paper for a client’s European Sales Management Effectiveness Project. The interesting perspective is how the issues raised in the early 90’s are still validated by Deliotte’s 2010 survey of 250 Sales VPs. It begs the question:
Why are Sales Compensation Hydraulics Still Leaking?
1.1. How do you design a good sales compensation plan?
Specifically, a good plan:
Uses performance metrics that drive the company’s overall strategy;
Ensures roles, skills, selling, processes, internal culture, etc. are consistent with the overall sales force strategy
Are mechanically sound ; and
Can be administered efficiently.
Fits for your sales organization?
Can be administered with existing people, processes, data, and technology
(The following is based on Frank Cespedes book Concurrent Marketing, The Management of Major Sales (Neil Rackham) and 2010 Strategic Sales Compensation Survey by Deloitte & Varicent)
1.2. Compensation Hydraulics springs a leak
Since the mid 90’s the great bulk of literature still emphasizes what might be called
“Compensation Hydraulics”: Push this pay lever and get this kind of behavior.
This type of thinking fails to recognize that sales compensation is dependent upon, data analysis, strategy, values and human motivation. Many forget to ask:
How should we pay our customer facing people? (Which inevitably involves a range of business issues?)
(Journal article by George M. De Marco, Byan A. Mccullick; JOPERD–The Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, Vol. 68, 1997)
I like this article as it challenges some of the more superficial approaches to training sales managers to coach. It is a challenge that so many duck and as I wrote in Quality Sales Managers Matters:
#1 High-performing sales manager’s impact reps engagement and financial performance. Reps reporting to great managers report high job satisfaction with four times more revenue than those working for poor managers.
#2 Coaching Is King—The manager activity most linked with sales rep success is coaching. However, their coaching ability to coach individual sales reps is the weakest.
#3 Who they coach is selective— Coaching low or star performers does not statistically improve performance. Core performers, the 60% center of the performance Bell Curve make significant improvements with coaching.
#4 Effective coaching hits the bottom line. Core sales reps receiving great coaching reach on average 102% of goal in contrast to sales people reporting poor coaching who achieve only 83% of goal. Good coaching can improve core performance by 19%. This is lower than with PDS’s and Huthwaite’s sales productivity projects (18%-30% sales increases)
#5 Great Coaching Is a Learned Skill—Quantitative analysis shows that five elements account for 77% of coaching effectiveness. Armed with this information, we can develop great coaches by focusing them on specific activities such as emphasizing the importance of targeting the best opportunities and spending at least three, but no more than five, hours coaching each rep per month.
The characteristics of coaching expertise, research into coaching effectiveness, coaching expertise, and expert performance in other domains, a profile of expert coaching has emerged. – Five distinct Characteristics
Characteristics of Expert Coaches
1. Extensive, Specialized Knowledge
All around understanding of the internal and external sales environments
2. Organize Knowledge Hierarchically
The ability to store and organize information as learning patterns which allows them to compare idealized performance standards with the present performance of their people.
At its core the experts are superior planners and evaluators. E.g. expert gymnastic coaches used a model to determine and plan for their athletes potential developing short- and long-term goals being set and periodically reset according to the athlete’s progress.
Another study compared 10 expert and 10 novice basketball coaches. The results indicated:
“..experts had more in-depth and detailed planning protocols, with more augmentation, sub goals and anticipated problem statements than novices. They planned practice sessions in bigger chunks, taking into consideration more components of the problem at one time” (p.215).
3. Highly Perceptive & Superior Problem Solvers
Experts are uniquely capable of accurately perceiving stimuli in game situations. They can sort important clues from other “white noise” and then generate superior responses. They can see how all the pieces fit together to help their athletes to plan, diagnose and strategize more effectively. The experts solve problems more methodically
4 Accurately assess and prescribe performance
This positively impacts the quality and quality of coaching during practice. Basketball experts spent 42% of their time in instruction In another study, expert coaches gave significantly more feedback.
Expert coaches are able to detect what people need to know and then find ways of supplying that information.
5. Exhibit Automaticity During Analysis & Instruction
Several studies on coaching effectiveness showed that coaches of less satisfied high school teams often interrupted the flow of practices to instruct, whereas coaches of satisfied teams typically provided instruction as they played.
