Tag:

Leadership

Perspective

by Ron Potter September 3, 2020

We’ve talked a lot about perspective lately. Then I saw a short video by Barry Hall II. I thought it was great and decided to make this a short blog by sharing.

Barry started with a video of a person spray painting some graffiti on a building that said

Just Do Nothing

That’s often a perspective that people take. They think “If I ignore it, it will go away. Just do nothing.”

Problems don’t go away. Innovation doesn’t happen. Nothing good comes from a perspective of “Just do nothing.”

His next frame was another person painting more graffiti on the wall around the corner that says

It is Impossible

Of all the possible perspectives, I may have seen this one the most often. It’s just not possible. If this is your perspective than there is no reason to try. There is no reason to search for alternative perspectives. Innovation will never happen. It’s more than being difficult, it’s the belief that it’s impossible.

His final frame steps back at an angle so that both walls can be seen at the same time (an entirely new perspective). Now the viewer sees a much different message than was provided by the first two sketches.

Just Do It, Nothing is Impossible

Step back, take a look at your situation from a different perspective and new possibilities might be seen.

The next time you’re faced with a difficult situation, listen. What are you hearing?

Just Do Nothing
It is Impossible

More importantly, don’t just listen to voices outside your own head. Pay attention to what you’re saying to yourself. Do you start with Do Nothing or It’s Impossible? It’s OK that we start there. I think it’s part of our human nature. But don’t leave it there!

Start thinking about how you could do things differently. What perspective would be entirely new?

There are a few books that can help on this front.

A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas by Warren Berger
Do the Work: Overcome Resistance and Get out of Your Own Way by Steven Pressfield
Anyway: The Paradoxical Commandments by Kent Keith

Just do it, nothing is impossible.

0 comments

Riding it Out or Reinventing

by Ron Potter August 27, 2020

“U.S. Companies Lose Hope for Quick Rebound From Covid-19” This was a headline in the Wall Street Journal the other day. Buried in the body of the article was the statement, “Executives who were bracing for a months-long disruption are now thinking in terms of years. Their job has changed from riding it out to reinventing.” On the same day (unrelated to the WSJ article) this cartoon appeared

I thought the cartoon was very appropriate because I’ve seen so many companies in my consulting career say they’re innovative but act like the cartoon.

Leaders Support Innovation

Leaders are not usually the innovators! Good leaders support the innovators on their teams.

Let’s take a look at how innovation happens from a Team Leadership Culture framework.

Team Innovation

Team innovation can be the most difficult to pull off but at the same time the most rewarding as well. However, it does take a few prerequisites for it to work.

Team Size

Many studies have determined that the best size of a decision-making team is seven, plus or minus two.

Once you get above nine people on a team, the ability to reach commitment on any given topic is greatly diminished. There are just too many factions possible with 10+ people.

If you have fewer than five team members, it’s too easy for the team to form factions of three people vs. one person. Even though that one person may have the most innovative idea, they will feel outnumbered and it’s too easy for the faction of three to treat them as an outlier or put pressure on them to go along with the majority.

Either way, the dynamics may be killing the innovation.

Keep decision-making teams to seven people, plus or minus two.

Team Attributes

TREC is the outline that brings the right attributes to an innovative team.

Truth. Being able to speak the truth to each other without fear of reprisal is necessary for innovative teams.

Respect. Each team member must be self-aware enough to know that their perspective is only a perspective. It is not “the truth”. It is not the only way of looking at an issue. It’s only their perspective and each member has a valid perspective. If the team trusts that all perspectives are valid, innovation is more likely to happen.

Elegance. Coming up with an innovative solution that is also elegant (simple, understandable, actionable) is the best solution.

Commitment. If the team is able to share the truth with respect, commitment can happen. Even if your perspective was different (or even opposing) to the final direction, commitment means that no matter what, you express your commitment to the solution. You’re able to do this because you were a member of the team that took all the perspectives into account and “committed” to a team solution.

Team Dynamics

If innovation is the goal, team dynamics becomes extremely important. Teams have been conditioned to come together for a given amount of time (usually an hour), encouraged to follow the agenda, and finally, make decisions depending on the discussion or reports. This feels very structured and efficient. It’s just not good for innovation.

Innovative teams have a different dynamic.

