Leading in the Matrix-7 Ideas to Cultivate the Right Skills

April 11, 2012 By 5 Comments

The sub-topic in a recent research release by Global Consulting Firm, Hay Group, suggests the skills needed in effectively leading in matrixed environments (empathy, conflict management, influence and self-awareness) for those below senior management “proved to be scarce across Hay Group’s database.”

While the primary topic of the research release, “Women Poised to Lead in Matrix Work Environments” is provocative enough for me to have invited an executive from Hay Group to an upcoming episode of The Leadership Caffeine Podcast, it’s this secondary issue that truly lights my fuse and should light yours as well. (And OK, raise your hand if you didn’t intuitively suspect there was a gender difference for the above described attributes.)

If speed, adaptability, learning…and the need to innovate are more than buzzwords and corporate clichés, but in fact are the requirements for success in this fast-moving world, then building cultures, teams and people capable of succeeding in the matrix must be a priority.

This type of “stuff” tends to get lumped into the squishy, touchy-feely bucket by many leaders. That’s too bad, because the need for people who display those skills is critical, and the opportunities for those who cultivate and apply them, nearly endless. 

7 Ideas to Promote Better Matrix Leadership Skills Across the Organization:

1. Build a common vocabulary for the matrix leadership skills. Terms like emotional and social intelligence, empathy and influence are not foreign to most of us, but our definitions and understanding of them are often very different. Ensure that you identify and describe the behaviors that reflect those skills as well.

2. Don’t immediately relegate this cultural change issue of strengthening matrix leadership skills to an HR or Training task. Those groups are enablers and even stakeholders, but the CEO must be the Executive Sponsor and Champion of this culture change, and there’s much more to effecting culture change than simply creating a program or initiative in HR or Training.

3. Senior Executives need to model the behaviors. If Hay’s research applies and if your firm happens to be mostly male at the top, these behaviors/skills may not be on display. We love to mirror those in authority, and if “the do doesn’t match the tell,” talk of a culture change will be just that…followed by laughter and sarcasm.

4. Start small by working with the “integrators” in your organization. Consider working with groups of professionals who serve as integrators…those who primarily work across boundaries and who have the ability to influence broader groups. A great starting point…focus on training and coaching your project managers and work with them to bring approaches, tools and even accountability to their project groups.

5. Land and expand. Leverage the results of smaller and early initiatives to create awareness of and promote good matrix leadership behaviors by building tools (training, coaching models and accountability tools) to support strengthening of this cultural change. Move from the integrators to the managers, supervisors and team leaders.

6. Create heroes and heroic stories out of successful teams and individuals. Nothing supports a culture like heroic successes. Bring visibility to project teams and leaders who create value. This is a powerful means of building institutional memory.

7. Accept that what gets measured gets done. Find ways to assess performance and growth in matrix leadership skills. Expect to experiment here…but get started and keep improving.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

The whole premise here is that speed, adaptability, the ability to motivate, inspire and succeed in an ever-changing and complex matrix environment is more and more the way firms and people work and succeed. If the premise holds, then it’s up to us as senior leaders to support the movement away from 19th century management approaches to something that looks and feels right for this squishy, ever-changing world we live and work in.

Oh, and by the way…for those of you waiting for your organizations to support your development here, cut it out. You own your own development. Strengthening your ability to lead in the matrix is a great place to start.

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Don’t miss the next Leadership Caffeine-Newsletter! Register here.

Art Petty is a Chicago-based management consultant focusing on strategy and leadership development. Art regularly speaks on innovation in management and leadership, and his work is reflected in two books, including the recent, Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development. (download a free excerpt at Art’s facebook page.)

Art publishes regularly at The Management Excellence blog at http://artpetty.com/blog/

Prior to his solo career, Art spent 20+ years leading marketing sales and business units in systems and software organizations around the globe. You can follow Art on twitter: @artpetty and he can be reached via e-mail at art.petty@artpetty.com

Filed Under: Leadership, Leading Change, Performance, Project Management Tagged With: , ,

Energy, Engagment and Some Science to Support High Performance Team Development

March 21, 2012 By 2 Comments

As a lifelong team participant and now devotee of leveraging the power of teams, I was fascinated and excited to see the article, “The New Science of Building Great Teams,” in the April, 2012 issue  of Harvard Business Review. (Subscription required for the full article…or check out the related HBR Blog Content for free.)

I suspect we are all for adding some science to the sticky, squishy and often problematic issue of how to get people to not only play nice together in the sandbox, but how to do so at a sustained high-level of performance.

While not to trivialize the findings of this extensive, sensor based, sociometric study, the authors engage in what seems to be a a great deal of razzle dazzle to conclude that levels of energy, engagement and exploration are the keys to assessing whether a team will perform at a high level or not. Raise your hand if you didn’t know that…and then excuse yourself from class.

