Does Your Dashboard of Performance Measurements Include a Warning Light?
Filed under: Crisis Leadership, Leadership, Leading Change, Surviving Lousy Leaders
Count me as one of the last idealists. Or perhaps the last of the naïve idealists. In a world filled with Quality Management Systems and Performance Measurement techniques backed by legions of people trained to implement and sustain quality performance, it seems reasonable to me that organizations are capable of not only keep themselves from imploding, but that they are armed to the teeth with tools to ensure prosperity beyond the wildest dreams of Dr. Deming.
As an aside, Dr. Deming once famously indicated that it was his hope that his legacy was to keep U.S. companies from committing suicide. Perhaps it is good that he is not here to see the firms elbowing each other out of the way in an attempt to get to the front of the line on the edge of the cliff.
- The U.S. auto companies are almost finished carrying out their joint suicide pact in a world where the rules for success as an automobile company are on display for everyone to see.
- Motorola, an icon of U.S. electronics has systematically destroyed itself by flailing and flailing in the mobile device (read: cellphone) world, and stands a reasonable chance of failing to survive without drastic action. (See my earlier post on the Dollar Bill Auction to get a feeling for Motorola’s problems.) The fact that Motorola is a Baldrige winner, one of the founding fathers of Six Sigma and an organization staffed with brilliant engineers, yet it cannot seem to engineer success is both puzzling and frustrating.
- Earlier this week, Boeing indicated that they would again delay the launch of its now several years late and much hyped 787 Dreamliner. The article indicated that the latest problem had to do with quality issues related to a new type of fastener required for the high tech and lightweight materials being used in the plane. The advance sale of 900 of these puppies at $178 million a piece and the expected 20% fuel consumption savings has customers hopping mad over this latest in a series of seemingly endless project management and supply chain problems.
- Financial services, banking, investment banking. Ugh. These icons of risk management succeeding in maximizing risk beyond their wildest expectations.
How does this happen in a world filled with balanced scorecards and legions of certified quality professionals constantly measuring, monitoring and striving to improve performance? I suspect that my own answer is that while we have ample tools available for our use in building, the one tool that we haven’t yet mastered is staring back at us in the mirror.
In discussions and lectures with the up and coming generation of leaders, there is widespread cynicism over the intentions and the capabilities of many of their firm’s senior leaders. There is little faith expressed that their leaders understand their firm’s key drivers and little confidence that the leaders are taking actions and measuring performance based on anything other than preconceived notions of what they think is right. Fewer organizations than you might think are doing anything to engender employee satisfaction…which is ironic given the mountains of data that indicate that employee satisfaction flows through to customer satisfaction and strong financial performance.
This current generation of senior leaders is failing, and the very imbalanced scorecard is visible all around us. The business cycle is one thing, but our problems go way beyond the business cycle to our preconceived notions of how to lead, how to run businesses, how to fuel innovation and how to create an environment where talent and calculated risk-taking are carefully cultivated.
Many organizations are hives of activity with no vector and the output is chaotic. Firms and top leaders need to quit guessing and start using the tools available to identify key business drivers and to measure and monitor the efforts and outcomes of focusing on those drivers.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
There’s nothing like a good old-fashioned crisis to engender creativity. Well, we have one. In spite of the difficulties, it’s a great opportunity for organizations and leaders to quit paying lip-service to cliché’s like customer-satisfaction, performance excellence and quality. It’s a big world with a growing population and while the forecast is stormy now, the seas will eventually calm and the sun will shine. It will be interesting to see who has the courage and fortitude to do the things necessary to make it through the storm. Even money that we find a whole new generation of leaders in the process.
Inspirational Leadership: The Victim of the Balanced Scorecard?
Note from Art: Today’s post is by Guest Blogger, Amy Meyer, a veteran technology marketing and product/project management professional, and an all around talented leader and wonderful person. I hope that this post helps launch Amy’s blogging career. She has a lot to say worth listening to. (More Bio/Contact Info at end of post.)
My name is Amy Meyer and I have had the pleasure of working for and with Art for many years. I look back on this time with gratitude, for the experience has rewarded me with life-long insights into how a company can achieve and maintain excellence. But I can also tell you that this is truly a double-edged sword. The experience has also made me less tolerant of poor leadership and as Art continually shares, there are plenty of examples from which to draw.
Today I’d like to cover what I believe to be a disturbing management trend. In today’s world of the Balanced Scorecard, companies have never focused so much energy on alignment of results with strategy. I applaud the approach. In fact I recommend it. But sadly it seems that for some organizations, results have become the sole focal point—the only thing that matters. What they are losing touch with is the fact that results are driven, at least in most companies, by living, breathing human beings.
It’s time these companies face the facts. You can’t get results by placing a scorecard in front of a talented individual and say “Get this done or you won’t get a raise next year”, and then walk away. This approach only works if your goal is to drive up your attrition rates and lose your best and brightest.
A balanced scorecard is not a replacement for leadership. To blow your scorecards out of the water, you need to nurture those people who make the magic happen. This requires more than management—it requires inspirational leadership. It is great to have smart people as colleagues and friends, because they can help you out if you ever need to write a guest blog! In this case I asked some of my most respected how they would define an inspirational leader. Here’s what they had to say.
An Inspirational Leader is Someone Who…
- Includes you in deciding the team’s direction rather than telling you what direction to go
- Picks up the shovel and digs with you rather than standing above you telling you to dig faster
- Makes other people feel important and appreciated, helps people believe in themselves
- Sets the pace, leading by example rather than decree
- Only assumes credit for providing his or her team the opportunity to succeed
- Motivates through personal performance examples and exemplifies the skills that he\she possesses through knowledge transfer and demonstration
- Knows when and how to encourage individual talents and maintains team integrity while respecting every individual
- Takes time to understand team members, creating bi-directional relationships that ensures the team that he/she has their best interests in mind
- Is proactive rather than reactive—two steps ahead, instead of one step behind
- Creates excitement in the workplace
- Builds efficient teams by trusting the occupational strengths of his or her subordinates and recognizes individual talents that balance one another
- Builds team morale by recognizing work-related achievements
- Provides opportunities for development on enjoyable and challenging projects rather than artificially inseminating the team with mandatory bonding events
- Sets a credible and ethical example to follow, has integrity
- Displays exceptional communication behavior, both as a speaker and listener, using well-educated inference as necessary
- Can either make or break a company
It’s time to wake up. Scorecards are measurements. To achieve and exceed your corporate goals requires the inspiration of confident leaders. So, how are you doing? Are you providing your team the support they need to achieve the results the organization requires? Why don’t you ask them what you could change to make them more successful! Being an inspirational leader requires a thick skin. Have the courage and the self-confidence to learn from the team you serve.
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Amy Meyer is a veteran technology professional with a broad spectrum of experience including strategic marketing, product and project management, software development and IT management. Amy is currently focusing her efforts and research on the topic of enhancing technology project success through investment in talented individuals and collaboration with cross-functional stakeholders. If you share Amy’s passion for the topic, feel free to contact her via e-mail at amy.meyer@charter.net
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