They will start as a whole team to discuss the areas of possible innovation.
All the perspectives are shared, at least in an outline form.
The team then breaks up into smaller teams. These can be as small as two individuals but should never be larger than three.
Deep Work is required. Deep Work requires spending distraction-free time on the topic, pushing your cognitive capabilities to the limit.
Return to the full team with this new Deep Work perspective to hear what we’re learning and then discuss directions we could possibly head.
Rinse and Repeat. Continue this large team, small team (maybe different small teams with each iteration) dynamics until the team begins to zero in on an innovative approach.

Team Decisions

Remember that the word “decide” means that you narrow your options down to a small number of choices (preferably two) and then you put one of those options to death. You kill it. You eliminate it. You stop spending resources on it. The commitment to the team direction should be powerful enough to put all of your resources towards the chosen innovative approach.

A Culture of Innovation

Moving the culture of an organization towards innovation usually centers around one word.

Decide!

As we’ve talked about the word “decide” lately, I hope it has become clear that the word decide means that you put one option to death in order to put your resources toward a different option.

Leaders and leadership teams will often decide on a direction but neglect to let the organization below them know that they’ve decided not to spend resources on other options.

Organizations are full of people who love the security of their job. They’ve spent years learning the job, getting better at the job, and feeling secure that they can go to work every day and do the job. They’re “secure.”

But, if you are now saying to them, “We’re heading in a different direction and we don’t know yet where it will all lead.” They can often feel scared or at least insecure. They may or may not mention this insecurity but they will wonder

Do I have the skill set to do the new job?
Will my job, group, division be eliminated?
Will I be asked to relocate to a different department or location?
Am I back to ground zero in terms of my skills and worth to the company?

Without any clarity on these and other topics, people will tend to come to work every day and continue to do what they’ve always done. They’ll seek security in doing the known rather than be lost in the unknown!

Open, Transparent, Humble

In times like these (which means now, in our current environment) it’s important that leadership is open with the organization. Let them know everything that you know.

Be Transparent. If people feel like they’re not getting the whole story, they’ll either go back to what they’ve always done or abandon ship. Your best people, the ones you need the most will abandon the ship first.

Be humble. Don’t give them the impression that you have all the answers when you don’t. Let them know that you and the team are doing their best with uncertain circumstances. Taking this approach will also bring forth more innovative ideas that you wouldn’t otherwise hear.

0 comments

Blog Leadership

Increasing Skills Doesn’t Make a Good Leader

by Ron Potter July 30, 2020

The thought behind this blog was from an article on Entrepreneur.com. Here is the list they developed as they talked about increasing leadership skills. I agree with the list but the short paragraph after each one is based on my learning and experiences.

Trust is not automatic

Many leaders believe they are leaders because of their position or accomplishments. Neither one makes you a good leader. In fact, many people in the position of power on the corporate ladder are there because of their accomplishments. For the most part, corporations aren’t very good at measuring leadership skills, but they’re very good at measuring accomplishments. Accomplishments are seen and identified and can be checked off on a spreadsheet. Leadership is a long-term game. The rewards of great leadership may be seen in the short term, but will really happen over the long-term.

Kindness is underrated

The article identifies this as conscious kindness. It shows or demonstrates how members of the team should treat each other. I would also suggest that it goes beyond team members. This can make a huge difference with customer-facing people. Kindness sets a cultural standard that can be seen and experienced throughout the corporation.

I was playing golf with a group of friends and we were visiting a new course for the first time. Our experience can be summed up as rudeness. The clerk behind the counter was rude. The starter was rude. The rangers were rude. We found out later that the course had been built by a wealthy person who considered it his private course and outside players were considered as intrusions. The course is no longer in existence.

A word of caution. Many people view kindness as never saying a “disparaging” word. There is an old song titled Home on the Range recorded by many artists including John Denver, the muppets, and others. Two lines of the lyrics are

Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day

Having uncloudy skies all day can be wonderful but will also create many long term problems. Rain is often needed. Seldom hearing a discouraging word can also be wonderful but will also create long-term problems. Honest criticism is often needed. The interesting part is that criticism can be done in a very kind way with some practice.

I once worked with a leader who was certainly the “non-discouraging” type. He was one of the kindest people I had ever met. But his team would say to me, “I just wish I knew where I stand!” When I asked for an explanation, they would say, “Our leader is so nice that I never hear one word of criticism. That can’t be realistic. “I just wish I knew where I stand.”

Be kind in your honesty.

Words are meaningless

Over the last several years I’ve been asked what I think of one President or another. After figuring how to answer that question with kind honesty, I settled on the following approach.

I always say: Watch what he does rather than listen to what he says. This is another way of stating the old adage, “Action speaks louder than words.”

