Your “Weekend Reading List” from Management Excellence

December 5, 2008 By 2 Comments
Suggestions from Management Excellence to Recharge and Refresh

Weekend Reading Suggestions to Recharge and Refresh

Beginning with this post, I intend to make “Your Weekend Reading List” a regular Friday feature.  Most professionals that I know are too busy to carve out quality reading time during the week, and many have confided that they wish they would be more diligent about reading on the weekend.  While I won’t be there to help you pick up the book or click on the link, I can at least try and remove the “I’m not sure what to read” excuse from your arsenal.

In what I promise will be (maybe) my last attempt to nag your conscience about this topic, I view reading as  critical for self-development as well as for recharging your intellectual batteries.  And I don’t suggest limiting your selections to those items in the business section of the magazine rack or the bookshelf.  As evidenced by my Recommendations List at Management Excellence, I encourage leaders and business professionals to read histories, biographies, books on physics and the classics.  Sneaking in an occasional mystery is also a good way to stimulate your divergent thinking skills!

OK, enough preaching and on to this weekend’s suggestions.  I’ll keep it short and this week, I’ll stay business focused.

The December 6 Issue of the Leadership Carnival at Great Leadership

The carnivals bring together some of the best minds and leading bloggers in management and human resources to cover a wide range of topics.  Instead of seeking out the best posts of leading consultants and bloggers, they are here under one umbrella for easy reading.  This is scheduled to go live on the 6th, so be sure to check it out.

Article: Where GM Went Wrong at Fortune.com

Like traffic slowing to pass a wreck, it’s almost impossible to not look on in both horror and fascination as this company which once was Master of the Universe now teeters on the brink of oblivion.  (Did you know that GM’s market cap is just over $1 billion and Toyota’s is some 160X greater.  How did this happen?)

Senior Editor, Alex Taylor III, covered GM for the past few decades and shares his fascinating insights into the culture, the leaders over time and the slow and methodical unraveling of this insular and grossly misguided company.  As we all face the reality of letting GM go or propping the firm up with our tax dollars, Taylor’s lengthy article (8 pages) is must reading.

Article: Big Blue’s Big Plan at Fortune.com

OK, this is a good issue of Fortune.   The sub-header, “IBM is drooling over the coming infrastructure boom.”  and IBM CEO Palmisano’s opening statement of, “We’ve been given this on a silver platter,” give you some clues to how IBM is looking at the global recession from a glass half-full perspective.  Another must-read article I guarantee will get you thinking about how you and your firm can find opportunity in chaos.  Pass this link along to your associates and fire up the divergent thinking!

Book: Winning, by Jack Welch with Suzy Welch

I’ve had this one in inventory for a couple of years and recently cracked the cover and remembered why I like Welch so much.  He cuts through the baloney and mysticism of topics like leadership, mission, vision, values and strategic planning, offering the reader practical, common-sense perspectives on driving results.  While his day at GE is over, like Drucker, the guidance is timeless.  In my opinion, the world would be better off with a few more like Welch in command today.

Book I’m Reading: Thinking About Quality, Progress, Wisdom and the Deming Philosophy, by Lloyd Dobyns and Clare Crawford-Mason.

Fresh from a great session teaching Quality Management to MBA students at DePaul University in Chicago, I’ve rediscovered my thirst for knowledge about Deming, his life and his philosophies.  This man gets too little credit for shaping the post World War II business world, and his “Theory of Profound Knowledge” is appropriate reading for these difficult times.

I just started this one from the hosts of the TV special, “If Japan Can, Why Can’t We,” that launched Deming into mainstream America 40  years after he had established himself as a near-god in Japan and other countries.  (I highly recommend the video…you can click on this YouTube link to the Deming special or search for Deming on the site to see the original program yourself.)  My early feedback on this 1994 (but timeless) book is, great!  I’ll keep you posted with a full review after I complete my “weekend reading.”

