Leadership Caffeine-4 Big Reasons to Kill Your Weekly Status Meeting

March 12, 2012 By 12 Comments

image of a coffee cupFew events do more to suck the life and energy out of a team than the boss’s weekly status meeting. If you are the boss, it’s time to exorcise these from your operating routine.

These forced marches around the table offering up banal or purely self-aggrandizing updates are energy and time sinks and serve no purpose other than compensating for the boss’s inability to figure out what’s going on in some form other than holding court.

In addition to draining the lifeblood from your team, here are 4 additional reasons to consider killing the weekly status meeting:

1. Value of Time. Time is precious, and the hour wasted listening to silo-talk is an hour (times the number of participants) you’ll never get back. Use technology to communicate status…use meetings to ideate, innovate and focus on solving problems.

2. The Pain Goes Away When You Stop. The slow, plodding round-table status update is INCREDIBLY painful for everyone involved. If you’ve hired properly, everyone in that meeting wants to be sprinting through their work days and you’ve reduced the pace to a crawl for what seems like an eternity. I guarantee you the only two things on anyone’s mind is, “So and so is full of it with that update,” and “When the #4%@ is the pain going to end?

3. Holding Court Ain’t Leading. If you require your team to convene simply to understand what is going on, you missed the memo on how to engage with your team members in the ordinary course of business. Try getting out from behind your desk and into the workplace more to learn what’s really happening.

4. Your People Shouldn’t Need this Meeting to Work Together. If your team and functional leaders aren’t talking to each other outside of this meeting, you’re failing as a leader. Set expectations for information sharing and collaboration in the workforce and hold people accountable for actually doing it.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

I’m all for connecting and collecting in groups for the right reasons. The boss’s status meeting is rarely the right reason. Build a culture of meeting by exception or, better yet, create a culture where people meet spontaneously when the stakes are ideas, innovation and solving problems that impact customers. If the meeting is simply for you to hold court and catch up, it’s wrong.

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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, Leadership Caffeine, Performance Tagged With: , ,

Leadership Caffeine-What Do You Do with a Team that has Failed?

February 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment

image of a coffee cupWe’re often too quick as leaders to throw in the towel on teams that have whiffed. That’s a mistake that may be more costly to performance and morale than the initial and temporary failure.

My quick answer to the question in the post title is: absent any visible, destructive behavior that may have contributed to the team’s missteps, the point in time when it becomes clear that a team has failed is the right time to double-down with a fresh challenge. Preferably one of those big and ugly challenges.

We all know that success most often occurs after a series of failures, yet this same stubborn tenacity to overcome setbacks that is so widely celebrated in our culture and with our heroes, is too often ignored in corporate team settings. After all, it’s not comfortable for executives or sponsors to spend much time associated with teams that have failed.

Team Longevity and Success:

There are well-documented criteria (Hackman, Thompson et. al.) for creating team success: a clear and guiding purpose, clear membership, enabling structures, the right kind of leadership AND team longevity.

Perhaps I’m biased by the technical product development and IT projects I’ve hung around most of my career, but typically the projects are difficult and often, the team members are being asked to do something that’s not been done before…at least in their organization.  The need for team learning coupled with the socialization dynamics present in every (new) team environment, demand a commitment to longevity as one of the key enabling factors for success.

Beware the Mirages:

We’re quick to attribute team failures to external factors (fundamental attribution error) or, to see Lencioni’s 5 dysfunctions in almost every struggling team environment. Just be aware, that you may very well be seeing a mirage…something you think you should see but that isn’t really present.

Building trust, developing comfort with conflict, committing to the effort, accepting accountability and focusing on results are all important, and realizing the team culture to foster those behaviors takes time.

It takes courage for a leader or sponsor to stand up and defend a failed team. That shielding effort expends political capital and if the outcomes continue to be poor, the capital is squandered.  Leaders and sponsors coping with struggling teams are well-advised to look for the following attitudes and behaviors as they assess whether to take a stand or fold the team.

5 Signs that Your Failed Team Merits More Time

1. An absence of finger-pointing and excuse-making. In my experience, there’s a direct inverse correlation with finger-pointing and the potential for team success.

2. Genuine group and authentic distress at the failure. While a judgement call, it’s not that hard for a leader to distinguish between embarrassment or fear or repercussions type distress versus genuine “We failed and it bugs the crap out of me/us,” distress.

3. An emerging Apollo 13 mentality… “failure is not an option.” A sense of emergency, an intense focus on the goals of the initiative and extraordinary efforts to innovate are healthy signs that the team merits more time.