Again, some personal experience with another leader. She would always say what she thought the recipient wanted to hear, regardless of what actions she would later take. She thought it was kindness. The people who worked for her saw it as a reason not to trust what she said.

Status quo is safe

IBM has lost much of the luster that it once had. But during the years when I was dealing with IT departments, there was a saying that “Purchasing IBM equipment is always safe.” Meaning that they could tell their leader that they had purchased IBM and the leaders would assume the best decision had been made. Or at the very minimum, they would not criticize or fire the IT person for making the IBM decision. It was safe! It just wasn’t very innovative.

Power trips happen

As a father, I never wanted to resort to the words “Because I said so!” with my children. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you how many times I violated that goal. Power trips do happen, but in my book “Trust Me” the number one trait of trusted leaders is humility. People know if it was a momentary power trip or a built-in trait. Avoid power trips if you can. Honestly apologize if they do happen.

Not everyone stays

One CEO I worked with said, “So you’ll show me who to fire from my current team?” My answer was NO. If you turn into a trustworthy leader, change the team and culture to match, people will self-select out. People who don’t want to make the effort to follow the guidelines identified above, won’t stay. They will seek an environment that allows them to ignore the guidelines above.

Look at each of the guidelines above. How are you doing? Each one takes discipline, growth, and a true belief that these traits will make a wonderful leader.

0 comments

Blog Culture

Manage people like Money?

by Ron Potter June 11, 2020

An Harvard Business Review article was titled “What If Companies Managed People as Carefully as They Manage Money?”

I like the idea because most companies focus a lot of their effort on how they manage money, projects, profitability, and skillsets.

I don’t like the idea because I don’t think we should manage people (It puts them in the same category as the money, projects, profitability, etc.) We should be leading people, not managing them.

IPO Preparation

One of my consulting clients was a high-tech firm that had decided to do an Initial Public Offering (IPO). This means they were moving from a privately held firm to a publicly held firm with shareholders.

They needed to convince investors to put some of their hard-earned money into the new firm, assuming it would generate a reasonable return.

Investment Bankers

There is a sub-set of the banking industry (Investment Bankers) that is solely focused on IPO’s. Once the Investment Bankers were chosen, the company put themselves in the banker’s hands in an effort to generate early and adequate investment.

So what did these bankers focus on?

The finances? No!
The quality of the leadership? No!
The competition? No!

These Investment Bankers focused on the “story.” What was the story of the company? What did the story tell the potential investor about the future? Was the story compelling enough that people would actually depart with their money and invest with the company?

IPO Preparation

The Investment Bankers sent in a team of presenting coaches to help the CEO and CFO prepare to meet potential investors.

For weeks they concentrated on the story. Was it complete? Was it compelling? Did it explain all the required changes and growth for the company? Would people be willing to invest in this company?

Roadshow

All of this was to prepare these two top officers for the “roadshow.” Over the next several weeks they would move from city to city, meet with a small group of investors and hopefully, capture their hearts and minds enough that the Investment Bankers were able to obtain commitments to invest.

Then the Investment Bankers made a statement that made me sit up and take notice.

You have 30 minutes

They told the CEO and CFO that if they didn’t capture the hearts and minds of the potential investors in 30 minutes, they were lost for forever.

30 minutes! They had 30 minutes to get people to invest their money. If it wasn’t compelling enough in the first 30 minutes, they didn’t have a second chance. They would be lost forever.

Invest more than Dollars

Then I began to think about the employees. What are we asking them to invest?

Money? In a sense yes.
Time? Yes. Be here on a regular basis. Be willing to cover any shift. Be willing to work overtime when necessary.
Effort? Be the best. Go the extra mile. Work hard and harder.
Brain? Be quick. Be innovative. Be smarter than the competition.

Invest More

In short, invest more than just dollars. Much more!

If we were willing to build a complete and compelling story about the future of the company for someone who will invest just their dollars, why are we not willing to generate even a better message for those willing to invest a lot more than just their dollars?

Investor not Asset

We often hear CEO’s and other top executives speak of employees as their most valuable asset.

I have assets. My computer is an asset. I’m willing to upgrade it, add more memory or space, install a new operating system. But at some point I say enough-is-enough and I purchase a new computer.

Do we really want to think of employees as an asset?

But, if you think about them as an investor, then you need to be willing to give them your best. You must have a compelling explanation of the future and how you’re going the get there. If you can’t express that clear, well thought out future, why would employees be willing to invest their time, effort, and intellect?