Now Grab a Cup of Coffee, Find a Comfortable Spot and Enjoy Your Reading Time!

Filed Under: Crisis Leadership, Leadership, Professional Growth Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Managing Resistance to Change

November 24, 2008 By Leave a Comment

At the risk of showing my inner-nerd, one of the more memorable sayings from the Star Trek series of shows (post Kirk & Crew) is: “Resistance is Futile.” This of course was the mantra of the Borg, a race of part-human, part machines that sought to assimilate all life-forms into their collective.  Of course, their fatal weakness was that they were only able to operate as a collective…and lacked the many characteristics that ultimately serve as advantages and that make us distinct as humans.  (OK, I suspect that I’ve gone beyond showing my true nature and nerdiness.)

Resistance to Change in corporate life is a very real force, and of course, the bane of existence of the many advocates of change challenging you to put aside your fears and embrace the new way of doing things.

H. James Harrington, writing in Quality Digest in an article entitled: Managing Resistance to Change—How to handle the inevitable, offers some insights and perspectives on dealing with this very powerful and limiting force in pursuit of a shift away from an organization’s status quo.  He writes:

“Sponsors who drive change tend to think of resistance as an inexplicable but avoidable force that affects people. When resistance occurs, they believe it’s actually a result of somebody’s failure. Typical responses are, “What’s wrong with that person? What’s wrong with that group? Why won’t they support our change effort? There must be something wrong with those people.” In fact, such a perspective is a major barrier to successful change.”

Most so-called change agents when faced with resistance will adopt the universal tool for breaking through…the organizational sledgehammer.  Instead of finesse and psychology, resistance is often met with arguing, imploring, and something a bit more insidious…political approaches to gain compliance or eliminate the roadblocks.  Alternatively, Harrington offers: “Expect resistance and manage it, either through a preventive or healing approach.”

His fine and short article reflects a “seek first to understand and then be understood” philosophy to dealing with this inevitable characteristic of organizational life.  Check out the rest of the article for his prescriptive guidance on dealing with resistance.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Resistance to your agenda for change might seem futile to you.  After all, who can argue with the expected benefits that you’ve so eloquently and logically outlined.  As Harrington indicates, you are going to pay for resistance up-front by dealing with it, or your going to pay during the life of the initiative.  Some resistance can be overcome through training and education and the rest will only be solved with accountability measures.  Proper investment up-front will hopefully minimize the cost and pain as the initiative unfolds.

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

Change or Die

November 10, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Perhaps it is human nature, but we tend to eschew change either in our personal habits or in business settings until we are faced with mortality.

In organizations, most significant change occurs during times of crisis when the threat of extinction sufficiently motivates individuals and groups to consider changing long-standing ways of doing things.   The crisis brings into stark focus the fact that it is easier and less costly to accept or embrace change than it is to suddenly become extinct.  Unfortunately, by the time this clarity is achieved at the top leadership levels, it is often too late.

As difficult as it is to follow the news everyday, we are living and working through a period of time when the extinction of firms and industries is taking place in front of us, like some business simulation game gone horribly wrong.  The game unfolds like this: focus only on short-term results, add in a measure of personal greed, consistently make the wrong decisions and act shocked as the results spiral out of control to the final act….a low probability of success, last ditch effort gambit (or bailout).

For some, the distance from the top of the Mount Olympus to the graveyards and swamps below is fast and furious.  The suddenness and rapidity of the fall is shocking, but perhaps easier to digest than those firms that have systematically planned their own demise step-by-step as they move from Masters of the Universe to what will soon be footnotes in our history books and business texts.

As in life, there are no guarantees of survival…there is no prescriptive formula that says “if you do X then you survive and prosper,” but there are methods to improve your odds.

