The 15 Points

On April 24, 2010, In Coaching, People, By admin

Mentoring is a key personal and staff development activity. If you are not currently mentoring or being mentored, I would strongly suggest that you add that to your routine as soon as possible.  In my latest mentoring session, I had a mentee come to me with what began as a big issue in their area and ended up being a positive problem-solving experience.

The mentee came to me with a question on how to solve an issue and what approaches would be appropriate in our matrixed environment. As part of his role, he needs to produce an all-in dashboard for his executive to represent a balanced view of how the business unit is performing. In a normal situation, we would begin the process of helping the person design the view, point out where it might not be balanced, and help identify glaring misses.

The mentee was running into roadblock after roadblock coming up with the dahsboard and the data to fill it. This situation was a little different because there were two sets of people problems:

  1. The individual was instituting a culture change in a team that had never had a dashboard so nobody really understood what the goal was.
  2. The individual didn’t understand that he was hitting a culture problem. His understanding level was “They don’t get it and their tools don’t have the data to give to me.”

I thought up a really quick exercise to use with this individual to help him see what was occurring.  It involved writing down 15 points in 3 sections of 5.  I took out a sheet of blank white paper and I wrote down “List the 5 things you want to accomplish” and then I numbered from 1 to 5. I handed the sheet to him and he proceed to fill them in.  Without questioning them, I took the paper and wrote “List the 5 people who you need to accomplish this task”. Again, we exchanged the sheet and he wrote down the people. Then, I wrote down “List the 5 things you need from those people.” For the final time, we exchanged the sheet of paper. He studiously wrote down the 5 things.

There was an amazing shift as the exercise elevated the individual’s thinking about what his job was. It shifted from how to complete the dashboard to how to get a matrixed team to perform. The ensuing discussion was all about how to create a matrixed team establish and complete a combined goal.  More on that to come in a different post.

Let me know what you thought and how you would have gone about elevating an individual’s thinking from completing a goal to getting a team to complete a goal.

-TheNewExec

Tagged with: • • •
 
0 Comments
Leave A Response

Practical Basics of Inclusion

On January 4, 2010, In Inclusion, People, By TheNewExec

On a daily basis, I speak with fellow executives and they will all state that one of our main purposes is to create an environment where our associates can succeed.  I agree that we can be most successful when we build a team of diverse individuals and make extra effort to include each one as much as possible. The net result is higher innovation, higher productivity, and happier / more engaged associates.

Here are couple of tips for making sure you include your associates. Most are obvious and the set of them will lead to higher associate satisfaction and engagement with your teams:

  1. Welcome new people to the team. This is a pretty straightforward item except that most people use an ad-hoc process. You should create a single, repeatable process for welcoming individuals to the team and use it for each new associate.
  2. Pulse Each Person. At meetings, there is always someone who is quiet or contributing but perhaps not as much as you may need them to participate.  Don’t be fooled by people speaking at meetings.  Each person has something to offer. A good practice is to go around the table randomly throughout a conversation and ask each person questions such as, “What do you think?” or “Do you agree with that position?” or “Have you seen this done a different way that was a success?”
  3. Encourage Different Points of View. Groupthink is an easy trap to hit and to avoid. To fall into Groupthink simply tell everyone they believe an opinion and why they believe it multiple times throughout a meeting. It is especially easy to fall into Groupthink if the leader of the team is the one doing this.  The easy way to avoid it is to encourage different points of view and ideas.  This can be done by suggestion boxes, rewarding different approaches or purposely accomplishing a task in a different manner. The team will begin to express their creativity and diversity if you can encourage different points of view.
  4. Broaden your Influencers and Problem Solvers. During a few meetings, take note of who is answering your questions and who is solving your problems. Chances are high that you have a few people who have earned your trust and support your explicitly during meetings. If you are an analytical individual, you might even create a pareto or some other tracking mechanism. Now, at the next few meetings purposely ask some of the quieter individuals for their input on solving problems and empower them to influence the direction of the team through you.
  5. Touchbase Frequently. Set aside explicit, known times with your team members. Preferably, you will touchbase with your team on a daily basis but weekly will suffice. Not all interactions need to be about work but the interactions should be spread fairly evenly across your team. One excuse for not touching base with each person daily / weekly that I hear often is that leaders are spending more time with priority items. This is not necessarily bad unless it is occurring over a long duration. Make sure and remedy the time distribution.
  6. Avoid Cliques in your Leadership Team. The last inclusion basic is to watch for groups of people on your leadership team that are banding together and not including others.  When this occurs, insert yourself into the discussion and purposely pull other people into the discussion.

