Leadership Lessons from the Road

February 27, 2009 By 2 Comments

One of the great things about leading workshops with talented professionals is how much I learn about the very real challenges that people face in trying to get work done inside their organizations.  

I had the great privilege of facilitating a workshop called Leader Mastery for Technical Professionals at The Data Warehouse Institute’s World Conference in Las Vegas this past week.  Kudos to the team at TDWI for producing an outstanding educational conference and for their usual flawless arrangements.

A special thanks to the group of great professionals that had the courage at a technically focused conference to attend a day-long session on a topic that would have many heading in the opposite direction. This group was engaged, hungry for knowledge to improve their performance and excited about sharing ideas, challenges and best practices with each other.  The pleasure was all mine!

After spending a day together helping this group develop a better context for what it means to lead and the principles and practices that will support their development as effective leaders, a number of themes about their challenges emerged from the discussions. These include: 

  • Gaining more context for their firm’s strategies as a means of better linking team goals and priorities to the organization’s priorities. 
  • Dealing with the very real challenges of building high performance teams across cultures, geographies and time-zones.  
  • Leading teams that increasingly include external contractors that don’t necessarily have the same level of commitment and share the same level of accountability.
  • Improving mastery of soft skills that promote performance including: coaching and feedback, talent development and decision-making. 
  • Gaining better support from HR to facilitate talent development and team strengthening versus the still all-too-common policing that seems to emanate from this functional area.
  • Breaking the vicious cycle of promoting the best technical contributors into a nightmare as they try and build bench strength.
  • Finding ways to work effectively and collaboratively in matrix environments.

My message in these sessions is always that effective leadership and effective leadership development practices serve as the foundation of organizational performance excellence.  What I hear consistently as I run these programs as well as when I engage with MBA students is an intense desire on the part of the individuals to contribute at a higher level.

I also hear significant frustration at the ridiculous cultural, managerial and procedural impediments that they face when trying to innovate and drive change.  These people want to create and belong to high performance teams and organizations.  Most confess that all too often, this is not the case. 

My bottom-line for this quick post from the road is for senior leadership to focus on breaking down barriers that inhibit performance and seek ways to set your talent free.  

Now more than ever, you and your organization require all hands to be contributing, innovating and seeking ways to create value.  It’s time to get out of your executive meetings, clear your agendas, start asking questions, listen carefully and then do something.  You are wasting remarkable opportunities to improve, and that’s not a winning approach in this market.

Filed Under: Career, Decision-Making, Leadership, Project Management Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Leadership Caffeine for the Last Week of February 2009

February 22, 2009 By 5 Comments

It’s still too cold out to contemplate an iced coffee, but the prospect of turning the calendar page from February to March is not unpleasant here in the frozen Midwest.  I’ll kick off this week with a tall cup of my favorite fair trade roast. 

Last week we focused on team performance and the week prior on relationships.  This week’s Leadership Caffeine offers some personal development suggestions for anyone interested in growing their influence by improving their skills in dealing with executive audiences.

How Strong is Your Executive Presence?

Many otherwise really smart people flounder when it comes time to deal with executives and board members.  They become tongue tied or worse yet, they develop a sudden urge to share everything that they ever learned about a topic and like a train barreling down the tracks, are not easily stopped.

One technical leader once described to me that every time he got in an elevator with an executive, he spontaneously blurted out something that was really stupid.  I urged him to take the stairs while we worked on correcting this unfortunate habit.

Do You Know How to Get to Carnegie Hall?  (Note: old joke…the answer is practice, practice, practice).  Why a message map is your best friend. 

Preparation, practice and experience are the best cures for improving your executive presence.  If you have advance warning of an executive encounter, craft a message map that carefully outlines your key and supporting points.  It’s a simple and powerful PR technique. 

Place the core message(s) in the middle.  Create a few spokes (3-5) that contain supporting points for your core message.  If it helps, create a spoke off of each of the supporting points with facts to back things up.  Answer all questions by reinforcing the points on your message map.

Practice delivering these points like you would practice a speech, although for heaven’s sake, make certain that you don’t sound scripted during your delivery. 

