Management Excellence Book Series Podcast: Strategic Speed
Filed under: Fresh Voices, Leadership, Leading Change, Management Education, Management Excellence Book Series, Management Innovation, Organizational Transformation, Performance, Strategy, Talent Management
Every year, a number of the large consulting firms publish surveys outlining the issues that keep global corporate leaders awake at night. Inevitably, the topic turns to strategy and more specifically to the headaches and challenges of executing strategy.
For those of us that have labored in the corporate world for a couple of decades, it comes as no surprise that translating ideas into programs and projects and then executing these programs accurately and quickly to seize market opportunities is darned difficult.
It also turns out that we’re not so good at it for a lot of reasons, most of which have to do with people.
It is this critical issue of improving strategy execution (speed and quality) by focusing on the people & leadership issues that bedevil so many programs, that the authors of: Strategic Speed-Mobilize People, Accelerate Execution, take on in this interesting, and research and helpful tool-filled new book. This is a practical, interesting and immediately useful book for anyone engaged in the work of creating and driving strategy and execution.
I had the good fortune to connect recently with Jocelyn Davis, one of the co-authors (along with Henry Frechette, Jr., and Edwin Boswell) of Strategic Speed, for an interview, where we discussed the high failure rate of strategies, the meaning of “strategic speed,” and a number of other issues important to anyone interested in improving strategy execution. Jocelyn’s insights into the book and the world of strategy and leadership were fascinating.
Enjoy the interview.
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-In case you missed it, check out my recent interview with Bob Sutton on his new book, Good Boss, Bad Boss.
-Note from Art: the authors supplied my review copy of Strategic Speed.
Finding Time to Focus or, Speed Kills
Filed under: Career, Leadership, Leadership Skills, Leading Change, Making Decisions, Management Education, Organizational Transformation, Performance, Social Commentary
More observations on business and culture from an unofficial leadership anthropologist.
The lot of professionals inside many organizations can easily be characterized by a series of endless status meetings, hurried hallway conversations and messages quickly dispatched on a pda while walking, ignoring the meeting in process or consuming a protein bar on the run.
Space aliens observing from afar might get the sense of a hive type atmosphere with a seemingly endless amount of activity, but almost no perceived vector. Clearly people fawn over those with power, but the output of all of this fawning and excessive movement might not be visible to these distant observers. Nonetheless, work gets done, customers are served and growth often created. I do however, worry and wonder about the human costs and the cost to the organization in lost-ideas, missed opportunities and a much more superficial existence.
If you work in one of these fast-paced cultures, the issue of finding time to focus on people and strategic priorities is a true struggle. The problem is compounded if you get caught up in the common notion that success equates to being perceived by the right people as busy.
Beware the Micro-Transaction Trap:
I’ve noticed a tendency for some in hive type cultures to get caught up in achieving a maximum number of touches per day. The goal becomes one of earning attendance to meetings where you need to “be seen,” and minimizing the amount of time that you spend on any one topic. Deep thinking is not promoted, because you are too busy engaging in micro-transactions. These are quick sound-bite type engagements where surface topics are covered and conversations on deep issues forestalled for another time.
Another Way:
I contrast the micro-transaction or hive style culture with my own experiences working and partnering with a number of different U.S., Asian and European organizations, where thinking time is valued, and discussions are typically allowed to run a useful course…one not dictated by the next entry in an Outlook calendar.
While I cannot say conclusively whether these more deliberate organizations are more successful than their hive-like counterparts, they are all market leaders and they do well retaining and developing employees.
What I can say from personal observation and interaction is that this more deliberate style certainly seems more humane, more enjoyable and to me, one heck of a lot more productive on the right issues. Strategic issues are tackled, learning takes place and coaching and nurturing of talent is a focal point.