Perhaps their most telling statement is: “A skeptic would argue that the points about energy, engagement and exploration are blindingly obvious.”  OK, I admit to feeling like I needed sunglasses at that less than startling conclusion.

In fairness, the authors continue beyond blindingly obvious with: “But the data from our research improve on conventional wisdom. They add an unprecedented level of precision to our observations, quantify the key dynamics and make them measurable to an extraordinary degree.”

OK. Again, I suspect we all can use some science and more precision in our work herding cats in pursuit of high performance.

A few additional points to ponder from the article:

  • 35% of the variation in a team’s performance can be accounted for by the number of face-to-face exchanges among team members.
  • In a typical high performance team, members are listening or speaking to the whole group only about half the time…the other half being one-on-one conversations.
  • Social time is critical to team performance… “often accounting for more than 50% of positive changes in communication patterns.”

In an important statement (which admittedly gives me cause to pause), the authors offer: “Without the data there’s simply no way to understand which dynamics drive successful teams.”

Excitement but Healthy Cynicism:

Who among us doesn’t want some help in building high performance teams? This study is fascinating for its potential, yet a bit frustrating in the “blindingly obvious” outcomes. The key it seems (and as the authors suggest) is to look deeper into the study outcomes for the insights that will lead to new approaches to building and managing. I’m interested and I suspect every student and practitioner of management is interested as well.

A quarter century of living on and with teams tells me that the dynamics change for every situation. I’m a bit uncomfortable imposing data and potentially inferring causation from correlation on something as complex as human interaction in varied situations. It might be easier to predict the weather accurately and consistently. Nonetheless, I’m hopeful we’ll gain some insights that can be applied in the workplace from projects like this one.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

I’m cheering for the authors of this type of research so don’t misconstrue my intent in the post. You’re getting my blink reaction. I need to read this article a few times to gain more insight beyond the “blindingly obvious” indication that the level (and quality) of energy, engagement and exploration relate to a team’s success. In particular, we all need to look for ideas and tools we can use from big, data-driven studies like the one behind this article.

For the moment, the best outcome for me is a firm, data-driven reminder that energy, engagement and exploration are critical. Now, how do we do a better job promoting the right kind of all three for that critical new innovation project? And that ERP implementation? And the new product development project? And the web site relaunch? And the sales force restructuring. And the… .

 

Filed Under: Decision-Making, Leadership, Leading Change, Performance, Project Management Tagged With: ,

Leaders, Tattoo this Causal Relationship on Your Forearms

February 22, 2012 By 6 Comments

I’ve been mildly surprised that the book, Beyond Performance-How Great Organizations Build Competitive Advantage by Scott Keller and Colin Price, hasn’t commanded more attention in mainstream business circles. Perhaps we’ve grown numb to the almost endless number of books purporting to show us the way to sustained success. However, don’t let the existence of 25,000 or so books published on managing change during the past two decades, blind you to some of the important and data-backed conclusions of Beyond Performance.

The book is the outcome of a massive McKinsey research initiative that suggests that the ability of an organization to gain and sustain success is a function of a focus on traditional performance tools and measures AND something they describe as Organizational Health. 

Organizational Health is defined as, “the ability of your organization to align, execute and renew itself faster than your competitors.”  

The authors backed by research that encompasses 600,000 survey respondents from more than 500 organizations; surveys and interviews with 6,800 CEO’s and an exhaustive literature review, put forth a powerful claim “On the strength of our research and analysis, we assert that the link between (organizational) health is more than a correlation, and is in fact causal.”

We’ve moved beyond correlation to a place where most of the 25,000 aforementioned books never go. The authors are stepping out on the statistical limb (a fairly sturdy, data-supported limb) in suggesting a causal relationship between performance and Organizational Health.

They take their conclusion one step further: “We argue that the numbers show that at least 50 percent of your organization’s success in the long term is driven by its health.”

What’s Organizational Health?

The short form: Organizational Health is described by three key components:  internal alignment on direction, quality of execution and capacity for renewal.

These three break down into 9 elements:

  1. Direction
  2. Leadership
  3. Culture and Climate
  4. Accountability
  5. Coordination and Control
  6. Capabilities
  7. Motivation
  8. External Orientation
  9. Innovation and Learning

The 9 further subdivide into 37 distinct management practices that can be measured, monitored and evaluated.  The 37 practices comprise the Organizational Health Index (OHI) survey, “a tool for measuring the health in rigorous and comprehensive manner.”

My Quick Takes:

Invest the time and read the book.  The book, the data, the OHI and the inherent management practices merit our time and attention!