These are some basics for insuring inclusion of your team that you can execute on a daily basis.  What other methods have you seen that are effective? What results have you seen from using methods such as these?

- The New Exec

Tagged with: • • • • •
 
0 Comments
Leave A Response

The Basics of Leading Successful Change – Stakeholders

On January 3, 2010, In Execution, Inclusion, People, Shared Values, By TheNewExec

As part of your goals, either you selected initiatives with your leadership team or you were selected by a leadership team to be the executive in charge of a corporate initiative. This should be game changing and is a chance to have a very positive impact on your division, organization, and company. Congratulations – both are one of the first few steps you should be taking in 2010.

If you are beginning an endeavor that has had some amount of forethought, you might receive a business case or perhaps even a gap analysis from current state to target state. If you didnt, I would strongly suggest doing those so that you can help tell your story. The story coupled with a stakeholder analysis will help you gain initial support amongst your peers, your indirect managers, the people affected, your virtual team, etc.  Tell this story every chance you can even if you feel you have told it one too many times and then tell it again.  Prior to beginning to tell your story and as part of your stakeholder analysis, be sure to map your stakeholders along two axes – amount of power over your initiative and amount of interest in your initiative.  This will help identify what types of resistance strategies are necessary.

Here are a couple of basic strategies you can consider as you determine how to deal with resistance to change:

  • General Education and Frequent Status Updates – While this can be very time consuming, the benefit is that if you bring people along with you, they will be your advocates in the long term. This is best to be used from the onset of an initiative and should be part of any basic communication and stakeholder plan.
  • Participation / Key Role – When you reach someone who has considerable resistance to you, has the potential to be a supporter, and you can benefit from the resistor’s knowledge to design a change, a great idea is to involve that person in your initiative directly.  This draws people into the initiative and committs them to helping support; however, be careful that you don’t spend too much time overeducating one person or letting them takeover your initiative.
  • Covert Negotiation – This is a very direct tactic to dealing with resistance where you offer an appropriate and ethical incentive to a party who is not on-board with your change initiative. Begin this discussion with direct negotiation so both parties are clear that the resistance should disappear inexchange for something of value.  Be careful of this technique because if it fails, you are almost surely going to make the relationship worse.
  • General Coercion - This option is the most extreme of the options presented here. In this scenario, you would be taking a very direct position and threatening to remove stature, organization or compensation. This tactic is risky as if it leaves long term ill will between the two parties and therefore, should be used sparingly.  On the other hand, if time is the most critical, scarce dimension of change, this is likely the best option.

Leading successful change requires that an executive operate along a continuum of resistance easing strategies ranging from general updates to participation to negotiation to coercion.  There is not a single strategy that fits all cases and you should use a Stakeholder Analysis early in the process to help overcome resistance.

-The New Exec

Tagged with: • • • • •
 
0 Comments
Leave A Response

And Which People Will Drive Our Key Initiatives?

On December 31, 2009, In Execution, People, Skills, By TheNewExec

It is highly likely that the immediate answer that came to mind was a person’s name or a set of people that you know that have consistently delivered corporate initiatives in the past. And, phrases like “within budget” and “exceeds expectations” and “a real driver” came to mind to explain to yourself why you would choose Joe or Jane to run your key initiatives. Does this sound about right?