5 Reasons Why Lack of Focus Extracts a Toll Personally and Organizationally
1. Speed drains and kills. Constant movement and micro-transactions draw upon instinct and adrenaline. Survival is the goal, movement is required and it becomes habitual. There’s no deep processing going on in this constant sense and respond environment. Frankly, I want some deep thinkers on my team.
2. Excessive focus on pace squeezes out good leadership practices. A key to successful leadership is finding time to focus on others. While sometimes the army is engaged, and sense and respond are required for a period of time, eventually, there must be an opportunity rest, reflect, learn, plan and reset. An always on, micro-transaction culture is a formula that promotes leadership ineffectiveness and rapid troop burnout.
3. All activity, no vector equals poor or suboptimal results. A lot of activity and no vector is a huge waste of physical and mental energy. Strategy sets the vector, and unless this strategy is clear to all, the motion is for show, not for go or dough. Lack of focus extracts huge opportunity costs from an organization.
4. The criteria for getting ahead are off-key. If it’s required to be constantly visible to the people in power to succeed, frankly, the leadership is fatally flawed.
5. Unbridled speed accelerates mistakes. Speed is a powerful motivator and a false god. Speed creates waste and allows mistakes to run further faster. The effective use of speed is a different story. (I have a great podcast interview coming up with Jocelyn Davis, one of the co-authors of Strategic Speed, where this notion of effective speed is shared in detail.)
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Speed kills, and so does inaction compounded by over-analysis. There must be a happy medium or at least a workable balance of speed and activity with the slow, thoughtful dialogue that leads to new ideas, performance improvements and effective coaching. If you live and work in a hive type atmosphere, you’ve got a tough task, but one worth fighting for on a daily basis. Learn to slow down and focus at least once a day.
Leadership Caffeine: 5 Ideas for Infusing Fun Into the Workplace
Filed under: Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Life and Business, Management Education, Middle Management, Performance, Professional Growth, Talent Management, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
You heard it here first. It’s OK to Have Some Fun as a Leader.
Most of the popular press on leading and leadership focuses on the challenges, strain and pains of leading, leaving one to assume that signing on for the role is akin to a vow of chastity or at least a vow of silence.
You don’t often hear the “F” (for fun) word used in sentences with the words, leader, leading or leadership. And while I’ll encourage you to keep the red noses and floppy shoes and squirting flowers safely at home for your own use at birthday parties, I’m going to step out on a limb and encourage you to not make this a miserable experience for you or your team members.
And let’s face it, there’s not been much fun to go around in the world for at least a few years. Just be really, really careful what your definition of the word fun is, or, you’re liable to feel like you took a vow of poverty once you and your floppy shoes get bounced out of the show for inappropriate actions.
5 Ways to Infuse Fun Safely into Your Workplace:
1. Start by smiling a lot more. Smiles are contagious and that’s more than just popular lore. Our mirror neurons fire when we observe someone engaging in a particular behavior, and the positive act of smiling is one that all of us appreciate. Your smile as the leader will have an uplifting impact on everyone that you encounter. Of course, choosing to grin during a crisis will have the opposite effect. Use this technique liberally when the seas are calm and the wind is at your back.
2. Improve the quality and frequency of your positive feedback delivery. Effective positive feedback reinforces the right behaviors, offers encouragement and provides motivation for the receiver and for observers. Avoid calling out “Atta boys” for trivial reasons. “Way to make that pot of coffee this morning, Smith.” Be specific, link the feedback to business issues and dispense the positive encouragement in a ratio in excess of 1:1 versus constructive feedback.
3. Celebrate the right victories. If your team or organization is in crisis, celebrate the small victories that help propel you in the right direction. Depending upon your role or level, some of these small victories might seem insignificant, but each success strengthens the foundation for future successes. Spring for pizza or, at least take a few minutes to thank everyone. Remember to provide visibility to the teams that drove the results and then drive home with a smile on your face, knowing that this was the right thing to do. Remember to adapt your definition of the “victories to celebrate” as conditions improve or worsen.