There are practical implications for you and your firm now. Often, big  research studies seem to come back and confirm the obvious. There’s a little of that here, but the data backing of the conclusions allows us to move from conjecture about these practices to confidence that we need to focus our energies around promoting organizational health.  Anyone reading this or any other leadership and management blog will intuitively get that the 9-elements (and 37 practices) are essential. The book offers few epiphanies from an intellectual perspective. From a practical perspective, it clubs us over the head and reminds us that we tend to ignore much of the softer stuff (beyond performance activities and measures). Translation, too many business and leaders suck at cultivating organizational health.

It’s broader than employee engagement.  The OHI is comprehensive enough to bypass my gag reflex on employee engagement surveys serving as proxies for organizational health. If I see one more question asking me whether I have friends at work or whether I have the tools to do my job, the gag reflex will fail!

See also the last decade. Ignoring organizational health has in large part contributed to the creation of the lost decade we’ve just lived through. This past decade guarantees heartburn many years into the future.

Reminds you of your priorities. The authors and their concept of Organizational Health speak to the pieces we all intuitively know are essential for survival in this world…alignment on direction, focus on getting great people supporting execution, and promoting a culture that learns and adapts. The encouragement to work on the practices that beget health is an important reminder for all of us.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

No magical answers, but strong support for what the best leaders and managers have long known…the soft stuff of culture, climate and environment and all the inherent management practices are critical. Organizational health begets performance. Is it time for a check-up?

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Don’t miss the next Leadership Caffeine-Newsletter! Register here.

Art Petty is a Chicago-based management consultant focusing on strategy and leadership development. Art regularly speaks on innovation in management and leadership, and his work is reflected in two books, including the recent, Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development.  Art publishes regularly at The Management Excellence blog at http://artpetty.com

Prior to his solo career, Art spent 20+ years leading marketing sales and business units in systems and software organizations around the globe. You can follow Art on twitter: @artpetty and he can be reached via e-mail at art.petty@artpetty.com

Filed Under: Leadership, Leading Change, Management Innovation, Strategy Tagged With: , , ,

Strategy-Towards Hypotheses, Experiments, Involvement & Learning

January 25, 2012 By 6 Comments

Few would argue that a nimble, quick-to-learn and quick-to-adapt organization is a bad thing. Given the rate of change in our world, those characteristics are increasingly table-stakes for survival and success.

Why then has the approach to strategy and the notion of “strategic planning” in so many organizations remained mired in a 1960’s kind of static, top-down event-focused model?

Many firms practice a style of strategic planning that might have worked in a different time and place, but today, fast-to-try, fast-to- fail and fast-to-learn are essential for survival and success.

Give Me an Epiphany, Darn-It!

Rarely does just the act of thinking through circumstances, opportunities and strategies yield the epiphany that allows a firm to carve out a competitive advantage.

In my experience, the management teams who have pursued the “strategy as event’ approach with the annual or semi-annual meeting(s) serving as the time to talk strategy and decide, are often frustrated with the time investment and disappointing outcomes. Few epiphanies…a lot of time…a lot of bickering and ambiguous outcomes with no clear next steps. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

Hypotheses and Informed Experiments, Please!

The best outcome of the front end of any strategy process is one or more (a limited number, please) of ideas…hypotheses, that can quickly be turned into and managed as experiments.

True value in the form of learning accrues to the organization from working through the strategic experiment, assessing outcomes and refining the ideas. Because these workplace and marketplace experiments require people to implement, manage, and assess them, the act of engaging the employee population creates understanding, involvement, excitement and importantly idea sharing.  

It Feels So Good When We Stop!

I’ve worked with teams who were accustomed to and frustrated by the “event” orientation of planning. When refocused on assessment, analysis and importantly, hypothesis generation, the unreasonable expectation of finding the magical answer was replaced by high quality dialogue around generating ideas for better serving customers and beating competitors. After a series of these discussions over time, and with some focused facilitation, the teams were able to zero in on one or two strategic hypotheses to invest in and learn from.

The Project Management Art of Building out Strategic Experiments:

While I frequently reference this phase as the Execution phase, I prefer Experiment…both because it doesn’t sound so fatal…and it implies Doing, Measuring, Learning and Refining (DMLR).  In my estimation, its in the DMLR cycle where the real work…and the real “Ah Ha” moments of strategy occur.

Six Ideas for Implementing an Effective Doing, Learning, Measuring, Refining Program:

1. Treat each strategic experiment like a project. Assign a Project Manager and use Best Practices PM to charter, scope, engage stakeholders, define the work, assess the risks, plan and estimate the work, implement the work, monitor and communicate. Yeah, that’s a mouthful. Your Project Manager in this case is priceless.

2. Ensure that there’s a strong sponsor in place for every experiment. Yes, best practices project management again. If this is important enough to be betting your strategic future on, it’s important enough to provide a Supportive Sponsor with heft and teeth.