Think of your employees as investors, not assets!

0 comments

Blog Leadership

Performance vs Trust

by Ron Potter May 7, 2020

Those are not my words. Those were spoken by Simon Sinek. If you have not discovered Mr. Sinek, look up his website. I read him and Share Parrish more than any other blog writers out there.

Navy Seals

Simon talks about working with Navy Seals. Navy Seals are probably the highest-performing teams on the planet. In his work with Seals, he asked, “How do you choose the guys that make it to Seal Team 6?” Seal Team 6 is the best of the best. The Seals drew the following graph:

Leader or Teammate

Nobody wanted someone from the lower left: Low Performer and Low Trust.

Everyone wanted someone from the upper right: High Performer and High Trust.

When Simon asked them which type of person they want as a leader or teammate, they all said they would prefer someone on the right side of the chart than the best performer who had low trust.

Keep in mind that these are the highest-performing teams in the world. But they would select Trust over Performance when it came to a leader or a teammate.

Corporations Have it Backward

In my thirty-plus years dealing with corporations and corporate reviews, they have all been heavily weighted toward the left side of the chart. They graded and promoted people based on their performance rather than the trust they exhibited or expected. It’s interesting to note that the Navy Seals termed that upper-left leader or teammate as toxic! Regardless of high performance, if the person wasn’t trustworthy, they were toxic.

Performance Reviews

Why do corporate reviews focus so much on high performance rather than high trust? I’m sure there are many reasons but the two that I see as most prevalent are:

Corporations often want high performance (get the job done now) over anything else. Part of the reason is that public corporations have bowed to quarterly reporting. If the return isn’t better that quarter, the leadership is often called on the carpet by Wall Street and the Investors. They don’t want to be in that position. Therefore, they promote people who produce high results, regardless of the internal costs. Remember that the Navy Seals labeled them as toxic.
It’s easier to measure performance than trust. With performance, it’s easy to check the box. Was the goal met or exceeded? Was it done on or ahead of schedule? Easy to measure and identify.
Does the person generate trust within their team? Hard to predict. The results may not show up for a long time. Corporate leaders want results this quarter, not three years from now.

Trust Builds Long-Term Performance

I’ve worked with a few leaders who ranked high on the trust scale. There are more stories, but two that come to mind include one leader who I worked with about a decade ago. Three members of his team are now CEOs of three different companies. He built trust!

Another CEO I worked with started two companies and built leadership teams that now run or are high-ranking leaders in several corporations.

Both of these leaders (and there are a few more) built leadership teams based on trust. That doesn’t mean they ignored performance, but trust ranked higher when it came to evaluations.

Visit Simon Sinek’s youtube talking about Performance vs Trust. Then evaluate what kind of leader or teammate you happen to be. Then think about the type of leader or team you want to be a part of. If you don’t like the answer to either of those questions, make a change! If you’re the kind of person that believes outperforming everyone is what will make a difference in your life, you’re in for a shock. You’ll end up very lonely.

If you’re the kind of person who exudes and promotes trust, you’ll find yourself much loved!

Lonely or loved. You make the choice.

5 comments

Blog Leadership

“Soft” Skills Win

by Ron Potter April 2, 2020

Start with skills

An article in the Wall Street Journal was written with and about Bob Funk, founder of Express Employment Professionals and former chairman of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank. Mr. Funk makes his living by matching people who want jobs with employers who need good employees.

When Mr. Fund talks about the interview process he starts with what most employees think of as the Hard Skills.

Hard skills and experience, he says, are only half the equation, and not the important half. “So many people do not realize how important the soft skills are to unlocking job opportunity,”

Mr. Funk offers a quote from a boss he had over 50 years ago. “There’s a person for every job and a job for every person. That’s still true.”

Try before you buy

Most of the companies he works for are small and medium-size companies with fewer than 250 employees and he places most of his workers in part-time positions. But over 60% of them go on to be full-time employees.

Hard skills and experience are only half of the equation and not the important half. (Italics are mine). Soft skills are the important part of unlocking job opportunities!

Soft skills rule

Mr. Funk found that the top five skills that employers look for are:

While Mr. Funk concedes that education is vital, the most important thing for most people is the ability to be trained. And while I agree with Mr. Funk on this issue I don’t believe he gives enough credit to that ability to be trained with people of education.