4. Ensure that people know that their work is important. There’s almost no stronger motivational technique than ensuring that your team members understand that what they are working on is important. Whether it’s important to internal customers or external customers doesn’t matter, as long as they have context for the value of their work. Working on something important makes work relevant and yes, even fun.
5. Increase involvement. There are individuals laboring in all sections of firms that have ideas of value to offer, but have no outlet for those ideas. When is the last time that you invited someone from Accounting to one of your team’s brainstorming session? Mix things up, break down some walls and get people involved!
The Bottom-Line for Now:
OK, so my definition of “fun” might be a little more mundane than many others. It’s unlikely that I’ll be invited to choreograph any big Fun Fairs soon. However, if nothing else, take away from this post the reality that you as the leader have a tremendous impact on the working atmosphere at your place of business. Apply some or all of the 5 simple ideas above, and you’re likely to see a palpable increase in enthusiasm, motivation, performance and yes, even smiling and occasional light conversation. And you’ll have a lot more fun in the process.
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Updates:
-The August Management Excellence Newsletter is out on Tuesday, August 17th. Sign up to receive this newsletter (I guard your e-mail address with an unrivaled ferocity!), and you’ll be on the receiving end of subscriber-only content. Register at Management Excellence or Building Better Leaders (far right column).
-Look for the Management Excellence Book Series to launch this week with my podcast interview with Bob Sutton on his new book, Good Boss, Bad Boss!
The Pursuit of Power and the Misguided Leadership Literature
Filed under: Career, Leadership, Leadership Skills, Life and Business, Management Education, Middle Management, Performance, Professional Growth
Jeffrey Pfeffer’s article, Power Play, in the July-August Harvard Business Review (fee) is interesting and relevant for everyone working inside organizations as well as for those individuals actively engaged in the development of leadership literature and course-work.
Pfeffer tackles the important topic of power. How to gain it, how to wield it, and in his opinion, why those that actively cultivate power are more effective at driving change and implementing a new strategy. He also suggests that the leadership literature is soft-selling or ignoring this very real and important part of organizational life.
First, the organizational issues. Anyone that has been around the block for more than a few minutes recognizes that the flow of power (formal and informal) is what makes organizations move. Power manifests itself in many ways that don’t involve revolution or underhanded activities. Consider the ability of one manager to consistently secure plum projects and top performers for her teams. Or, another manager’s track record at pushing his new programs through the various approval channels and gaining investment support. Both individuals have cultivated and used power for practical, productive purposes.
I’m refreshed to see the term “Power” in a positive and pro-active light. It’s often not talked about except in the context of “abuses of.” Much like politics in the organization, power is a very real and palpable source of performance fuel. It is also something that is actively sought by some that see it as a way forward and upward, while it is eschewed by others that view at as noble to avoid the perceived games and grabs.
Good, relevant content for anyone laboring inside an organization or working on a team.
And while I like what Pfeffer has to see, he most definitely is knocking the chip off of the shoulders of those in the leadership community with his second of three barriers that preclude many people from assembling a power base.
From the article:
Barrier 2: The Leadership Literature: ”Most books by well-known executives and many lectures and courses about leadership should be stamped “Caution: This material can be hazardous to your organizational survival.” That’s because many leaders touting their careers as models to be emulated gloss over the power plays they used to get to the top. The teaching on leadership is filled with prescriptions about following your inner compass, being truthful, letting your feelings show, being modest and self-effacing, not behaving in bullying or abusive ways—in short, prescriptions that reflect how people wish those in positions of power behaved. There is no doubt that the world would be a much better place if people were always authentic, modest, truthful and concerned about others, instead of simply pursuing their own aims. But wishing that’s how people behaved won’t make it so.”
