Five Tips for Leading Change When You’re Not In Charge
Filed under: Career, Leadership, Leading Change, Organizational Transformation, Project Management, Surviving Lousy Leaders
One of the things that I love about what I do as a speaker/trainer/educator is that I get to work with a lot of great people genuinely concerned about their development and the development and improvement of their organizations.
As I continue on my career respite from managing a business that’s not mine, I’m increasingly conscious of the significant gap between the needs and ideas of employees and the attention and interest of senior managers.
There are so many remarkable ideas and thoughts on improving performance that never see the light of day that it is staggering. Just a few examples:
- The managers and knowledge workers in my MBA classes in Project Management constantly agonize over the issue of: “I see how it should be done and why, and we are not even close. How do I get my company to change?”
- Specific to managing projects, it seems nearly universal that people describe mismanagement, not by the project managers, but by the arbitrary establishment of dates, deadlines, budgets and even specifications from the top.
- A valued former colleague recently reminded me that an ultimately successful mega project from our past was slowed by lack of executive management guidance to drive culture change and ensure accountability across the organization. Life looked good from the top. The view from down below was filled with pain and frustration. I don’t know why we didn’t listen.
- In all of my leadership workshops, one or more participants will raise their hands and ask something like: “I get everything you’ve been saying, but how do I pull this off with a boss that doesn’t get it?”
- I run a workshop that helps teams tame and execute a practical strategy process and the refrain is similar: “We can use this, but how do I get everyone on board. Especially top management.”
As much as I would like to opine on some easy answers for those operating from somewhere below the executive ranks, I don’t have any (that are easy). To quote Bill Clinton, “I feel your pain.”
I do have some suggestions that stop short of coup d’état, and I’m hoping for some of the extremely sharp readers here to add in their ideas.
1. My first comment is for the people at the top. WAKE UP! Leading doesn’t mean that you have the monopoly on ideas. To the contrary, leading means figuring out how to help people that have great insight into problems and solutions. Listen and set your people free!
2. Make the boss the hero. Learn to sell your ideas in the language of leaders. Just because you think something is important doesn’t guarantee that anyone else will. Understanding your manager’s priorities is a key to success with this tactic.
3. Develop the skills of a diplomat and create alliances. Many opportunities for improvement require changes across silos, and the view from the silo next to your problem is very, very different from what you are looking at. The adage, “Seek first to understand and then be understood,” is advice to live by when proposing changes across functions. You need allies.
4. Seek a sponsor by blending your new-found mastery of diplomacy with the language of executives. Make certain your idea is important enough to the firm’s core issues of executing strategy, improving service to customers and cutting costs. Beware the risks of moving upstream without your boss.
5. Create your own center of competency. Failing to up-sell or cross sell improvement ideas, you should work to optimize results within your immediate span of control. Interestingly, best practice improvements are contagious. As your team improves and visibly benefits from and enjoys the improvements, others become curious. Use this credibility to spread your wisdom.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
If you are in charge, this is easy money for you. Pay attention and do something about it.
If you’re not in charge, but believe in change, don’t give up trying to find opportunities to make a difference. I would rather crash on the organizational rocks of politics and uncertainty than labor away in futility. Never ever give up.
Readers, jump in here. Please share your thoughts and examples of success in leading change from the middle.
Your Recruiting Practices Might Just Be Killing Your Business
Filed under: Innovation, Leadership, Leadership Skills, Management Excellence Tips for Tough Times, Organizational Transformation, Talent Management, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
It’s long past overdue to change the way you recruit talent. The way you’ve been doing it is wrong, and it is hurting your business.
This topic is particularly relevant now, because there is a goldmine of talent on the street in this lousy economy. Your opportunity to strengthen your firm with hungry, motivated and powerful people will never be better.
Don’t muck it up by using the same tired old tactics for filling your critical and precious few opportunities.
Specifically, I’m concerned about the propensity that we have as leaders to hire clones. This manifests itself in one of several ways:
- Organizations hire from within their industry in a never-ending game of musical chairs. The people stay the same, but the business cards change.
- Managers specify MUST HAVE requirements for experience, that guarantee that the game of musical chairs continues merrily along. Visit a job board and read the ridiculously detailed experience requirements that become the filters that recruiters and HR gatekeepers use to screen candidates.