How to Improve Your Odds of Survival

  • Senior leaders must embrace the fact that survival and prosperity occur only at the pleasure of customers.  Instead of giving lip service to the importance of customers, you need to develop systems to constantly seek out, understand and translate into actions the Voice of the Customer.  This is remarkably difficult to do in practice and requires for many an impossible shift in culture and values.  Nonetheless, you must change or die.
  • Senior leaders must embrace the fact that without motivated, dedicated employees they have nothing.  There can be no doubt that satisfied, engaged, respected, informed employees are essential for survival and success.  Why then are our systems and our managers and leaders so often at odds with what it takes to create an environment where employees will gladly give their best.   The poor leadership habits that are vestiges of another era must change or you will die.
  • Call it total quality, performance excellence or whatever you want, but you must embed the notion of high performance and all that it takes to achieve it into the DNA of your organization’s culture.  Success can breed success or it can give birth to complacency.  An unyielding focus from the firm’s leaders on creating a high performance culture is required.  This means that the fire-fighting mentality must stop, clear performance/quality priorities  established and the systems developed to allow these to succeed and for people to learn in the process.  You must change to create a learning organization or you will die.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Change or die.  It’s that simple.

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

Does Your City Government Treat You Like a Customer?

October 31, 2008 By Leave a Comment

This is my pre-election post on government, and I promise to stay focused on performance and not politics.  There’s enough hot air being expended by the candidates and pundits and I don’t need to add to the global warming.  However, it does seem like a good time for all of us to evaluate the return we are getting from government and frankly, ask for more.  And by more, I don’t mean more money or even government. I mean quality, performance, results, and yes, even a bit of good old-fashioned customer treatment.

A great example of government delivering on its responsibilities for its customers…yes, I said customers, is 2007 Malcolm Baldrige Award Winner, Coral Springs, Florida.  The city of Coral Springs won a Baldrige Award for Performance Excellence, a feat that is remarkable for even the best of businesses.

A little bit of background on this post.  I am working with a talented group of MBA students at DePaul University in Chicago studying the Baldrige program as a framework for performance excellence.  We are looking at the practices and results of great companies in all sectors of the economy,  and the idea of performance excellence in government seemed like a fitting pre-election topic.  As a group, we struggled to recall if and when we had ever felt like “customers” much less “satisfied customers” in our dealings with our community governments.

As an aside, most people mistakenly associate Baldrige with just quality, when in fact it is one of the most comprehensive programs in the world in challenging and guiding organizations to become great at creating value for stakeholders.  Of course, quality in all facets is at the center of this high performance formula.  Coral Springs is the only municipal government to win this award to-date, and offers some powerful lessons for all of our communities as we head to the polls to elect our leaders next week.

A few noteworthy points:

  • Coral Springs truly views its citizens and businesses as customers and designs all of its services to maximize customer satisfaction.  From Saturday hours to their “City Hall in the Mall” facility that provides added convenience for people going about their normal business.
  • The city is a model of strategic planning effectiveness, engaging stakeholders in the development of a strategic plan and importantly, the development and execution of this plan around clearly defined goals and objectives.
  • Continuous improvement is inherent in this community’s emphasis on measurement and control of critical processes.  From customer satisfaction to employee and volunteer satisfaction, to focusing on measuring, monitoring and improving around the processes that create value for citizens and businesses, Coral Springs runs like you would expect the most quality conscious business to run.
  • The results are clear and visible for all to see in the form of ongoing reporting of key performance indicators to remarkable achievements in delivering what the customers deemed important in a high-performance community.  From schools to traffic to safety, the community appears to have achieved results that most communities will envy.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

If you are intrigued and want more tangible information on what a city government looks like when it clearly identifies its customers and holds itself accountable to creating value for those customers, take a look at the Baldrige Video at the city’s website. Do yourself a favor and watch the long-form of the video, preferably before you head off to the polls to elect or re-elect your city officials.  Better yet, send these officials a link and ask them if they understand who their customers are and what you expect.  Perhaps if we all hold our officials accountable, we might just get a reasonable return for our investment.  About now, any form of positive return would be good.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Do Your Employees Truly Believe That They Can Make A Difference?