I take issue with this one just a bit. While I don’t claim to have read all of the contemporary literature on leading, I’ve rarely tripped across anything from a substantive leader or writer that spews just the overly sweet and syrupy content the Pfeffer describes in his quote. The issues of building accountability, earning respect and growing credibility as a means of influence (power), making tough calls that affect firms and people (uses of power), and driving results (to gain more credibility, influence and power) are standard fare. I’m not certain what books or articles that Mr. Pfeffer is reading, but perhaps he should broaden his reach just a bit.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
I like the open discussion on “Power” and its relevance to individuals and organizations. We’ll have more discussions here on that content. Mr. Pfeffer definitely gets my nod for drawing it out and even for his well intended (I suspect) but slightly off-target shot at the leadership community. If nothing else, he offers all of us pursuing the development of the next generation of effective leaders, a valuable reminder that we must know and deal with the facts of organizational life.
Leadership Caffeine: 4 Signs that Your Leadership Approach is Working
Filed under: Crisis Leadership, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Management Education, Middle Management, Organizational Transformation, Performance, Talent Management
Most leaders struggle to understand whether they are helping or hindering the cause. Except of course for those leaders/narcissists who believe that their every utterance is sheer genius wrapped in pure motivational gold.
The feedback from your manager, while important, tends to be based on either numbers or fairly casual observation. And feedback from your team members is welcomed, but you never really know for sure whether it’s the unvarnished type.
The “Am I Helping?” issue is particularly important when a troubled team or organization gains a fresh leader. I’ve lived this situation a number of times and I’ve spoken with leaders familiar with navigating the throes of turnarounds and significant change initiatives about how they measure their own effectiveness. Most agree that while the indicators of progress and personal leadership effectiveness aren’t posted on the wall every day, the signs are present in the workplace for everyone to read.
Whether overtly or through their interpersonal and working dynamics, it turns out that your team members make it pretty clear whether you are helping, hindering or just taking up space, time and valuable oxygen. However, it’s up to you as the leader to learn to read these important but often subtle signs and to adjust accordingly.
4 Signs that Your Leadership Approach is Working:
1. Conversation Quality Improves: most troubled teams or organizations struggle to create high-quality conversations that focus on facts, tough issues and ideas and options. Often, the dialogue reflects denial or it unduly preoccupies on the negatives in the situation. The effective leader helps conversations move in the right direction by creating an environment of transparency and candor. Easy words, but a difficult task that takes time and a nearly constant care and feeding by the leader.
2. Idea Flow Increases: an important by-product of improved conversation quality is the increased flow of ideas for fixing today’s problems and forging the future. Troubled teams led by lousy leaders are conditioned to focus on what’s right in front of them and to ignore the bigger picture. Alternatively, effective leaders recognize that the one and only way to create the future is to leverage the collective grey-matter of the team. These leaders look for the flow ideas to start as a trickle and they know that things are working when the trickle turns into a torrent of innovation and value-creation.
3. Collaboration Returns: troubled teams struggle to work together and often fail to translate squabbling into anything resembling constructive output. Groups on the mend tend to rediscover the fun and power of working together, and what was just recently a “No Collaboration Zone” begins to look and act like an environment that recognizes that people are interdependent upon one another.
4. Pride Returns and Quality Breaks Out All Over: the shift from an unhealthy environment where people do what they are told to a situation where personal pride drives individual and group accountability for quality is a powerful sign that a leader’s approach is fostering the right results. Effective execution becomes important to the group and the pursuit of high-performance moves from lofty words to tangible goals. This tends to be a longer-range lagging indicator than several of the others and as it kicks in, the leader must recognize that his/her job is to increasingly emphasize knocking down obstacles and supporting the emergence of new leaders in the workplace.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Effective leaders understand that the measures described above are important outcomes of a great deal of hard work and not just accidents. Effective leaders gauge their own progress by the visibility and trends of these measures more than by the traditional measures of performance or the often slightly (or majorly) biased input of managers and team members. Get these right and top and bottom-line improvements flow.
While there are no gauges to precisely indicate the barometric pressure changes created by your approach to leading, awareness of and sensitivity to these measures is an important starting point.
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