- Many search firms and consultants lack the creativity and fortitude to challenge clients on hiring clones. They execute on a search to the “Must Have” requirements, blindly assuming the client knows best. While they may execute the transaction effectively, these service providers have not cracked the code of how to add value to a client. (This problem however, does not start with the recruiter, it starts with the hiring managers and their false belief that only someone with a very specific set of experiences is worth considering.)
- Talent Development is still an oxymoron in many firms. The words are uttered, the courses are scheduled, but the underpinnings of a culture committed to finding and developing the best people and the best talent are lacking.
I’ve practiced what I’m preaching here, and I’ve experienced the pitfalls, but mostly enjoyed the benefits, as my firms became market leaders. It takes courage to hire based on your read of the raw talent…your perception of the business and the people acumen of an individual, versus hiring based on the fact that this person has done this same job in the same industry.
Why do you want to continue retreading the same worn-out industry ideas by hiring exclusively from within your market?
It takes commitment to truly developing talent when you hire for skills and gifts and potential, not for comfort. Effective leaders understand that hiring outside the industry will elongate the ramp-up process and create more work at start-up.
However, the first time your out-of-the-industry hire looks at you and your team in a meeting and says, “Have you considered doing it this way?” you will smile knowing that the process of cross-pollination has started. The payback from the up-front investment has potential to be tremendous.
With the exception of very specialized, knowledge or contact-intensive roles, most positions can be filled and learned by a smart person.
What’s so special about your industry or market that only people that have worked in it are capable of working in it going forward? Absolutely nothing.
I’ll let you in on a dirty little secret. There are very few differences between industries. The problems at a high level are all the same. The people are different, and there are unique variables, but someone who has lived across multiple markets recognizes the patterns in a hurry. And this someone has also lived through and seen complex problems solved in different ways. These experiences are priceless to you.
Occasionally, one of your attempts to hire a decathlete will fail. It’s painful, and if this happens a lot, you’ve got other problems. Some people are lousy judges of talent.
The Bottom-Line for Now
I’ll take the potential benefits that accrue over time from assembling the smartest, most capable and gifted group of individuals, regardless of background, versus settling for the mediocre to poor outcome from industry inbreeding.
Screw up some courage and expand your search parameters and get prepared to do your job as a leader in developing talent. You might just end up with a powerful, creative and motivated team prepared to challenge conventional industry thinking while creating value for customers and thumping competitors.
The Case of the Rapidly Shrinking Attention Span
Filed under: Career, Innovation, Leadership, Leadership Skills, Leading the Generations, Life and Business, Social Commentary, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
I wrote a post last year entitled, “Yeah, Why Don’t Managers Think Deeply,” prompted by an article in Harvard Business Review. Judging by the posted comments as well as the e-mails that I received, the notion that we seem to almost discourage creating opportunities to think deeply about our business, our strategies and our jobs, resonates with many people.
Are we losing our ability to focus?
Maybe. Maybe we never had it, and it is the exception instead of the rule, but it just seems so much harder in this noisy, interruption-driven, always-on world to focus on an issue and work through it to creative, complete solutions. We’re too busy racing from one sound-bite opportunity to another, focusing our precious gray matter on topics for nanoseconds before the next interruption comes along.
If left alone without new stimuli for more than a few minutes, we seek them out on-line via social networking sites, through e-mail or even in the ubiquitous and mostly useless meetings that dominate our corporate calendars. Go a few minutes without an e-mail, and I’m willing to bet that you are worried that something is wrong.
I’ve discussed this with many other colleagues and neighbors, and perhaps it is generational, but we all see and sense the same chronic societal attention deficit disorder.
No one seems to pay attention for long. In the work environment, our cellphones and e-mail devices are on and we engage constantly about the urgent and often the unimportant. We don’t seem to solve and create as much as we should.
Our children only exist in “heavy noise” environments, where socializing includes talking, interacting with many on the web, texting on the cell phone, playing music and studying (??) all at the same time.
Social networking sites are powerful and exciting and valuable for certain things. I love LinkedIn and Twitter for the opportunities they afford to meet and connect with old and new acquaintances and for pure networking. However, they can also be addicting and suck precious time out of your days and nights interacting in sound-bites.