August 12, 2008 By 1 Comment

I am busy preparing for my fall MBA teaching assignments and I tripped across an interesting survey about employees and change (circa 2006) in the excellent text: Managing for Quality and Performance Excellence by Evans and Lindsay. (Note, contrary to my comments regarding some other management texts that I’ve run across, this one has a great deal to offer both the student and the instructor.)

The survey of Fortune 500 employees offered an interesting insight into what your employees might really be thinking while you as a leader are delivering yet again, another of your famous “take risks, innovate, create and you are empowered” pep talks.  The survey results said that 79% of respondents understood that they were accountable for “taking initiative and bringing about change,”40% of the respondents indicated: “they do not believe that they can make a personal contribution.” 

While employees are often appropriately cynical about the disingenuous cheerleading of many leaders, if you’ve got 4 out of 10 members of your firm “not believing” that they can make a personal difference in the firm’s success, you’ve got a crisis on your hands! 

I’ve written in prior posts that a leader should strive to ensure that everyone in a firm can pass the “Walk in the Door” test.  Simply stated, everyone in the organization must be able to connect their priorities to a firm’s key objectives and strategies when they walk in or log on to begin their day’s work.  Easy to write, hard to realize, but definitely not impossible to achieve.  However, if 4 out of 10 employees don’t buy in to the belief that they can and will make a difference to a firm’s performance, my speculation is that “To Do” lists are filled with Urgent but Unimportant tasks that fill time and ultimately come to represent a person’s corporate existence. 

Leadership Root Causes of the 40% Malaise Organization:

  1. Leaders lack credibility to help bring about change.  People have heard the same pitches over and over again, but have not seen leaders step up and remove impediments or make the process and structural changes needed to allow people to create.
  2. The leaders talk change, but the bureaucratic procedures and silo politics serve to flush any hope for change down the drain.
  3. Leaders have failed to create proper awareness of a galvanizing vision and supporting strategy.  Vision and strategy are likely abstract concepts to most employees in a 40% Malaise Organization. 
  4. Communication is likely stilted and tough discussions avoided, or worse, discouraged or even punished.
  5. Systems and processes fight change and directly contradict the lofty exhortations of the leaders.
  6. Accountability for results is fuzzy.  Malaise prospers and spreads in environment where accountability is kept in the closet, like mildew in a damp basement.

The Cure(s): Apply Some Good Leadership Common Sense Quickly:

  • It’s hard to resist the “fire the leaders” that got you here in the first place.  If you are the new leader at the top of your organization or team, give this one some strong consideration.  Otherwise, keep reading.
  • Quit talking and start listening and acting.  The problem and the solutions are in your court.  Seek to understand the level and depth of the malaise and why your associates believe that they cannot make a difference.  What are the impediments?  What systems, processes or behaviors confounding attempts at change and creativity?  What management practices have ripped the heart out of any desire for people to solve the big problems?
  • Provide people with context for the firm’s situation and build widespread awareness of a clear vision for the future.  Ask everyone how to realize the vision and begin involving a broad swath of the population in defining strategies and actions.  Create and publicize victories for teams and individuals as small changes take root and big changes begin to develop.
  • Open communication channels, encourage and reward individuals willing to identify problems and solutions to tough issues.  Hold your leadership team accountable to listening to ideas and acting on removing impediments.  Eliminate the leaders that are more concerned with politics than results and replace them with leaders that understand what it takes to help a culture evolve at light-speed.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Every leader should spend a few minutes at night staring at the ceiling and pondering whether his or her employees are truly engaged in helping the business advance.  If your perception is that the answer is "Yes," ask yourself how you can truly be certain.  A company marches forward on attitude, and if the attitude is that “my input doesn’t matter,” you’re in deep trouble.  It’s time to quit talking and start asking, listening and acting.  How engaged are your employees?

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