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.
Leadership Caffeine-Give Your People Room to Run
Filed under: Career, Leadership, Leadership Skills, Management Education, Middle Management, Not-For-Profit Leadership, Surviving Lousy Leaders, Talent Management, Values, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
Overheard: “If I don’t stay on top of my people, nothing gets done.”
If lousy leadership were a crime, the owner of the quote above might just merit a short stretch of quality alone-time to reflect on the implications of his statement. There are so many things truly wrong with the style of leadership that the statement connotes, that I’m not certain where to start.
I regularly run into examples of leaders operating on the frontlines and even the top-lines that equate leading with policing and oversight. In sessions where I poll on the behaviors of great and lousy leaders, the horror stories of micro-managing bosses and inspector and critic style managers are so plentiful that it’s often difficult to rein in the discussions.
The perception that being boss involves constant policing has not yet been bred out of our culture.
There are certainly core issues that demand oversight. Issues of ethics, legal compliance, and discrimination all merit constant vigilance. And maintaining appropriate operational control is absolutely a leader’s responsibility. However, there’s a line that is crossed when the boss extends intense vigilance to the day-to-day and sometimes minute-to-minute work effort of team members. Move too close to this line or, cross it, and you guarantee a tense working atmosphere, a loss of initiative and a deficit of creativity. What should be a creative and productive experience becomes more like a prison experience.
Gaining compliance is not leading. Any two-bit despot can gain compliance by inducing fear through excessive oversight.
In conversations with individuals describing leaders that they admire, commonly referenced behaviors are they exact opposite of the overbearing and over-the-shoulder manager:
Doesn’t micromanage me
Let’s me do my job
Asks me how she can help
Sets clear expectations and then lets me go
Doesn’t jump all over me when I make a mistake…but rather, he asks me what I learned.
We need more leaders that generate those types of comments from their team members.
11 Reminders that Your Job as a Leader is About Building, Not Guarding:
1. Focus on the working environment! You own the responsibility to create and sustain a positive working environment. You cannot do that by micro-managing.
2. Create the right type of oversight by creating a culture of accountability for the values and norms in that environment.
3. You are a teacher. Teach and train. And then teach some more.
4. You are a coach. Observe and provide timely constructive AND positive feedback. Everyday.
5. Be approachable, but don’t spend all of your own time approaching. Give your team room to run.
6. Create context, not confusion. Clarify and communicate. Create context for key organization strategies and goals.
7. Expectations and accountability drive performance. Set clear and challenging expectations for individual and team performance. This is not micro-managing, it is good management.
8. Remember, you’re there to help, don’t hinder. Knock down obstacles and free your people to run.
9. Defend, don’t distract. Learn to shield team members from distractions. Keep your people free to run, part 2.
10. Stay out of the way. You are a distraction most of the time. See the prior item.
11. Assert only when you need to. Don’t assert often. If you have to assert often, review the prior 11 items.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
We’re all responsible for developing the next generation of leaders. Let’s get this right and help educate and train the micro-managing boss out of existence.
Beware Context Canyon When It Comes to Leading Change
Filed under: Leadership, Leading Change, Management Education, Middle Management, Organizational Transformation, Professional Growth, Talent Management, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
We invest a great deal of time talking and writing and preaching about change. We discuss resistance to change, fear of change, our own need for personal change and the challenges that organizations face when it comes to embracing change.
We’re not very good at changing, but we sure like to talk about it.
Spend a few sleepless nights channel surfing the infomercials (a discomfiting experience in more ways than one), and you’ll realize that there’s a tremendous amount of energy that goes into selling us stuff to help us change in all area of our lives.
In my non-scientific polling and personal leadership anthropological meanderings, I’m comfortable generalizing that most change initiatives fail. From diets and fitness programs to resolutions and new corporate directions, failure to change is epidemic.
While I suspect that our failure to change our own individual habits is a close cousin to change failures in business, I’ll focus on the latter here.
We Create Our Own Context Canyons:
Most managers and management teams spend a great deal of time processing on the drivers of change. By the time they start discussing or announcing changes, the issues and often the approaches are well-baked in their minds, while the rest of us on the receiving end are left with the deep thoughts of, “Huh?” or, “Why?” or, “Huh?”
The result is a gaping hole that I call the “Context Canyon” between managers suggesting change and employees processing on the implications of change. Depending upon the culture, resistance will range from loud and overt to quiet and passively aggressive. Nonetheless, resistance will reign supreme until the “Context Canyon” is filled-in not just by the managers, but also by the rest of the organization taking the time to internalize the case for change.
5 Common-Sense Ideas to Help with Change:
1. Recognize the Context Canyon. You and your peers may have worked through the case for change for months. You’ve had time to process on the rationale and think through and even debate options and alternatives. Mentally, you’ve long since accepted the need to change. Remember that if the first time that your employees hear about the change is when you announce it, they are just starting their mental processing journey. Your springing it on them has put them on the defensive from the beginning.
2. Involve People in Change Discussion Early and Often. People typically want to contribute to the discussions on change. They want to do their part to facilitate changes that will better serve customers and improve value for stakeholders. Treat them as an extended team of advisors. You show remarkable leadership courage and you show your respect for your employees by engaging them up-front on discussions about change.
3. Get the Why? Right! Again, beware the Context Canyon. People might hear your rationale on Why change is required, but that does not mean that they agree with your logic and your case. A pronouncement from on high typically does not equate to agreement or acceptance. Create safe opportunities for individuals and teams to ask questions, offer their thoughts and process on the case for change.
4. Ask for Help on the What? After awhile, the discussions on “Why Change?” need to move towards “What to do?” You’ll gain stronger organizational support by inviting and listening to active input, than you will dictating changes. Additionally, the shift in discussion from “Why?” to “What?” actually serves to strengthen the case for change. Remember, your organization requires the same amount of time that you do to process-on and internalize the case.