Commentary of Summitt’s coaching:
“provides succinct and rapid-fire instructive and prescriptive feedback during play”
6 Self-Monitoring Skills
Experts are more self-aware, analytical, evaluative and corrective of their performances. They are driven by the desire to improve their own coaching performance
Developing Expertise in Coaching
Gain More Knowledge
Study successful coaches
Identify the important. Organizational skills are critical to effective coaching. Keep yearly, monthly, personal records
Stay perceptive, recognize problems early and solve them quickly.
Concentration is a must – focus on the task at hand and don’t let yourself be interrupted or distracted. When analyzing a skill performance, focus only on one aspect of the performance, not the whole skill. ”The sooner the coach can analyze skill problems, the sooner the will move to the expert level”
Identify & solve problems in a rapid, complete and correct manner demands skill that continually needs to be developed
Increase short- and long- term Memory – A great distinction between the experts and others “the ability to acquire, retain and apply knowledge”
Make it Automatic – develop practice routines, warm-up drills, pre-game activities
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.
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:
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”
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’
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.
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
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page Nick Anderson, Senior Partner, PDS Group LTD
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.
Sound weird, doesn’t it? Truth is . . . being tied to one training methodology simply isn’t productive.
There’s no “perfect training methodology” – whether it be focused on selling, managing or coaching. Any training should Advance Competence while Advancing Sales. Complex sales organizations need methodological purpose rather than one methodology piled on top of existing methodologies.
Additionally, people have been trained a lot in their lives. It seems obvious that we should also give them credit for the concepts, processes, and skills they have already learned. Adding methodologies (no matter how good they are) risks creating indifference. We know indifference does not change behaviors! Conversely, building commitment relies on giving your people and managers credit for what they already know, while at the same time changing behaviors that do not work.
Accelerating Complexity places extreme demands on leaders. The leader’s ability to relate, energize, and develop their followers is critical to empower them to act without direction. It’s a competitive imperative and requires a new balance of more effective and affective leadership. It’s the ability to produce results by being affective. That ability to influence people, in the way they think, feel and act is now paramount
As Peter Senge said Leaders “…cannot afford to choose between reason and intuition, or head and heart, any more than they would choose to walk on one leg…”
So, this month I deal with what leaders need to do – the easier bit. Next month, I cover the tougher piece on how leaders need to lead transformationally.
In this blog I want to focus on Preparing People For Changeby 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
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.
• 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
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
Last month we looked at competitive differentiation and emphasized the importance of Competitive Value Discovery as fundamental. It helps you discover value potential over your competitors. Finding value that the Customer had never thought of before is competitively differentiating. Also, whether it’s your existing customer or you are trying to secure a new client, they always weigh your value against your competitors’. Focused Value Discovery helps you gain greater control over what they weigh, how they weigh it and, as importantly, what the competition is doing in the same regard so that we can counter such tactics. So, if we have far better intel and a better sense of the client’s changing priorities we can work both offensively and defensively to influence their Decision Guidelines.
In sum, you need to gain the high ground
What have you chosen for us this month?
This month I want to explore why planned and focused value discovery is vital to creating and implementing a successful sales strategy. Aligning where you are going with your resources gives you the best chance for creating new or additional revenue sources. This means being competitively clear about how you are going to choose the products (or services) you want to build. For instance:
Build the product you want to build,
Market the product you want to build,
Sell the product you want to build,
Service the product you want to build
Build the next generation
Determining where to differentiate based on market conditions is a strategic value conversation. You have to know your products as well as you know your competitor’s. Then determine strategically where competitors are most vulnerable and how to deliver those messages. You must regularly test your premise with the customer…
How easy is it to find out how your competitor is differentiating themselves?
Not easy! Sure, hard product functionality is on their website – that’s the easy bit. It’s difficult because most think each competitor is static and consistent – but they are not! Many competitors don’t even behave the same between their different regions or divisions. For example, a competitor can be your partner in one geography, yet be your competitor in another. Typically, this occurs in IT. So, what they do in Idaho is often very different than what they are doing in Chicagoland. With one client, we helped them find out that a technology partner was in fact competing against them using two strategies. The first was in schools districts and the second in State Government. They were losing 8/10 sales to them. After we determined this we helped them reverse that condition.