There are key characteristics that help people drive initiatives and they are much more important than a sound methodology and project tracking tools. Leadership is the absolute key to driving home game changing initiatives. There are a few soft skills that are often undervalued or not explicitly discussed when selecting the right person to lead the corporate initiative. Here are a couple soft skills that my team and I always discuss prior to selecting that person:

  1. Great Communication – It is imperative that your choice can utilize any form of communication to guide the team, update stakeholders, seek input on a decision, etc.  Classic forms of communication including email, public speaking, and executive one on one’s are non-negotiable. Newer forms of communication are becoming more and more a necessity. These new forms include moderating a project blog, moderating a project wiki, Twitter, Facebook-like communications, and perhaps text messaging.
  2. Coaching – Over the course of a typical initiative, individuals and teams will have high execution points and low execution points. A good leader will recognize and adapt to each type. For the high points, the team will receive immediate, public praise. For the low points, the leader will pull the team together and in a motivating manner address how to course correct.
  3. Focus – Focus is key. This might be one of the harder skills to identify and properly groom in an individual.  Focus is required of a leader because inside any company or environment, there will be distractions to include an organizational announcements, a newly introduced product from a competitor or even people joining / leaving the team. The strong leader will be able to stay focused on the big picture and instill that focus in the team.
  4. Empathy – The final skill we feel is core to a good initiative leader is empathy.  More often than not, teams will be both virtual and matrixed across multiple groups.  It is rare that an initiative leader will have all of the resources under direct control.  To successfully motivate and influence, an initiative leader will be able to put themselves in the other person’s position to understand their point of view.  This is helpful when a leader is wanting to include different perspectives and to keep the team focused on a goal.
  5. Foresight – The environment is constantly shifting and these shifts can cause an initiative to derail very quickly.  Either using tools such as an FMEA (Six Sigma) or general intuition, an initiative leader must be able to anticipate, communicate and resolve events that other leaders might not expect.

These key skills are a required for discussion for our company when selecting a leader for an initiative. What key skills do you require?

-The New Exec

Tagged with: • • • • •
 
0 Comments
Leave A Response

Commit To Your People in 2010

On December 31, 2009, In Inclusion, People, Shared Values, By TheNewExec

Over the past few years, I have been very fortunate to assemble a strong team of diverse individuals. From this, we have each learned from each other and have grown together. Each year, we make commitments to our team about how we will make our team a better place to work. The most important commitment we make is to our team directly and helping them feel included as part of the larger team. Here are a couple of things we will be doing in 2010 to show visible signs of championing diversity on the team:

  • I will document, publish, and communicate my own diversity message as part of standard communications. This will help team members see that our focus as a business is being successful but not at the expense of our team.
  • I will hold each of my managers responsible for the same associate focused diversity message
  • Insure the team is built to include a strong representation of race, ethnicity, age, and gender demographics and monitor movement of these demographics through metrics such as new hires, management by levels, and promotions.
  • Continue our volunteer program and focus on non-profit programs that are special to the management team
  • Identify high performing talent in the organization and align a mentor with each

We’ll continue our focus on processes as well in 2010 and our focus on the people will be a key driver to the team and individuals’ success.

-The New Exec

Tagged with: • • •
 
0 Comments
Leave A Response

A Quick Coaching Opportunity Regarding 2010 Goals

On December 31, 2009, In Coaching, People, By TheNewExec

Yesterday was a short day in the office. During that short period, one of my new managers came in to see me prior to the new year and a short conversation took place. After some initial coffee-talk and holiday discussion, Jane asked, “We had a great 2009. What do you want me to get done for you in 2010?” At first I was intrigued at the manner in which she asked her question, then I was disappointed and finally, I decided to use it as a coaching moment.

I always start my coaching moments by giving some amount of praise and this time was no different. I began by replying, “2009 was a banner year for us. Our team banded together to reduce process defects, reduce total expenses and improve associate engagement in a very tough economic year. Your contributions were invaluable as you led three of the critical initiatives for the team and you directly affected the success of the group by bringing them in under budget with expected results. We couldn’t have made our goals without your projects delivering more than their fair share of results. Thank you for that.”

At this point and having worked with me for a number of years, Jane realized that I was being very sincere as well as there was a coaching point coming. “I’d like to suggest that you already know what we need to have done in 2010 and that you were just taking the easy way by asking me what I wanted to have done. What do you think we need to accomplish,” I questioned. For a short period of time, we discussed in open dialog the various customer, associate and shareholder goals for 2009 and how we met those goals. Then, we discussed where we could have accomplished more had we had more time and resources in 2009.