Anticipate questions and carefully frame answers:

Attempt to anticipate the key questions you might receive and frame short, fact-based answers. Some executive questions are fairly predictable, including things that focus on budget, time, improving the schedule, impact and risks.  Others are a bit more challenging, including things like “what alternative courses of action did you consider and why were they rejected?”  Work hard in thinking through the potential questions.  A good initial message map will include most of the answers.  It’s also OK to indicate a need to investigate as long as you commit to following up.

 Look the part:

Although it might seem like it does not need to be said, how you dress and how you carry and conduct yourself in front of executives says a great deal. The nonverbal cues that you are sending out are likely more powerful than the message you are verbalizing.  If your role calls for increasing amounts of face time in front of executives, it might be time to get a wardrobe makeover.  Ask for help from a fashion consultant if you need it. 

Follow your Mom’s advice: sit up or stand straight and look people in the eyes.

Executives are looking and listening for signs of confidence when you are talking.  Chances are you are either asking for something or updating on something important, and in all cases, they are assessing your competence.   Look people in the eyes when talking.  If you are using a powerpoint deck, don’t read the slides!  Stand or sit tall, listen attentively and answer clearly and sound like you believe yourself. 

Passion helps with persuasion

Don’t discount how powerful your passion about a particular topic can be in winning over an audience.  Don’t be afraid to let this passion come through in the form of enthusiasm and excitement.  Don’t overdo it, but don’t forget to bring this dimension with you and use it as a tool.  People will remember the passion more than the message.

The bottom-line for now:

Chances are the opportunities to address and interface with board members or your firm’s top executives are infrequent.  You definitely want to seize these opportunities to show your skills, intelligence and excitement for the business.  Great careers are launched when a firm’s leaders see and hear someone that is comfortable, confident and passionate about the business of the firm.  Now, about that executive small-talk problem in the elevator…

 

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Career, Leadership Caffeine, Marketing Yourself, Professional Growth Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Right Stuff: Sprinting Towards the Future

February 20, 2009 By 1 Comment

It’s easy to focus on the bad news.  Everyone’s talking about it.  We’re bombarded with news flashes and human disaster stories as the layoffs mount and the foreclosures climb.  And make no doubt about it, these are tough times, but let’s start giving some coverage to the firms, leaders and entrepreneurs that have turned off the news channels and are too busy building or rebuilding to worry about the dire forecasts.

For a good dose of “can do” spirit, get out of your office and go talk with some smart people working to strengthen, build or start businesses.  I’m doing just that as I work with a colleague to gain market feedback for a new business venture that we are considering. 

We’re talking with the best battle-hardened, seasoned executives and operators that we can find.  The type that would have no qualms telling us that our baby is ugly. So far, they’ve highlighted a few flaws, but no one is using the U-word.

The great by-product of these discussions is the insights we are gaining into people and firms and their approaches to working and building while too many other people preoccupy on failure. 

Here are a few themes of success we are hearing from people that are sprinting towards the future instead of hiding from the present:

-Savvy operators see opportunities to out execute their skittish competitors and are strengthening every part of their firm, from people to processes, and focusing on driving results that will translate to growth.  The lack of a rising tide is actually exciting to these operators.  It’s an opportunity to pick up talent, gain customers and gain market share that will fund future investment and growth. 

-The smart firms in the venture community have a new formula: build to sustain.  Instead of the traditional model which was buy low, pump up and sell high as quickly as possible, the smartest operators are embracing the new reality by backing their firms with the best experts that money can buy and those experts are helping the firms improve execution around core tasks like development, product management and marketing.  Instead of the former oversight & badger model, the venture firms are taking responsibility to support strengthening in areas that will create value for years to come. In the words of one leader, “this is hard work, but worth it.”  

-Other entrepreneurs see remarkable opportunities in the application of new technologies to helping people manage their lives. From the Trunk Club for Men that I am now a proud customer of, where technology meets, expertise, meets convenience for men’s fashions, to new devices and programs underway to help millions of people manage difficult health problems, the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and excited about the potential.