Why do so many companies fail to recognize such competitive strategies?
Because they don’t have the focus, processes and ability to read their competitive environments. Such signals are not easy to read: they are weak ambiguous, and need deciphering. Only a systematic and aligned process can decipher competitive signals early enough to make a difference.
It is difficult. First, top management is never close enough to the market. Second, some top executives can’t see competitive reality. Somehow they become insulated from competitive reality by relying on intelligence that is invariably biased, subjective, filtered or late.
By the time most executives get evidence of changes in their markets, they have already lost touch with customers, technology, competitors, suppliers, government and the other forces operating to squeeze their profits.
The question is, if you do nothing, what are the competitive consequences? Without taking specific preventive measures, such as ensuring that top managers consider competitive information in making decisions, companies will be hit on the head by change – time and again.
You may be thinking, who has the time to continually and systematically identify such signals early? Who has the expertise to attempt to decode all of them? The answer is: Your people – those who are in daily touch with the competitive arena.
Survival depends on competitive agility when facing changes in the environment by:
Continuously moving on three fronts –content, context and process
Being unpredictable and so easily identifiable to your competition
Being experimental
To compete in unstable markets you need to be competent in two things:
Identifying and understanding the competitive forces at play and how they change over time, linked to
Mobilizing resources to respond competitively
How do you get this flow of competitive intelligence to decision makers?
The Five Aspects of Competitive Strategic Change
Our uncertain environment means strategic change involves parallel streams of activity. There is no easy logic; It’s more like brewing a culture– like beer. It’s a difficult complex process where a manager’s ability to cope with ambiguity is paramount.
It’s not surprising then that higher performing firms handle five interrelated aspects of strategic change better:
The firm has to be an open learning system and not reliant on one specialist function.
As Romme (1989) puts it:
“There is the problem of not only environmental “sensing”, but also “sense-making””And sensing tends to be by individuals whereas sense making nearly always involves collective processing…
Successful competitive sensing and sense making is requires:
Key people to champion assessment techniques which increase openness
Both structure and culture to encourage environment-facing behaviors
Even with these factors are present there is no guarantee anything will change without actions which stabilizes and drives this assessment capacity forward. .
Presumably, this means leadership style has to change?
2.Leading Change
I agree, it’s not is not just ensuring that the environment is understood; the vital need is to ensure that the organization learns and acts on new information that requires courageous leadership. The leadership challenge is that unpredictability makes the prospect of greater control remote. So, big initiatives in themselves are of limited value and may well be dangerous. Paradoxically, effective leadership relies on the gradual and modest. This includes assessing, for instance, through “problem-sensing” and “climate-setting” management can assess the political implications of a competitive strategy. Effective leadership relies on shaping a long term process rather one direct initiative. These processes have to encourage analysis and actions which are sensitive to changing circumstances.
Competitive research suggests that leading an organization through change does not imply reliance on one leader. Great emphasis in those organizations studied was placed on:
Creating a broader notion of collective leadership at higher levels
Embedding a complimentary sense of leadership and responsibility at lower levels
Leaders need to be “Radical Gradualists,”knowing where they need to go using incremental and unspectacular steps.
It involves integrating competitive actions at all levels.
Building a climate for leading change also needs to raise energy levels and set new directions. The conditions needed are:
Showing why the changes are needed
Building the organizational capabilities to mount the change
Establishing an agenda which sets direction, visions and values
What’s the next challenge for becoming more competitive?