4. External validation that the initiative is (still) highly relevant. There’s a tendency for firms and teams to irrationally pursue failed objectives. Avoiding this sunk cost/escalation of commitment trap is difficult and important. The assumptions of and need for the project from an external customer or market perspective must still be valid before offering more time to the failed team.

5. A hunger for insights and knowledge from outside the team.  Instead of turning inward and developing a bunker mentality, the team recognizes the need for help and pursues it.  I’m particularly convinced of a team’s legitimacy, when they seek outside critical feedback on technical and performance issues.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Sometimes, good performance is just a bit further down the road. Don’t discount how critical it is to give good people time to gel on big projects.

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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: Crisis Leadership, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Performance, Project Management Tagged With: , , , ,

Beware Professional Performance Drift

February 15, 2012 By 1 Comment

Note from Art: You are to be excused if the phrase, professional performance drift invokes images of those obnoxious drug commercials that end with people in bathtubs overlooking a lake, followed by a voice-over warning on the potential side-effects that require you to see your doctor immediately. (Not sure the doctor is the first one I would want to see with THAT side-effect.)

The concept of performance drift (for professionals) is wonderfully outlined by John Hamm, writing in his recently published book, Unusually Excellent: The Nine Skills Required for the Practice of Great Leadership. (I’m through the first third…great! Full review to follow in a subsequent post.)

Hamm offers:

“Even the best performers in any field, will slowly-and imperceptibly-stray away from the fundamentals of their craft. This drift is almost always invisible to them. The human nature part is that losing precision in the fundamentals is exactly the last thing most accomplished people would imagine or accept as the cause. Instead, left to their own devices, they look elsewhere… .”

John’s quote packs a lot of punch in a small space. He reminds us of the importance of the fundamentals to our success as professionals. He underscores how difficult it is for us to see ourselves as others do. And he appropriately highlights our annoying human tendency to look outside of ourselves and at other, external causes for our own failures.

The most effective leaders I’ve worked around in my corporate and consulting careers manage to have an intuitive grasp of their own performance drift. While they may struggle to self-diagnose and correct, they display a keen sense for understanding when they are off their game. They look inward…or at least they ask for help in the form of feedback before they strap on their fundamental attribution error vests and start parading around the workplace acting like the blame-stormers we know and don’t like.

There’s no substitute for help in identifying and curing our own performance drift. We all need someone who offers frank and constructive feedback on our performance-particularly when we are drifting. It might be the trusted colleague capable of telling you how your approach is impacting others, or a coach who brings an objective set of eyes to seeing and reporting on your performance.

And while perhaps Hamm is right and performance drift is inevitable, I’m a big believer in a little preventive maintenance along the way.

Three Ideas to Help Recognize and Slow Your Professional Performance Drift:

1. Learn to Read the Signs.

In what may be the squishiest piece of well-intended guidance I’ll ever offer, listen to that little voice in you mind or that twinge in your gut that tells you something’s wrong with your performance. The voice or the sharp stabbing pain are more than likely byproducts of the cues on your performance that you are picking up from people around you. Many of us ignore the cues…and ignore the signs of our own performance gaffes, but those around us see them and their responses, however subtle, are good indicators that we stepped in something and it stinks.

2. Regularly Remind Yourself of the “Bigger Purpose” of Your Role.

I crafted my Leader’s Charter to remind me of my true role as a leader and serve as my “bigger purpose.” A few moments reviewing and reflecting upon The Charter every morning, does wonders for my attitude and for providing a strong reason for being.

The Leader’s Charter:

Your primary role as a leader is to:

  • Create an environment that facilitates high individual and team performance
  • Support innovation in process, programs and approaches
  • Encourage collaboration where necessary

 and

  • Promote the development of your associates in roles that leverage their talents and that challenge them to pursue new and greater accomplishments.

Use my charter, create your own, place it somewhere visible to you and your team members, read it regularly and importantly, review and adjust your priorities to match the priorities in your Charter.

3. Talk Less, Listen Harder, Ask Questions and Finish with “How Can I Help?”

I’ve little doubt that there’s a correlation between our ratio of talking to listening and our own performance. The more we emphasize talking, the less we are tuning into what matters with our teams and employees. Deliberately focus on shutting up, letting others speak first and last and importantly, listening and observing. If you have to talk, ask questions that help teach others and move them towards discovering solutions. And make sure your last words in a fair number of conversations are, ‘How Can I help?” And then do it!