Higher Education

So many of today’s graduates from major universities have been convinced that their degree from that particular institute has taught them everything they need to know to be successful. I’m a graduate of the University of Michigan Engineering school and for a period of time recruited new hires from that institute. What I discovered was that it didn’t make any difference which university the candidate graduated from. What made the difference was number 5 on the list above, the ability to think critically that made the biggest difference between potential employees.

Learning is what’s important

As a consultant, I once ran an old exercise that didn’t produce any results. When I asked my client why the effort fell flat they said they got the most out of sessions where I was sharing what I was learning. My own learning produced the best results for my clients. I believe that a college education gives you the opportunity to start learning. Showing up to work every day assuming you’re there to share what you already know will get you nowhere. Showing up to work every day ready to learn will show an eagerness to learn, which will carry you a long way.

0 comments

Blog Team

GPS4Leaders

by Ron Potter February 20, 2020

Over the last couple of years, I have been working with a team of people to bring some of our (myself and other coaches on the team) experiences to users in an app. I would like to share a video with you about that journey.

GPS4Leaders

Good GPS devices perform three functions:

Show you where you are
Show you where you’re going
Give you the best route to get there.

GPS4Leaders performs the same functions. It will show you where you are as a team through

Personal Assessments
Team Dynamic Assessments

It will show you where you’re going through

Models of great teams, leaders, and cultures

It will give you the best route to get there

By talking team dynamic assessment, showing you where to focus and progress towards becoming great teams, leaders, and culture

Cost-Effective

GPS4Teams (including two of the four modules of GPS4Leaders) is very cost-effective. At $150/year/person it will cost only a fraction of a good executive or team coach. However, our goal is not to replace the good executive or team coach, it’s to help them be much more effective by focusing their work and requiring less of their time to help you grow teams, leaders, and cultures.

Visit GPS4Leaders.com

Join us today to help grow your organization.

0 comments

Blog Culture Leadership Team

Team Leadership Culture

by Ron Potter February 13, 2020

Over this last year, we’ve spent time and detail defining the Team and Culture sections of Team, Leadership, and Culture.

Our Monday blogs have spent a great deal of time over the last couple of years looking at the Leadership elements from my book Trust Me. Let’s wrap up this section with a summary of the three elements.

Team First (Sort of)

As I’ve said in the past, I believe Teams should be worked on first followed by Leadership than Culture.

However, the overlap between Team and Leadership makes it very difficult to do them in order.

You’ll notice from the matrix above that there is a great deal of overlap between the Team and Leadership columns. It seems as if you can’t accomplish one without the other. I believe this is true!

The first element of the Team list includes “Truth”. However, you won’t have the reputation of a “truthful” person if there is no humility, compassion or integrity.

Respect requires humility, development, and commitment from the Leadership list. Neither one of these overlapping issues is restricted to the three that I mentioned for each one. There are elements in all eight of the Leadership outline that are required in one or more of the Team outline. Essentially, you can’t have one without the other.

Next Steps

Start by focusing on each of the first two outlines, Team and Leadership.

With the Leadership list, become much more self-aware and get some straight feedback from a trusted advisor, coach, or partner.

For the Team list, it will require the entire team to be made aware of the four elements and do some honest grading in each of the categories. In our next blog, I’m going to introduce you to an app called GPS4Teams that will help you accomplish this goal.

Culture

The Culture section follows work on Team and Leadership. Until you’ve improved to a very high level on the Team and Leadership aspects, any efforts at improving Culture tends to fall on deaf ears.

A friend and I were discussing why some cultures last (the Mayo brothers died decades ago but the culture at the Mayo Clinic seems to continue). In identifying those companies where the culture doesn’t last, we always came back to elements of Team and Leadership that either changed or were lacking over the years. You can’t build a great culture without first building great teams and leaders.

Emotional Quotient

Many people feel a high IQ is sufficient for solving problems. The interesting thing is that there has never been any correlation found between high IQ and success.

What has been well documented is the correlation between high EQ and success.

Emotional Quotient can be divided into two components, Personal Competence and Social Competence. You’ll see the Personal Competence of self-awareness, self-regulation and self-motivation relating to Leadership. The Social Competence of social awareness and social skills relate to building Team.

Team and Leadership = Success

This correlation tells us that success requires great teams, great leadership leading to great culture.

Get started on your success today. There’s nothing mysterious about the process.