3.Linking Strategic & Operational Change
The cumulative effect of separate acts can be powerful. As Pettigrew & Whipp puts it:
“Translating strategy into operational action does not occur by a neat sequence of steps to a logical outcome; it may include…iterative actions in order to break through ignorance or resistance; it often requires…aborted efforts and the buildup of slow incremental phases of adjustment which….allow short bursts of concentrated action…”
You need to focus on:
Opening up people to reach closure on what worked in the past and reinforce the changes that need to be made
Sustaining speed, intensity and momentum of the process
Recognizing that re-formulation of the strategy will occur – Set the expectation that you can’t to get it right first time
Translating strategic intent into operational reality – WIIFM
Then, new knowledge and insights gained during implementation of a strategy can be captured, retained and disseminated. So, replicate success and avoid failures better than you competition
I am curious to learn about the next step
So, the next step is about the organization’s ability to keep learning about its competitive surroundings
4.Competitive Learning
Peter Senge defined learning organizations as:
“Organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to learn together.”
Competitive learning organizations need to create positive learning spirals that:
Develop the value of competitive knowledge as a key differentiating weapon
Facilitate learning that generates, maintains and regenerates that knowledge
Find ways of exposing knowledge locked-up in the procedural repertoires of the firm
Ensure that the knowledge base of the firm matches changing competitive conditions
Competitive learning spirals involve observation, reflection, hypothesizing, experimentation, action and “hands-on” application. What is learned has to be codified and diffused.
Such spirals are team based. People collectively developing their knowledge, values and shared mental models of their competitive environment. It goes beyond training. The need is for a much broader approach which embraces “play experimentation”, developing appropriate language as well as reshaping attitudes and values.
Often overlooked, is the need for breaking down entrenched knowledge and beliefs – “unlearning”. – Shedding outmoded knowledge, techniques and beliefs, and then learning new ones to carry out strategies is crucial. The ability to do so faster and more effectively than your competitors becomes almost priceless!
How do Leaders juggle all of this?
5.Orchestrating Competitive Change
It’s about holding a firm’s strategic thinking together, while carrying out the reshaping and adjusting which new or emergent strategies demand. Research shows the need for competitive integrity between the strategic competitive position adopted by the firm, the internal resources and external collaborators
Such orchestration is not easily attained or maintained. It means solving analytical, educational and political problems.
The problem of orchestration lies in the divergence between official goals and more routine decisions. As Kanter (1983) says, “there are many rules for stifling innovation”. These include multiple layers of managerial approval; intensive controls; secretive decision making; and suspicion of new ideas. In other words, corporate contradictions prevent change – the formidable obstacles to which many give little attention.
Are there any other aspects which leaders should consider when conducting competitive change?
Developing Competitive Networks
A key aspect is developing competitive networks. It’s investing in networks to build up, for example, a set of complimentary assets which it needs in order to exploit its knowledge base.
Networking focuses on developing relationships between your firm and others which are directly concerned with generating new intellectual capital (IP) For example, sharing life science research with a collaborator. Each has one piece of the puzzle, so they build a database by sharing intellectual property.
It also is about developing relationships which affect the firm’s process of generating and altering its knowledge indirectly. An example here is with data centers and different IT firms used to support the customer’s service in that data center.
Developing such networks requires learning local cultural and market conditions, techniques of partnering, negotiation skills and collaboration. Such networks are often invisible assets which cannot be readily purchased and controlled.
So, I guess the real question is how well an organization develops its competitiveness by being better at discovering customer values and then aligning their organizations and partners to meet those demands. Right?
Competitive Value Discovery is the tip of the spear targeted and driven by superior focus, processes and leadership that galvanizes the organization. It is sustained by the belief that being competitive is about making sense of changing market conditions, customer needs, priorities and competitive responses.
Competitiveness rests not only aligning such aspects, but also replicating what works over and over again. Can you tell me what those systems are in your organization?
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
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.
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:
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?
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.
Sustainable change is based on leaders having a radical vision and building a pathway to that vision one step at a time.
Just as you wear a pair of shoes, this change walk has the left shoe – radical, right shoe gradual – Radical Gradualism
That got me to pose this question:
“What is the glue that holds an organization together while it goes through change?”
Relationships – the golden triangle of your people, your customers and your partners.So, that’s the pathway today – creating and holding on to that human glue that produces success
“Where’s the evidence to support your track this month?”The answer seems obvious…but…why is this facet of business becoming more important?
Traditional rationalization and cost cutting strategies fail too often – too many business turnaround failures. These traditional approaches, which are predicated upon cost efficiencies, have left companies demoralized, distracted and less productive.