-In chatting with the great professionals at Construx , a leader in advancing best practices in software development effectiveness, one gets the impression that what they offer is more valuable and more in demand than ever.  Their recent announcement allocating 25% of the seats in their open-enrollment workshops at no-charge to unemployed developers is both a testament to the firm’s values (I’m a former customer and got to see these values first-hand) and a remarkable gesture to support the continuing education of industry professionals.  Face it, it’s also a brilliant way to strengthen people’s allegiance to the firm. No momentarily unemployed developer will ever forget Construx’s help.

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I like what I am seeing and hearing.  The focus on operational execution underscores the need to focus on procuring and strengthening talent. 

The “run to sustain” model takes into account the new formula for creating value…which is of course the same one as the old model that we keep forgetting in a “mania-a-decade” world.

The focus on looking at today’s crises and creating solutions to either eliminate or to help manage is just great business. 

Hey Leader, Your Baby is Ugly

I can’t complete this piece without looping back to the reality faced inside many firms.  I talk with and teach hundreds of great professionals through workshops and in classes and what I continue to hear is that YOU (leader) don’t get it.  The nightmare stories of poor execution, misalignment, missed opportunities and waste are coming from people that want to help and fix, not people that relish the opportunity to complain. 

Try listening to your people and then try freeing them up to save your skin before throwing them into the street.  If someone has to go, throw yourself out first.  Of course, you probably don’t have the courage to do that, so focus on my first suggestion.

The Bottom-line for now:

Next week I travel to The Data Warehouse Institute’s World Conference to deliver my workshop on Leadership for Technical Professionals.  The pre-enrollment numbers are great, and I view this as a sign that everyone…even the most creative and brilliant of our technical professionals are seeking opportunities to grow and contribute.  I’ll also be looking and listening for more signs of success.  While the storm in our economy is nasty, I like the forecast just a little bit more with every conversation.  

Filed Under: Crisis Leadership, Leadership, Leading Change, Surviving Lousy Leaders Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Challenge and Opportunity of the Product Manager

February 17, 2009 By 2 Comments

Note from Art: this post came about through my on-going research with a colleague into best organizational practices in product management and product manager career development.  For additional information on this topic, check out my recent podcast interview with Michael Ray Hopkin at The Product Management Pulse and stay tuned for future posts.  

Product Managers face significant organizational challenges in their quest to expand their roles and increase their value-creating contributions to their firms.  

Through a recent and on-going series of interviews with senior executives as well as product managers across a variety of technology and manufacturing organizations, it is becoming clear that more and more organizations recognize the potential for product management to create tremendous value.  It is also clear that enlightened executives increasingly recognize that the professionals that work in product management roles are a ready-made source of high potential contributors and emerging leaders.  

Consider:

  • The Product Manager has the difficult and unenviable challenge of leading and influencing others across the organization without formal authority. The nature of the role requires the development of the lateral influence skills so critical to driving cooperation and execution inside organizations. 
  • Product Managers are charged with shaping market and offering strategies and are critical links to the Voice of the Customer.  The best product managers learn to interpret and translate this sometimes confusing “voice” into offerings that solve problems and create value for stakeholders.  
  • All too often, product managers and product management organizations struggle to transcend the persona of taskmasters and move beyond the never-ending, highly tactical activities.  Organizations that treat this function tactically are wasting remarkable opportunities to create value.
  • The role of product manager is a remarkable training grounds for a firm’s future leaders.  These professionals see the organization from all perspectives; survive and prosper on their abilities to educate, motivate and inspire action and are at the epicenter of driving strategy and execution. 

It’s encouraging to see that some senior leaders and leadership teams are beginning to “get it” when it comes to expanding the involvement, accountability and authority of product management teams and professionals. However, from the school of “be careful what you ask for,” product  managers also need to step up their game several levels in order to fulfill their expanding missions. 

Part of the feedback that my colleague, Joe Zurawski, and I are hearing from executives is that that the core functional skills that product managers have honed over time must be augmented by the development and expansion of a set of senior leadership skills that will allow for increased contribution.  

Senior executives are looking for their emerging senior contributors in product management to bring more advanced skills to the party, in the areas of: Leadership, Strategic Thinking, Executive Presence and Process Optimization.