0 comments

Blog Culture Culture Series

Culture – Other Financial Research

by Ron Potter February 6, 2020

Through the years the Denison Organization has continued to perform research on the original model. One piece of research that caught my eye early in the process looked at six normal measures of performance that most companies look at on a regular basis. Those six measures included:

Profitability
Sales/Revenue Growth
Market Share
Product Development – Innovation
Quality of Product or Service
Employee Satisfaction

Most Culture Surveys focus on the last of the six measures, Employee Satisfaction. Research originally done by the Gallup organization indicated that satisfied or engaged employees lead to better organizations. I’ve looked at several of those surveys as my customers have used them. I agree that more satisfied/engaged employees do lead to better organizations. But, it was always difficult for me to figure out what actions lead to more satisfied employees. The Denison Survey always provided me with more direct and measurable actions that would lead to employee satisfaction.

Four Quadrants

First, let’s remind ourselves what is included in each of the four quadrants.

Mission

Adaptability

Involvement

Consistency

Now, let’s take a look at each of the six measures of success and look at the Quadrants that drive them.

Profitability

Mission
Involvement

The description of this one given by the Denison organization is “Do we know where we are going?” If it’s not clear where we’re going, it’s hard to figure out where profits will come from.

The description given to Involvement says “Are our people aligned and engaged?” Know where you’re headed and engage the people in getting there. Strength in these two quadrants will lead to profitability. Notice that profitability requires elements of each of the “four” halves of the chart. Mission is in the upper right quadrant. Involvement resides in the lower left quadrant. Top/Bottom, Left/Right. Profitability requires a bit of it all.

Sales/Revenue Growth

The two quadrants driving this success factor include:

Mission
Adaptability

The description given to Adaptability is “Are we listening to the marketplace?” This means that our Mission is being tweaked along the way to meet the needs of the marketplace. If we’re listening.

Also notice that both of these quadrants are at the top of the chart. This is the half that creates an Externally Focused organization. This type of organization is very focused on the forces in the market place.

Market Share

Mission
Adaptability

These happen to be the same two as Sales/Revenue Growth. In hind-site that might be abundantly clear. But what has been interesting to me (and makes this connection even more powerful) is that even when the industry is trending downward at the moment, companies with strength in these two quadrants tend to perform better than others facing the same difficulties.

Product Development and Innovation

Adaptability
Involvement

Once you’re familiar with the layout of the survey, this one also becomes abundantly clear. Both quadrants are on the left side of the chart which creates very flexible organizations.

Quality of Product or Service

Mission
Involvement
Consistency

This is the first of the performance measures that has strength in three areas rather than just two. It adds Consistency. People need to know what the Core Values are and the consequences for violating them. They also require Agreement from everyone plus Coordination and Integration across the organization. There can be no disagreement on how we do things around here and no piece of the business making decisions that benefit themselves and not the whole company.

Notice it does not include customer focus. Quality is internally driven, not externally driven.

Employee Satisfaction

Mission
Involvement
Consistency

This is usually the one that is measured by Culture Surveys. What’s interesting to me is that this one is driven by exactly the same quadrants that drive Quality. A clear mission, active involvement and consistency drive quality, and satisfaction!

Where do We Start?

One of my colleagues calls this the “So what, Now What?” question. Now that I know this information, where do I start or what do I do with it?

One way to answer that question is to see how many of the performance maesures are driven by each quadrants.

Mission is involved in five of the six performance measures:

Profitability
Growth
Market Share
Quality
Employee Satisfaction

Involvement is involved in four of the measures:

Profitability
Development/Innovation
Quality
Employee Satisfaction

Adaptability is involved in three:

Growth
Market Share
Development/Innovation

Consistency is involved in two:

Quality
Employee Satisfaction

I always suggested that you start with Mission, get everyone Involved, increase your Adaptability and change and finally make sure that you’re absolutely consistent in your approach.

Build a Great Culture

Great cultures are absolutely required to build great companies. Just don’t forget the other two elements of being great:

TLC

Team Leadership and Culture.

0 comments

Blog Culture Culture Series

Culture – Four Halves

by Ron Potter January 27, 2020

Yes, I have an engineering background and I know there are two halves to every whole. However, the best way to start looking at the results of your culture survey is to look at each half: left vs right, top vs bottom.

Photo credit: Denison Consulting

Stable and Flexible Organizations

The right side of the chart: Mission and Consistency, creates very stable organizations.

The left side of the chart: Adaptability and Involvement, creates very flexible organizations

The trick is to exhibit the right amount of each half depending on your situation. I’ve seen a couple of companies do this the wrong way. Both are companies that are over 100 years old and during that time have been the largest company in their industry.