If you look at the data – pure light
Successful leaders transform their organizations doing several things, like:
Building closer relationships with customers while harnessing human talent to deliver greater customer satisfaction: HP’s competitive strategy vs. IBM Mini Computers
Leveraging internal resident talent and expertise to resolve business problems and capitalize on opportunities: 3M Post-It Note
Fostering a climate that results in personal ownership for doing what’s needed: HSBC’s Customer First Change Process in the UK
Devolving responsibility to groups and teams create a project based organization: Volvo pioneered work cells – one team-one car
Raising the importance of individual and organizational learning, ensuring learning and working are integrated: KPMG link learning to career progression
Secure changes in attitudes and behavior: Fred Smith, FedEx“Anywhere,Overnight, Guaranteed”
“In the military, leadership means getting a group of people to subordinate their individual desires and ambitions for the achievement of organizational goals. And good leadership has very measurable effects on a company’s bottom line.”
My call to action: Challenge your attitudes, values and your behavior. They are the sole of your change shoes, rather than just focusing on your technology, products and services – all of which can be copied.
Some would say that other things like the right “goto” market strategy with the right distribution channels etc. So, have we got a chicken and egg situation like what comes first
People or Process or Structure?
Good point, but consider this: the days of ready, aim, fire have long gone, it’s been ready, fire, aim for some time. Few startups succeed – e.g. new restaurants close before their first anniversary. The change paradox is this “hurry slowly” – radical gradualism is a simple concept rigorously implemented
Let’s put it another way: At least three separate disciplines drew essentially the same conclusions about change and project management:
WYSIWYG-( What you see is what you get) is no longer reality. It’s IWKIWISI (I’ll Know it When I see It!) that reflects our world today
Like a lot of what you say seems common sense…why don’t more companies take this approach…?
Many factors….one telling fact is that average age of senior executives while falling is between 46-50 yo.So, they graduated between 1978 – 1982….Who had a laptop let alone a cell phone? At that time business schools still held on to a Fortune 500 view of the world and seeing the world through the lens of the Harvard Business Review. Let me ask you – What percentage of businesses is of this size in West Michigan? – Not many. So, the enculturation of managers was still “ready, aim, fire”
Bosses are turning still turn a deaf ear…Bosses are ignoring a wealth of creative ideas from their employees
1:4 people believe that they are never listened to by superiors
Among older people the proportion rises to nearly 1:2!
1:4 never been asked by their bosses for their opinion or actively encouraged to offer up ideas, no matter their length of service.
1:2 Canadians surveyed believe that their companies use half or less of their brain power
Surveys – NOP Survey 1000 (London & South East) & “Report on Business” Magazine Dec 1998)
Do you see this trend getting worse?
Employees want bosses to listen better
In the Leadership Digest, in 2006 – While employees gave their bosses “high marks” in a recent study of worker satisfaction, staff still suggested areas for improvement:
43% want bosses to use their employees’ skills and abilities better.
More than 35 % want the boss to step in more often to resolve conflicts.
Just over 25 % wish bosses would ask for their ideas and listen more readily.
So, it depends on how business leaders react. Let me explain, based on James Brian Quinn, Philip Anderson, Sydney Finkelstein,with rare exceptions, productivity lies more in intellectual and systems capabilities than say raw materials, land, plant, and equipment. Intellectual and information processes create most of the value-added for firms in the large service industries–like software, medical care, communications, and education–which provide 79 percent of all jobs and 76 percent of all U.S. GNP.
In manufacturing as well, intellectual activities–like R&D, process design, product design, logistics, marketing, marketing research, systems management, or technological innovation–generate the real value-add. McKinsey & Co. estimates that by the year 2010, 85 percent of all jobs in America and 80 percent of those in Europe will be knowledge-based. Yet few managers have systematically attacked the issues of developing, leveraging, and measuring the intellectual capabilities of their organizations.
What are the other pitfalls in creating this service based economy and how does it relate to relationship development?
The more knowledge workers, the flatter the organization which impacts the style of leadership and how wealth transitions from one generation to the other or to new owners. This economy is and will become more dynamic.