I’ve noticed that I struggle to read many books from cover to cover anymore. True, most of the books I’ve been reading lately are fairly boring business books, where all of the meat is in the introduction, the first chapter and the last chapter. Nonetheless, I find that I want the essence of the book quickly and then I want to move-on to my next intellectual stimulus.
During the few minutes that I’ve been writing this, a quick glance indicates that 3 new e-mails have come in, I’ve got several Twitter updates and someone has decided to follow me, so courtesy says I ping them back. I just received a blog comment that indicated my posts are too long (tough, don’t read them!), someone is dialing me on Skype, I have a fresh text from my son at college (definitely looking for money!) and I have a new voice mail message. THE NOISE IS DEAFENING!
OK, I’ve designed my work environment to allow for all of those interruptions, so I have no one to blame but myself. My guess is however, that your work environment is not too dissimilar. We have created an interruption-driven world where we consciously choose to be interrupted and not to think deeply.
The lack of deep thinking is not a good thing.
Maybe you can “Create” in this noisy environment, but I cannot do it effectively. Nor can most people that I know.
I need to wrap up this post and focus on a new leadership keynote, create some new tools for an upcoming workshop and get back to work on my e-book. I now turn off my internet connection and cell phone just to concentrate. The more I do this the more I create, solve, innovate and produce.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Be careful about becoming an actor in The Case of the Rapidly Shrinking Attention Span. As a leader, you want people and teams to focus. You need to create opportunities to create for your teams and for yourself.
Educate your associates on the power of focus and silence. Do the same for yourself. Don’t let your ability to think deeply be stolen by the false idol of Always-On communication.
Podcast: Ten Big Points on Leading and Leadership, part 1 of 2
Join Art for a little less than ten minutes of Management Excellence as he shares points 1 thru 5 of his 10 Big Points on Leading and Leadership. This podcast was based on a recent guest speaking opportunity for a class of college seniors and adapted to fit anyone who is leading, interested in leading or charged with developing leaders.
A pdf file of the “Ten Big Points” is included as an optional visual.
Leadership Caffeine for the New Week: 5 Quick Tips to Jolt You Into Action
Filed under: Career, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Leadership Skills, Professional Growth, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
Whether you are Chief Executive, a functional manager or someone who leads informally on project and product teams, start your week right and put these suggestions to work.
1. Say “Hello.”
If you work in a physical office, start your day by walking around and saying hello and asking about the weekend. Smile, make good eye contact and show that you are interested.
There are a lot of stupid reasons why we stay away from people’s personal lives. Get over it. I’m not suggesting you probe, pry or do anything that makes anyone the least bit uncomfortable. Instead, pay attention to what people volunteer to you and follow up. If you know that someone has a sick child, a major event or is involved in something important in the community, ask a question about it. And quit steering the conversation back to something about you.
2. Audit your schedule and revise it to include some or more people-time.
Look at your week’s schedule. If you are a leader responsible for others, you should have a healthy chunk of your time invested in meetings that provide an opportunity for you to coach, gauge progress, provide feedback and provide encouragement. If most of your time is consumed with status meetings, you need to make a conscious effort to reorient your schedule. Set up following weeks with a better balance of people time and coaching meetings.
3. Recognize the Opportunities for Drive-By Coaching in Your Day.
Hallway conversations, quick phone calls or even e-mails can and should incorporate elements of coaching. They are not substitutes for quality time, but tools to use as everyone plows through their work. A quick phone call to follow-up on an issue is a great opportunity to offer encouragement, ask a few questions and set up a formal meeting.
4. Resolve this week to help solve problems and knock down barriers at every opportunity.
It’s amazing how enjoyable work is when your driving motivation is to help. Instead of planning to read the riot act or take some names at the project from hell status meeting, focus on helping the group identify and frame problems and begin developing solutions. Resist the urge to provide answers or you will miss the teaching opportunity.
5. Calibrate on Your Manager’s Goals
Regardless of whether your manager practices any of this good leadership stuff, strive to coach in reverse. Recognize that the boss has a whole host of problems and pressures, many of which she does not share with you. Ask questions and volunteer your help. You’ll both be glad that you did.
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A week is a horrible thing to waste. Put one or more of these tips into play. Rinse and repeat in the future. Again you’ll be glad that you did.
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e-book-Leadership and the Project Manager - Developing the Skills that Fuel High Performance