Too Stable

One of the companies took an approach that was way too stable for their changing environment. As they lost market share and profitability over several years their approach was to “do things the way we’ve done them for over 100 years. That approach has weathered downturns in the past and will do so again.” Unfortunately, it didn’t weather the downturn and they became a small provider in the industry as other companies took the innovative lead.

Another company that was also over 100 years old knew they were falling behind the competition. They hired a “visionary” CEO from a very different industry to help them innovate their way back to a leadership position. This leader lept to a vision of the future that was so far beyond their current position that most people complained they didn’t even know what he was talking about. Consequently, they continued with a “business as usual” approach because they had not been prepared to function differently then they had for many years.

Just like many sports teams, companies often go into a prevent defense posture once they’ve gained the lead. There is great fear in the organization of losing the gains that have been made so they try to protect their current position.

Teaching a Fifth Grader

Because most leaders don’t want to be labeled as the ones who lost the gains that have been made over several years, I see more of this issue rather than the case of trying to leap-frog forward to an entirely new position. Becoming an innovator is tough to pull off if your company has not been prepared to let go of old habits and products in favor of a new, innovative approach.

This issue was made very relevant to me when my children were in about the fifth grade. If one or both of them (they were two grades apart) were having difficulty with a particular subject in school they would turn to me for some help. However, as I began to explain the issue from my level of understanding or education, their eyes would glaze over and they would finally toss their homework on the table and tell me that I was no better than anyone else at explaining the issue from their level of understanding. I then asked to see their textbook and read one or two chapters ahead. Once I remembered the concept that needed to be learned next, they usually responded with something like “Why didn’t you say that in the first place? It all makes sense to me now.” With that approach, I was astounded at how quickly they learned and advanced through the topic, often faster than their schedule dictated.

If you want your organization to advance quickly to the next level of understanding so that they can compete at an innovative level, show them the path. Help them see one or two steps forward. You’ll find that they will get quicker with each step along the way until you (and they) realized that they’ve turned into an innovative organization.

Need for Change and Innovation

Don’t let go of the stable side of the culture survey. No organization can get out of balance and remain successful. While I often see companies maintain the stable side of the survey, it must be balanced with the flexible side in order to obtain long term success. Both sides must be expanded in order to be successful.

Difficult to accomplish? Yes, but necessary. While some people think that leadership is easy, it never is. Balancing stability and flexibility is difficult. But that’s what it takes to be a leader. Accomplish the impossible during the day then go home and be an ordinary family member at night. It’s worth it but it’s not easy.

Internal vs External

In our next blog post, we’ll take a look at the other two “halves” that are just as difficult. Then we’ll take one last look at culture in general and how it impacts the bottom line. Stay tuned for next week.

0 comments

Blog Culture Culture Series

Culture – Consistency: Summary

by Ron Potter January 9, 2020

Consistency

Image result for Image of give me a lever long enough

The last quadrant of the Denison Culture survey is Consistency, “Does your system create leverage?”

We first introduced the mechanical image of leverage when we introduced the “fulcrum” of Consistency. Most people have seen or heard the quote from Archimedes when he said: “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” As a side note, he also said “Eureka!” which meant “I’ve got it” or “I’ve found it.” Leverage is what he found.

In the post about Coordination and Integration we talked about the lever and how that looks different in each part of the organization.

Together these two create “Leverage!”

The three sections of the Consistency Quadrant talk about achieving leverage.

Consistency is about Results

Dan Denison and his team at Denison Consulting may disagree with me, but in my mind, this quadrant is about results.

My belief is that if you’ve worked hard at each of the other three quadrants of Mission, Adaptability and Involvement, the results are great Consistency.

Take a look at some of the words within the individual questions related to each of the three segments:

practice what they preach
a distinct set of practices
a clear and consistent set of values
accountability
win-win solutions
we reach agreement, even on difficult issues
clear agreement about the right way
share common perspectives
coordinate across the organization
good alignment

These issues are results. The organization has and develops leverage. It creates a highly productive culture.

Should you set and live by a clear set of core values? Yes.
Should you work hard at reaching agreement across the organization? Yes.
Should you coordinate and integrate across and between divisions of the organization? Yes.

But, if you try to accomplish these things without first establishing Mission, Adaptability and Involvement, they won’t amount to much. There is no foundational work. The structure will crumble without the needed foundation.

What is Culture?

We introduced the Culture Series many months ago with this start:

A dictionary definition says “the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an organization.”

Exciting environments come from leaders and teams developing people to face difficulties and obstacles in innovative thoughtful ways that utilize the skills and experiences present.