Can you explain what you mean wealth transition?
Dynamic = more transitions – buying and selling, merging acquiring. But, What gets missed? Capital is no longer about bricks and mortar – it’s Human Capital
So, what challenges does this present? What can you do to build value in these circumstances?
The greater reliance on human capital for valuing an organization the more PE firms, M & A need to look at tools to assess the real value. This means doing the obvious things of doing inventories of the people, their skills, competence and certifications, where needed to redress findings like:
Only 1 in 10 can consistently achieve their Strategy’s full potential
Non-Financial Factors valued most by investors
Strategy Execution
Management Credibility
Innovativeness
What are the main things executives have to do better?
Fulfills others: Take risks, trust each other, take proactive approach that we will work together on solving problems, share considerable confidence in their own and others abilities, have enthusiasm for their jobs.
Providing effective feedback is one of a manager’s most important tasks; it’s also one of the most difficult. Here’s a six-step model, proposed by Jack Stahl, current CEO of Revlon and former president of Coca-Cola, to facilitate feedback and make it more effective.
Value the individual. Begin by affirming what the employee contributes to your organization. Be sincere and thorough. This step is critical because it frames the conversation.
Ask the person to identify his/her biggest challenges. Ask the employee to assess his/her performance, including both strengths and challenges. This will help you pinpoint areas for targeted coaching.
Provide targeted feedback. Give specific examples of behaviors to change.
Agree on areas to develop for the future. The objective here is to focus the individual’s development and encourage him/her to practice specific new skills. You could also point him/her to training opportunities.
Agree on the benefits of improving and the consequences of not improving. This step is designed to fuel the employee’s motivation to improve or change.
Commit your support and reaffirm the person’s value. “When people feel valued, they can hear difficult feedback without being demoralized by it.”
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
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 tostopdoing
Specifying what you expect people to startdoing
Confirming what you want people to continuedoing
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:
KNOWWHAT 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?
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.
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.
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?
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
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?
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
This is the second in a series which goes to the heart of the challenge facing our economy – Implementing Successful and Sustainable Change.
Since 1996 when Kotter’s research revealed that only 30% of change initiatives succeed. Even today, when McKinsey surveyed 3000 business executives this ratio of 1 in 3 still applied in 2009.
In both surveys, the number one reason was people not being or willing to be on the same page. At the heart of this issue is that people are not clear on their expectations of others and they don’t understand the change from their perspective. The problem is that managers use rational models which they think just makes a common sense and why things go wrong from the get-go why?
Because when they simply implement their prescription, they disregard or are not aware of certain, sometimes irrational- but predictable elements of human nature. Unfortunately, Yes. I say that because only 30% of change works and only 10% of such initiatives deliver everything intended by those planning the change.
Why has this lack of success been so difficult to improve upon?
At its core is this quote from Rabbie Burns:
Rabbie Burns
“O wad some Power the giftie gie us, To see oursels as ithers see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us” “O would some Power the gift to give us, To see ourselves as others see us! It would from many a blunder free us” (Robert Burns)
A translation. In times of change conventional wisdom suggests that the leaders of change should model the desired change to mobilize influential leaders to drive change deep into the organization.
So, you’re saying before leaders start walking their talk they need to be careful. What do you see as the pitfalls leaders should be aware of?
Two spring to mind.
First, Leaders think they have already made the change and they just need to get everyone on side. They forget that all those retreats, strategy sessions and closed door meetings with advisors, consultants etc. weren’t easy. Conflicts arose and concessions were made. So, in their arrogance they think that their people should “Get It” with little chance to go through the “Storming and Norming” that the management team went through. That is not to say all people should be involved all the time but you have to allow for them time to adjust, question, object and be answered in a respectful way.
Second, leaders think they are the panacea rather than mobilizing others to get things to happen.
Let’s take the first one.
Most senior executives generally buy into Gandhi’s astute observation:
“Be the change you want to see in the world”
Yet knowing something and committing oneself to change too often don’t lead to significant results
So, leaders change their behavior and yet nothing happens…I am confused…
And so are leaders…..when they make a change. Too often most leaders don’t count themselves among those who need to change.