The Bottom-Line for Now:

While this quote from the world of music is attributed to a number of different people, it rings true for all of us. “If I don’t practice for a day, I know it. If I don’t practice for two days, my wife knows it. If I don’t practice for three days, everyone knows it.”

There’s no pill to cure professional drift, however, recognition is as they say, the first step. Renew your efforts to tune into the impact you are having on others and deliberately focus on practicing the fundamentals. While the outcome may not look like the bathtub scene in the aforementioned commercials, the results will be great and the side-effects definitely won’t require an embarrassing call to the doctor.

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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: Career, Leadership, Performance, Professional Growth Tagged With: , ,

Leadership Caffeine: Teach Your Team Smart(er) Decision Processes

February 6, 2012 By 2 Comments

image of a coffee cupNothing happens without a decision. Nothing good happens without the right decision. And, in case you doubt the need to focus on making better decisions, spend some time skimming the news.

If you’ve kept up with your health and fitness resolutions thus far this year, you know that even minor adjustments in diet and exercise pay big dividends. The same goes for our individual and group decision-making approaches.

A bit of deliberate effort to strengthen the decision-process goes a long way towards minimizing or mitigating the impact of personal and group biases. Translation, this might just keep you out of those less than flattering headlines in the news.

At Least 5 Questions We Need to Ask Our Teams Before They Decide:

1. “How are we going to make this decision?”

2. “What data do we need to objectively evaluate our options?”

3. “Before we decide, how can we frame this issue in neutral terms?”

4. “What would someone who doesn’t have history with this issue say about it?”

5. “If we were starting a business today, would we invest in this?”

While there are many and varying forms of decision-making traps and nearly countless combinations of cognitive biases that impact our discussion processes, the introduction of and follow-thru on these simple but important questions can clear much of the fog out of the way. 

Improve Discussion Quality to Improve Decision-Making Effectiveness:

In working with under-performing management and project teams, one of the critical factors in improving results is in improving the quality of the discussions surrounding key decisions. Use the 5 questions above to strengthen processes and improve the quality of the dialogue and analysis.

Create a process to decide. The act of asking and then developing a process to decide is a powerful step in the right direction. This imposes both accountability and serves as a process guide to corral our all-too-frequent wide-ranging, overlapping and chaotic, emotion-packed dialogue around big issues.  Another good practice for teams working on strengthening decision-making effectiveness, is for them to follow the “how should we” question with “What traps might impact our process here?” (See my related posts links below for more on this topic.)

Cut Through the Data Smog. Data is plentiful in today’s organizations, yet we tend to anchor on data that supports our perspectives and dismiss data as flawed when it refutes our case. Challenge the team to think through data needs…and particularly to evaluate confusing correlation with causation…or to avoid sampling on the dependent variable. And of course, don’t forget that in spite of massive advances in business intelligence and analytics software, the quality of the data should always be scrutinized before accepting it as gospel.

Frame for Fun and Profit. Positioning a situation as a gain or loss absolutely biases solution development. Spend time to carefully frame issues…and work to frame them as neutral if possible. Another approach is to invoke F. Scott Fitzgerald’s maxim that, “the sign of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”  Consider framing the issue in different ways and developing solution sets based on those frames.

“Tell me again about your assumptions.” Always invite an outsider in for the big decisions. Someone who has no skin in the outcome can offer the candid perspective so often lacking in our politically turbocharged discussions. Instead of the tame or lame Devil’s Advocate, invite someone in and listen carefully if they tell you that your baby is really ugly.

Let’s Not Escalate this Commitment! Many of our issues resolve around past decisions and whether to carry on or not. Follow the above suggestions and ask and consider the very critical question of, “If we were starting a business today, would we invest in this?” If the answer is “no” put a stake in it. And remember, that the money you spent is a sunk cost…it’s gone. Beware the “with more time and money” discussions.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

This is a big topic with big implications for your firm and for your career. However, the best way to eat an elephant is still one bite at a time.

Starting today, teach your teams to strengthen their decision-making processes by asking the annoyingly appropriate questions highlighted above. Remember, we want to keep you and your firm out of the headlines…at least when it comes to lousy decisions.  And the last time I looked, most bosses bestow things like responsibility, money and authority on those who they trust to make good decisions.

Deciding whether to put effort forth to improve how to decide may be the only “no-brain” decision you’ll encounter today.