Productive environments exist when teams learn how to elegantly use the resources they have to get the most out of an organization in a simple way.

Why Build a Great Culture?

I’ll go back to the name of my company, Team Leadership Culture (TLC). These are not distinct issues that you face and corrected one at a time. Great companies and great leaders are always working on all of these issues.

One of the biggest mistakes that I see leaders make is to assume they’re high-level managers. One of the more difficult transitions is to shift from being a great manager to a great leader.

Great Managers

Work in relatively stable environments
Have long-term views and line-of-sight
Usually have clearly defined direction and strategy
And because of these issues, have a limited need to re-direct themselves or those who work for them.

Great Leaders

Spend the bulk of their time on vision
Develop and lead teams that manage more of the detail
Constantly scan the environment both internally and externally to spot the need for change early
Tend to be more risk-takers and have a higher tolerance for risk.

Great leaders and leadership teams create great cultures. Cultures outlast leaders and teams. This applies to both good and bad cultures. Make sure you and your team are focused on a great culture. It’s the only thing that lasts.

0 comments

Blog Culture Culture Series

Culture – Involvement: Team Orientation

by Ron Potter November 7, 2019

The Team Orientation of Involvement contains several wonderful elements.

Cooperation is Encouraged
People are not isolated pieces
Teamwork is used over Hierarchy
People see the relationship between their work and the work of the team (teams)

Problem Solving

I think one of the first things that get in the way team orientation is that corporate leaders and members are problem solvers. Don’t get me wrong, problem-solving is a wonderful skill and is the reason why most people get promoted in organizations. But it can also be the first thing that gets in the way of good team orientation.

Email Overload

As a consultant, I was often asked how to reduce the amount of email that was a burden to everyone. I always looked at three things:

Why was the email sent?
What was the response?
Who was cc:d on the email?

Why was the email sent?

The answer to this question was always something like:

I gave this person an assignment and they were looking for an answer or a solution.

What was the response?

The answer to this question was almost always – I sent them the answer or solution.

Who was cc:d?

The answer to this one always seemed a little more cynical. It would go something like – Everybody and their brother

Immediately eliminate 40% of email

The solution to almost all overload email is accountability. This incorporates questions one and two.

I would suggest to the leader that they stop reading email with the intent to respond. And start asking themselves the question “Why am I receiving this email?”

Because corporate leaders are good problem solvers, their immediate (non-thinking) response is to figure out the problem and send the answer. However, if they look at every email with the first question being, “Why am I receiving this email?” their response becomes different than providing a solution.

Why am I receiving this email?

Some of the responses I’ve heard from the Leader:

I don’t have the right expertise on the team
The person sending the email doesn’t like the answer their getting from the team
The person doesn’t want to be held accountable for the solution. Now they have an email to prove that I gave the solution, not them.

This last answer is hardly ever seen by the leader (they’re problem solvers. They feel good about themselves for giving answers). But it’s the reason many emails are generated. It’s an easy way to get the monkey off their back and onto the back of the leader. And the leader seldom notices.

Answer with a different response

I suggest that the leader answer the email with a simple question, “Why are you sending me this email?”

40% of email will cease!

This response sends the message “I’m not accepting the monkey”. Figure it out. It’s why I gave you the job. Come to me with solutions, not questions.

Notice that this one response touches three and maybe all four of the Team Oriented Culture elements.

Cooperation is Encouraged – It encourages the individual to work with their peers. Cooperate. Engage!
People are not isolated pieces – It’s not just one person solving a problem (or their boss solving it for them). Again, they need to engage with the team and peers.
Teamwork is used over Hierarchy – I’m starting to sound like a broken record here but it’s not a top-down solution.
People see the relationship between their work and the work of the team – Decisions are not made in isolation. It’s not just the boss who sees the big picture. The individual must understand it as well to provide a workable solution.

I used the example of email but it can be any electronic media. In fact, texting adds a sense of urgency that makes the leader feel they must give a solution rapidly.

But, it can also apply to one-on-one meetings and even happen in team meetings.

Solution or Team Orientation

This idea that the leader should also be the problem solver is at the heart of most of these team orientation issues. It’s a tough habit to break. Don’t just solve the problem,

Encouraged cooperation
Make sure everyone functions as part of the whole, not just individual pieces
Don’t perpetuate the hierarchy, build the team
Make sure everyone understands how their actions and solutions impact the team

Create a team orientation, you’ll get better involvement.

0 comments

Newer Posts

Older Posts