Core functional/vocational skills are critical, but not enough to allow well-intentioned product management professionals to expand their contributions.  Nor is the “make it so” mandate from senior management that has decided it is time for this function and these professionals to provide more. 

To survive and prosper as senior contributors and emerging executives, product managers must:

1.  Strengthen lateral influence skills (the ability to lead and motivate without authority and across the organization).

2.  Develop the ability to recognize emerging patterns in the marketplace and translate that recognition into ideas (strategy & strategic thinking skills)

3.  Improve their ability to articulate and command credibility with senior executives (executive presence).

4.  Work relentlessly to improve execution and continuous improvement around value creation activities across the organization (process optimization).

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Developing the abilities and skills in those areas is no small task.  A deliberate focus by executives and their high potential product managers on developing skills and gaining experience in those four areas is essential.

All parties must engage in a focused development initiative that emphasizes exposure to diverse situations and ever-increasing levels of ambiguity and challenge.  Education and training are a part of the process, but mentoring and coaching should earn the lion’s share of focus.  Only through deliberate and focused action will organizations derive top value from their high potential product management assets. 

Anything less is a formula for same-old, same-old. In this economy, no one can afford to stand pat on the bad old practices of the recent past.  

Filed Under: Career, Leadership, Management Innovation, Product Management, Professional Growth Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Leadership Caffeine for the Week of February 16, 2009

February 15, 2009 By 1 Comment

Three ideas to help jump-start your week and strengthen your leadership effectiveness.  I’ll take a French Press of the the dark roast for a little extra kick.

The focus this week is on strengthening team performance by improving your own leadership practices. 

You as leader directly control the quality of your team’s working environment.  The health of this environment is a critical indicator of your leadership effectiveness.  Start and sustain a program to improve in the following areas:

1.  Face up to dealing with poor performers.  All of your efforts to instill a sense of accountability and high performance come crashing down on the rocks of your inconsistent treatment of individuals.  Everyone knows if there are two or more sets of rules. 

Accountability is accountability and commitment is commitment.  If you want the entire team to take you seriously as a leader and to take pride in performing at a high-level, you MUST deal with the poor performers in a fair, firm and timely manner.  Don’t put this off any more.

2. Ensure that your team members know how to communicate with you.

What’s your personal communications plan?  Have you established a protocol for communications with your associates?  If not, consider doing setting up some ground rules for the benefit of your associates and they will thank you. 

Clarify what type of information and updates you are looking for.  Don’t make people guess about what you want/need to hear.

If you talk about having an “open door policy” you had best clarify what that means and then live up to it.  Set yourself up for success by encouraging the right types of interactions…and don’t forget to identify that from time to time, the door must close for you to do your job.  

Also, remember that your most valuable opportunities to communicate are not when people walk into your office, but when you engage informally with them in the workplace.

Establish a 911 protocol to help people understand when/how to approach you with an emergency issue.  If you don’t do this, you risk either being exposed to an endless stream of “emergencies” or missing out on the real problems. 

 3.  Leverage the power of high expectations.

I have been consistently amazed and occasionally awestruck by the results of teams and individuals where I have observed leaders that have expressed genuine confidence and asserted high standards and expectations.

These enlightened leaders understand the power of the effective working environment and they focus all of their energy on strengthening it and the people on their team. 

Setting high expectations only works when people WANT to strive to meet or exceed those expectations.  These individuals develop a remarkable sense of pride and the thought of falling short doesn’t occur to them.  The notion of disappointing the leader that has worked hard to coach, to create opportunities and to knock down barriers is unthinkable. 

Contrast the leader who serves, coaches, supports, provides feedback, and challenges with the leader that attempts to drive complicity through a command and control approach.  One wins and the other makes people miserable. Which one are you?

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Unlike the formula for Coca Cola, the formula for becoming a great, effective and inspirational leader is not locked away in a vault somewhere.  High team and individual performance flow from personal pride and drive.  The effective leader taps these powerful forces by creating the right conditions for people to flourish. 

Is your team flourishing?  

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Leadership Caffeine Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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