5. Address the WIIFM. Don’t fool yourself. People might be expressing concern about the organization, but everyone is thinking about, “What’s In it for Me?” (The less selfish sounding version is: “What does this mean for me in my job?”) This is the 600-pound gorilla on the back of the elephant in the room. The more time that you put into spanning Context Canyon, and the more that you allow your employees to help you “design the way forward,” the easier it is to deal with WIIFM. Your willingness to allow people to define how they have to change puts a great deal of individual and organizational angst to rest.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
While watching the various infomercials and pitch-people offering all manner of goods to improve our lives in the kitchen, the bedroom and the bank account, it occurred to me that we needed an offering to help us successfully navigate changes in our organizations and jobs. For only three installments of $39.95, I’ll help you navigate Context Canyon. And for the first 20 organizations to order, I’ll throw in the knife set.
There are no silver bullets or magic products that promote change. Use good old-fashioned common-sense based on human psychology. Context is King and involvement promotes engagement.
Management Excellence Book Series Kicks Off Featuring Good Boss, Bad Boss
Filed under: Career, Fresh Voices, Leadership, Leadership Skills, Life and Business, Management Education, Management Excellence Book Series, Middle Management, Professional Growth, Surviving Lousy Leaders, Talent Management, Values, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
For as long as I can remember, books have played a major role in my life.
I still recall the day my Mom took me to the Hild Library in Chicago for my first library card. And I remember distinctly the scene a few months later, when she engaged in a vigorous discussion with the library staff on my need for an Adult card. I had consumed everything worth consuming in the Children’s section and needed to move on. Mom prevailed, and the rest for me is reading history.
This preoccupation with reading continued through my summers as a child, including one memorable, slow, hot season reading the World Book from A to Z. While it wasn’t Britannica, it was what we had in our apartment in Chicago. And yes, I read more than the cool transparent overlays. I read the complete text. Every entry. It was a little like work, but I was on a mission. As a result, I have a remarkable store of trivial knowledge on everything that happened in the world up until 1973. Beyond that, I’m a bit fuzzy.
Fast forward a few decades, and books are still a major part of my life. I’ve authored one, I’m working on another and I consume content in history, business and science in an unquenchable thirst to learn more. Given this preoccupation with the written word, it’s fitting and about time that I extend my love of books and regard for the hard work of authors to a feature here on the blog. Thus, welcome to the first post and first interview for the Management Excellence Book Series.
About the Management Excellence Book Series:
First, I’m not a book critic, I’m a book lover. You’ll never find a negative review here, because, if I don’t like the book, I won’t write about it or interview the author. It is my intent to offer a resource with this series that extracts and shares insights and introduces you to new or time-tested great ideas.
I intend on using a mix of audio interviews (podcasts) and posts with transcribed interviews to share ideas and learn more from management book authors that have labored long and hard to help us learn and grow. My mission is to search for the pearls of wisdom, the fresh ideas or the classic ideas that help us all make a difference.
While my audio interview skills are clearly in need of practice, there’s no reason not to start. We are living in a period of time rich with the flow of information and ideas, and I’m excited to help all of us gain just a little bit more insight and context from great management thinkers for use in our professional and personal lives.
I look forward to sharing with you via the interviews. Enjoy!
Art Interviews Bob Sutton About Good Boss, Bad Boss
Art Petty Interviews Bob Sutton on Good Boss, Bad Boss [33:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Art Petty Interviews Bob Sutton on Good Boss, Bad Boss [33:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadGood Boss, Bad Boss by Robert I. Sutton, Ph.D.
Just about everyone is familiar with Bob’s prior work, The No A**Hole Rule! Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One that Isn’t. That great read talked about what many of us have been thinking, and even made the “A” word acceptable business meeting and cocktail party discussion fodder (in the context of the book, of course!).
Bob is back with a tremendous new book, Good Boss, Bad Boss-How to Be the Best and Learn from the Worst, available for pre-order from major booksellers now, with a scheduled publication date of September 7th.
His emphasis in his latest work is on describing the good habits of great bosses, and once again, Bob is saying what many of us are thinking or, living through in our working lives. In this era of the seemingly “disposable worker,” and after a decade of corporate scandals and a great number of bosses doing the “perp walk,” Bob focuses squarely on what the best bosses do day-in and day-out. He contrasts the great habits of good bosses with the equivalent lousy habits and approaches of bad bosses, providing anecdotes and vignettes that we can relate to or anguish over. We all know a few of the bad bosses. Let’s hope that our good boss experiences outweigh those others.
I had the great fortune to connect with Bob recently on a phone call/interview, and our scheduled 10-15 minutes turned into 30 minutes of fascinating insights about the book, and about Bob’s work as a professor and consultant. He was a delight to interview and I sincerely believe that you will find his insights and anecdotes as fascinating as I did. Enjoy the interview and enjoy the book!
And finally, this section from the preface of his book sets the tone well:
“The best bosses don’t ride into town, save the day with a bold move or two, declare victory, and then rest on their laurels. There is no final victory. The main reward for success is usually that you get to keep doing a damn hard (but often satisfying) job for a while longer. Despite the horseshit spewed out by too many management gurus, there are no magic bullets, instant cures or easy shortcuts to becoming a great boss. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar. The best bosses succeed because they keep chipping away at a huge pile of dull, interesting, fun, rewarding, trivial, frustrating, and often ridiculous chores. …Devoting relentless attention to doing one good thing after another-however small-is the only path I know to becoming and remaining a great boss.“
Nine chapters of pure boss gold! Thanks, Bob!
Note from Art: Bob supplied me with a pre-release copy of his book for this interview.
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!
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