3. Explain, Engage and Listen! People work in compliance under orders, they work with their hearts and minds when they are part of something big. Getting them involved is good. Arming them with context on why, and what and importance is critical. Listening to their feedback is priceless. Since many strategic initiatives involve doing new things or doing things differently, this holistic approach to engagement is essential.

4. Create Learning and Sharing Forums with Teeth. It’s good to pre and post-mortems…it’s better to create ample opportunities for idea sharing, lessons learned and adjustments to experiments on the move. Hey, I’m probably violating several tenets of The Scientific Method with the adjustment statement, but timeliness is critical and your Project Manager will help you manage changes in the plan.

By the way, by this time, you may want to give your PM a big fat raise!

5. The Truth is Always in the Field…Sometimes You Just Have to Look Carefully. The best strategic experiments involve customers and partners. Invite them in…make them part of the process and of course observe and listen carefully. And then act.

6. Do Something with the Outcomes-Plan to Change or Move Forward. After a period of time and armed with the insights and feedback of employees, customers and partners, there’s a vetting and decision-making process that those in charge have to prosecute. From kill to change to go to what’s next, you and your team are on the hook for returning to the process and assessing and deciding.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

There are at least two “dirty little secrets” in what I’ve described above. It’s a nefarious plan for involving the broader organization in strategy and execution, and it not so secretly “operationalizes” the work of strategy. While there’s no magic and I would be misleading if I didn’t highlight that the process is filled with bumps, hiccups and debates it’s darned powerful if and when managed properly.

Filed Under: Leadership, Leading Change, Project Management, Strategy Tagged With: , , , ,

Leadership Caffeine: Warning! Your Words About Change are Falling on Cynical Ears

January 23, 2012 By 1 Comment

image of a coffee cupEven the most credible of leaders have to step up their game when it comes to talking about and promoting change on their teams and in their organizations. 

You can trust that a good number of the people doing the heavy lifting inside of your organization have developed a case of cynicism on talk of change emanating from the higher-ups.

They’ve consumed too many “flavor of the month” programs and developed heartburn when the programs died in mid-stream. They’ve watched people in your role come and go, and they no longer hear the siren call or pay much attention to the slogans and signs.

Can you blame them? If they wait a few minutes, this too shall pass, and in spite of their positive view of you, people have been conditioned to wait until the noise dies down and the focus turns back to getting the work done. They also know that you’ll likely move on to something bigger or different before too long.

For some leaders, the institutionalized and individual resistance to change is extremely frustrating and vexing. One leader offered to me, “I’m told that I’m credible, people have responded well to my leadership, I don’t pump sunshine or doom and gloom, yet people are dragging their feet on this new program. I know that it means doing new things and that can be frightening, but why aren’t people more excited and supportive?”

What’s a leader to do?

7 Helpful Steps to Get Started on the Right Foot Talking About Change:

1. Expect Resistance. Start from the assertion that you will run into a naturally occurring level of personal and cultural resistance, regardless of the how much people like and respect you.

2. Construct a Message for Real People. Lead with the facts. Explain the situation. Include your assessment. Avoid corporate and consultant-speak. Openly acknowledge the risks and unknowns.

3. Don’t Pitch the Solution…Share the Problem. Ask for help finding the solution. There’s a profound difference on how people process “here’s the answer,” versus “here’s the problem and we need to find the answer together.”

4. Beware the “Town Hall” Trap. Whether you are leading a company or a team, your inclination is to pull everyone together and to “present” your case for change. Senior leaders in particular fall victim to assuming that because something has been shared far and wide that it is now fact and reality. It’s good to share but there’s no “one-and-done” big group style of communication that cuts through the individual resistance to change. The large meeting is one step of many required for success.

5. Make Your Case One-on-One. The optimal level of dialogue is always one to one. Yes, it’s difficult. It’s also essential. Whether it’s you or those members of your change-coalition, the dialogue (not monologue) must be focused at the individual level.

6. Keep the Monologue Locked in the Closet. The faster people perceive that you are genuinely interested in their ideas and even their challenges to your own ideas, the faster the initiative will build momentum. Listen, acknowledge, adjust based on good input and share the adjustment.  And just keep doing it.

7. Model the Behavior. Do as you say…and do it very visibly and genuinely.  Nothing shoots a change initiative in the rear-end faster than your words and your actions not matching. The do must match the tell.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Change is inevitable in our world and intuitively, we all know and accept this reality. However, don’t discount the challenges you will face in gaining support for your message on the need to change.You’ve had ample time to process on it, but when your team members hear it for the first time, it’s either noise…or interesting but not tangible.

The only way through the resistance is straight ahead. Your honesty and authenticity are truly important. Your willingness to engage in a dialogue and your humility in asking for input and help are priceless.

Filed Under: Leadership Caffeine, Leading Change Tagged With: , ,
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