Like if you pulled them to one side and whispered “Are you really customer focused?” they would say “Not really” (I don’t have time to be…have you seen the paperwork I have to get through or ….P & L)
The fact is we all 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
So, when it comes to change Walking your Own Talk it’s not so much as a desire to show people what to do BUT the real bottleneck is leaders knowing what to change at a personal level.
It sounds like many leaders don’t take a cool hard look at themselves before embarking on “Walking the talk” and prescribing what others should do?
Exactly, we often see this in our alignment work. Consistently, leaders have 70%+ more expectations than others realize and leaders are often oblivious of what their people expect of them.
What can leaders do to overcome this potential blind spot?
There are several ways using surveys like 360 degrees feedback, or simply asking regularly what should I be doing differently? Or one large company has what they call the “Ring of Fire”
Direct feedback in answer to
1. “What makes you great?”
2. “What holds you back?”
Are people really going to reply honestly?
No, not if the climate has not been set. Yes, if the Leaders don’t believe they are the cure all for their organizations problems.
Yet, it’s sound advice that they should mobilize others, who by experience, respect and ability can become influential it getting things to happen. Yet, too often the influential leader’s role has shifted from being that helpful element to a broad set of actions, to being a cure all.
It’s a mindset problem leaders have. They forget they need to create the framework for changes not persuade people to adopt their prescriptions for change.
That sounds like leaders should let people come up with their own solutions…
No & Yes.
Persuasion or selling the need for change and what the change needs to acheive has to get welded together in leaders’ minds.
Leaders need to create receptivity for change (Framework) and not stray into the debilitating arena of “I know what we need to do…..”
The dangers are that you are seen to be part of the problem, you risk cutting off the growing motivation to do something differently and focus people on being spectators of change rather than being players in the game.
In reality it is often unexpected people who feel compelled to step up to drive change e.g. Like in Genzink Steel where customized job shop scheduling software didn’t work. It was the work scheduler who stepped up and said basically “The Emperor has no clothes”. Her colleagues were so fed up with the system that they stopped using and went back to their old ways. They certainly didn’t like her saying that because it brought back all memories of the hassles and frustrations they went through trying to get it to do what it was supposed to do.
That’s why keeping leaders focused on creating the framework of lasting change is vital.
Too often we see leaders vested in their narrow focus unwittingly excluding the very people the need to create this framework.
So, what does effective leadership look like?
If you turn to Robert Greenleaf’s philosophy it can help leaders create the frame and not try to build their house on their own.
“Greenleaf – The servant-leader is servant first… Becoming a servant-leader begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first… The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and the most difficult to administer, is this:
Do those served grow as persons?
Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?”
Robert Greenleaf’s most important work, Servant Leadership (1977/2002), is subtitledA Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power & Greatness. Though his terms are secular ones, his definition of leadership is the clearest statement of this idea that the needs of followers are holy and that legitimate use of power arises from the consent of followers.
Like Christ washing the disciple’s feet – what did this do for their perception of his leadership?
Great leaders like Montgomery, Schwarzkopf, Washington, and MacArthur all engrained their officers to “Look after your men”
So, ask yourself:
How often do I proactively ask for feedback? (Remember alignment is a two way street)
What you expect of me?
What I think you expect of me?
What I expect of you?
What you think I expect of you
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.
challenging. Striving for consistency and efficiency builds tensions between those who care most about equipping children for an uncertain future.
amental. It helps you discover value potential over your competitors. Finding value that the Customer had never thought of before is competitively differentiating. Also, whether it’s your existing customer or you are trying to secure a new client, they always weigh your value against your competitors’. Focused Value Discovery helps you gain greater control over what they weigh, how they weigh it and, as importantly, what the competition is doing in the same regard so that we can counter such tactics. So, if we have far better intel and a better sense of the client’s changing priorities we can work both offensively and defensively to influence their Decision Guidelines.
It is difficult. First, top management is never close enough to the market. Second, some top executives can’t see competitive reality. Somehow they become insulated from competitive reality by relying on intelligence that is invariably biased, subjective, filtered or late.
oney 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
ten 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?
The Crispian Advantage 