Shortly thereafter, the conversation switched gears to Jane coming to me with questions about potential areas for improvement and about risks to our business in 2010 from competitors. Jane was asking questions such as “Would reducing xyz type of process defect which gets products to market faster be appropriate given the overall environment we expect in 2010?” and bringing up points such as “If you recall, we cut ABC scope which could yield additional revenue for several business lines. How does this stack against other priorities?” Jane was appropriately monetizing her team’s capabilities throughout the discussion which was helping sell her ideas. This was the type of conversation two executives should be having as opposed to the “What do you want me to do? / Go do this” type which is a one way street. Jane rose up from being a typical project manager to being a valued, included partner.

Jane taught me what she knew about the internal and external pressures on our business while I contributed additional factors about overall company strategy and what our resource limitations would be.  This two-way conversation left both of us more enriched and excited about what we were jointly going to accomplish in 2010. Over the course of the conversation, several things occurred:

  • I learned a different perspective from a subordinate which helped reshape goals for the upcoming year based on a view hadn’t considered
  • My associate felt more included and was more included in the decision making process. This ultimately results in long-term buy-in for the goals.
  • An associate learned how to engage with a more senior executive by engaging in a business conversations as opposed to a “what do you want me to do next?” conversation

Jane left the office owning the plan around this particular area and I could see her level of energy had greatly increased.

-The New Exec

Tagged with: • • •
 
0 Comments
Leave A Response

Thank the People … and Get Ready to Make Your Resolutions

On December 29, 2009, In People, Shared Values, By TheNewExec

In the late 70’s, McKinsey introduced their 7S Model and 30 years later this model is still relevant but underused. In speaking with a number of senior executives across the country about their primary roles, each one very quickly identified Strategy, Structure, and Systems as their primary functions. Historically, these have been referred to as the “hard” skills required to be a leader or manager of an organization. Occasionally, a senior executive would mention Skills (often referred to as Training or Personnel Enablement).

It is very easy to overlook Style, Staff and Shared Values. Increasingly, we are seeing in research that these might even be more important for long term success. Style refers to the leadership approach of top management and the overall operating approach of the company. Shared Values are those often unwritten values and aspirations that go beyond conventional statements of corporate objectives.

As a first objective of the new year, I ask you to remember this:

“Water is as soft as anything on Earth yet mountains and canyons have been sculpted by its force”

As a second objective of the new year, start by thanking the people in a 360 degree view – the people that work for you, your peers, and your primary manager.  Then, go multiple levels deeper to thank the people in the organization that delivered for you in 2009. Think about the shared values of your company and the shared values of your organization as you place these calls to people.  Thank the people for their hardwork in 2009 and relay how valuable they will be in 2010 for your organization.  Be sure to wish them and their familiar a happy holiday season.

As a third objective, I offer that on the spot recognition shouldn’t be a once per year activity. Here are additional questions to consider as you create your 2010 resolutions:

  • What will your resolution be to let your team and peers know that their efforts are invaluable to the organization’s success?
  • How frequently should you be thanking / recognizing both internal and external customers?
  • How will you recognize and thank front line employees and do they know who you are?
  • What are your customer and associate satisfaction systems?

Feel free to email or post here any comments you may have.

-The New Exec

Tagged with: • • • • •
 
1 Comments
Leave A Response

Introduction – The New Executive

On December 28, 2009, In General, By TheNewExec

The New Exec is in its first stages of development – not only the website but also the theories and articles found on the site.  The concept is very simple and I hope that you will take part in making this grow to become useful to more people than just those that stumble across it. This site should enable you to excel as a leader in whatever you are doing and benefit those people you are leading.

What do we mean when we say new executive? A new executive can take multiple forms:

  • A newly promoted manager with executive duties
  • An existing executive that wishes to refresh current leadership and management competencies
  • A newly promoted or existing executive that understands the workplace and surrounding communities have changed dramatically in the last few years

The idea for consolidating and publishing this material was very simple – Where can a new executive find a collection of refreshed perspectives and how can they be shared quickly? Many old perspectives can be found via simple online searches or reading existing management and leadership texts.

The primary author on this site will blend twenty years of leadership and management with current events, new academic theories and practical application of those theories. Most importantly, we will stress practical application of suggested techniques and theories.

-The New Exec

Tagged with: •
 
0 Comments
Leave A Response
Go To Top »
Get Adobe Flash playerPlugin by wpburn.com wordpress themes