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Related Posts:

Management Excellence Toolkit, Part 1: Create a Decision Journal

Management Excellence Toolkit, Part 2: Mind the Decision Traps

Management Excellence Toolkit, Part 3: How to Frame Your Decisions for Success

Management Excellence Toolkit, Part 4: Improve Your Estimating and Forecasting Effectiveness

Management Excellence Toolkit: Better Design for Workplace Discussions

Filed Under: Decision-Making, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Performance Tagged With: , , , ,

Are You Running in Place When it Comes to Your Professional Development?

January 4, 2012 By 3 Comments

Unlike the resolutions that so many of us make in January and discard just as quickly by February, our own professional development requires a deliberate and consistent effort to improve.

While most people in our organizations run in place when it comes to their own skills and knowledge development, a few committed souls manage to fight the gravitational pull of doing-nothing and break-away from the pack.

Is this your year to break-away?

Professional Development Success Stories to Motivate & Inspire:

Here are just a few of the examples I encountered in my work last year. They are to be commended for their efforts and results.  Names changed for privacy purposes.

  • Julie set her sights on moving into a front-line leadership role last year and was just promoted. Along the way, she took on every possible assignment she could glom on to that taught her what it took to lead. Not only did she prove to herself she was cut out for the role, she proved it to the people she worked with and importantly, she proved it to the person who had to select her for success…her boss.
  • Mark had long struggled mightily with self-esteem issues in spite of his stellar performance. With guidance, coaching and a lot of effort on his part, he’s become more comfortable with himself, and his excellent performance is now matched with an appropriate level of self-confidence.
  • Susan was given a battlefield promotion into what seemed like a no-win situation with the project from you-know-where. She inherited a demoralized and burned-out team and cost-overruns that would choke a good-sized horse. Six months later, after working unceasingly to lead and support this team and project back to health, the organization is looking to Susan and this groupas the model for how a high-performance team should function.
  • Juan, consistently displayed great passion for his work, but was limited by his confidence…in part due to his struggles to master English. He did it…and his boss described to me that he could see Juan’s confidence and contributions grow overnight. 
  • A little over one year ago, Adam was told that he needed to develop more “executive presence” to break through to the next level. Armed with the world’s most ambiguous advice (“You need more executive presence”) he researched and worked to strengthen his presence, authenticity and yes, confidence. He got the promotion.

I love these stories…because their examples inspire us all. Will you write your own success story in the next year?

7 Quick Ideas to Help You Take That First Step Forward:

1. Call a personal time-out. Stare in the mirror for a few minutes and think about where you are going professionally and if you are comfortable with your vector, pace and progress. You know if you are running in place. You also know in your heart of hearts when it doesn’t suit you.

2. Ask Questions About You. While uncomfortable, you will be well served to find someone or some small group in the workplace and ask them what they think of your professional performance and areas for development and your visible strengths. Fair warning…not all feedback is created equal, so you need a few perspectives before you decide where to focus.

3. Mine the Performance Feedback on Your Reviews. While there’s not enough space here for me to pick apart most review processes, I’m a fan of mining them for nuggets of truth or at least clues to the truth.

4. Start Small and Build. You’ll be tempted to tackle the Ironman of professional development and “fix” yourself all at once. Resist this temptation…it’s a formula for failure. You’re better off running a 5K.  Identify one thing to get better at…and develop a strategy for doing just that. Remember, if you improve 1% per day… , well, you do the math. The outcome will be impressive. Expand your areas of emphasis once you score some victories and build confidence.

5. Read Widely and Read Mostly from Outside the Business Genre. Regardless of my role as a management and leadership author, you’re much better suited reading about people who have overcome adversity and accomplished great things in the process. Histories and biographies are great!  (Although, my Leadership Caffeine book, makes a nice mid-day energy boost!)

6. Get Away from the Naysayers. You are better off reorienting your workplace relationships to those who like you are striving and moving forward. Don’t let the “Run in Place” crowd hold you back.

7. Celebrate the Victories, No Matter How Small. Give yourself a psychological break or reward. When you’ve scored a point, moved the bar a bit, overcome a historic weakness or fear, celebrate for a few moments. And then get back to it.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Remember, if you are running in place, you’re falling behind. Here’s to moving forward!

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Art Petty is a developer of leaders and a strategy consultant. Art frequently speaks on leadership and management, and his work is reflected in two books (Practical Lessons in Leadership and Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development) and over 1-million words published at The Management Excellence blog. You can reach Art via e-mail to learn more about his leadership development, speaking and management consulting services.

 

 

 

Filed Under: Career, Performance, Professional Growth Tagged With: , ,
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