Do you ever wonder if people running out of a burning house are thinking about rearranging the furniture? Would you think them crazy if they did?  

And yet this is what we do so often in business. We run around doing things that don’t matter and really don’t make much sense…

We are often ignoring the real issues of leadership and process, and spend our precious time just looking at rearranging boxes on an organization chart. Reorganizing the staff can sometimes be just a blind stalling tactic that let’s us feel like we are doing something important. 

Fire?  What Fire

Organizations have historically used reorganizations to solve real performance problems that really don’t have anything to do with structure.

For example, here are some real problems that a reorganization can help fix:

• Ineffective leadership
• Lack of accountability
• Lack of, or poor, project/program prioritization
• Poor internal or external communication
• Few real measures to understand effectiveness of service (internal and external)
• No cohesive/holistic approach to outsourcing or using vendors

As a by-product of many mergers and rapid growth, many organizational structures are unruly, but not untenable.

With competition nipping or gnawing at their heels, fundamental changes are usually in order and not just moving people from one side of the organizational chart to the other.

 

What is Rearranging?

 Reorganization is defined as:

re·or·gan·i·za·tion  (r-ôrg-n-zshn)n.

1. The act or process of organizing again or differently.
2. A thorough alteration of the structure of a business corporation.

Or quotes found from folks I know:

• “Or perhaps you mean the kind of corporate lunacy that induces people who are far removed from operational reality to decide that they need to ‘shake things up‘ in the organization to ‘spur productivity‘ and ‘improve bottom-line results‘, without having a clue as to the true cost of their decision.”
• “Layoffs“
• “Reorganization is a ‘friendly term’ management uses to make significant structural/organizational/position changes more palatable when people are about to get ‘moved around.’”

Suffice it to say, most people do not think random reorganizations work well or at all.

 

Putting the Fire Out First 

The most important thing is to deal with what is really broken.

• If leadership is not effective, help the leaders gain skills to become better leaders or find new ones.
• If people aren’t being held accountable, set up processes to do so.
• If project prioritization is an issue, make sure to create a forum to have all the key stakeholders discuss and agree upon project priorities and resources.

Essentially, deal with the real problem head on.

Don’t be naive; reorganizations are necessary, but are not the answer to all organizational issues.

 

Rearranging the Furniture Will Not Put Out the Fire

There are times that restructuring does cause increases in positive outcomes. However, more often than not they fail.

Although there are thousands of reasons why, they mostly boil down to three themes:

1. Employee and Leader Resistance

Employees and affected leaders often believe the reorganization is a result of inability to make tough decisions or other non-business related rationale.

People hate change.

Change actually causes a reaction in the prefrontal cortex that has people resist change initially.  Outside of a very few occasions, everyone resists change regardless if it is good or bad.

If it’s determined to be necessary, make sure that the rationale for the reorganization is steeped in facts that point to improved performance.  Although people may still grumble, it is hard to argue with facts.

2. Timing is Horrible

Lenny Bruce said:

“Timing is everything.”  

Nothing could be more true when it comes to reorganizations. It is important to undertake a reorganization only during a slower time in the business cycle.

 If that is not possible, it should not be in the midst of other big changes or at peak times.

If FedEx were to restructure, doing it between Thanksgiving and Christmas in America would not be a good time.

3. The Scope and Impact of the reorganization is not realistic or fully thought through

Doing these two things will set you up for failure:

1. Trying to turn a team around in very short time frame.

2. Adding a large amount of responsibility to a team that does not have the capacity.

Change does not have to happen all at once. It should not be thought of as a “once in a lifetime” opportunity.

Trying to get everything into one reorganization too quickly is like trying to jam 40 kilos of potatoes into a 10 kilo sack: something will break.

 

If the furniture really does need to be moved, then Move It.

Be clear about the issues that cause the lower productivity, efficiency, etc.   It is imperative that the real issues causing reduced productivity, profit, etc. are being addressed.

As a result of taking some actions to “put out the fire” a reorganization can be a natural outcome.  Make sure that the new structure works to address these issues.

Moving boxes on an organization chart will not solve deep-seated issues of performance and productivity.  It is vital to take time in determining what the true issues are.

Making the Reorganization Successful

1. Plan or the “Dip In the Delta”

Change will impact performance, but you can make that a positive.  That is why it is undertaken in the first place. The magic is knowing how to mitigate the dip in productivity and turn that quickly into a positive.  This takes planning and thought.

 Make sure you are actively working on how to utilize the change to solve organizational and productivity problems 

2. Get Buy-In from Leaders, Employees, and Other Key Stakeholders

Make sure that the people impacted by the change not only buy in, but are “pulling for it” before it happens.

3. Make Sure the Process and Metrics Are In Place

There is nothing worse than not being able to accurately tell if the reorganization is really making a difference. Make sure there are agreed upon metrics to measure organizational performance to showcase wins and point out where more needs to be done.

Hone internal processes to ensure that performance gains can be realized.

Make sure that internal communication, project prioritization, and other key processes are known, used, and enforced to maximize the impact of the reorganization.

4. Take Care of Employees and Leaders After the Reorganization.

Reorganizations and change initiatives in general fail if focus is taken off the change once it’s implemented or goes live.

This is a huge mistake.

The most important work and most critical time to focus is right after the reorganization takes place.

Leaders need training and support, employees need to know where to find answers and express concerns, and customers need to continue to be served and find resolution to problems when they arise

5. There Must Be a Willingness to Take On More Change, Just Not too Quickly

Nothing is ever perfect the first time.

It’s okay to tweak structure and process once it’s been in place for a little while if its not working. In fact, if you don’t people will learn to get around things to get what they need.

If a change is not working, admit it, but only if there is proof that it’s not working. Once time has been given to make the change work and it is proven to be unsuccessful, change it again.

 

Remember: Put Out the Fire First, and then Redecorate

Reorganizations can be a powerful tool to support organizational change.  They can be a tool in increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of an organization.  But it is imperative that the real underlying issues of low performance are taken care of first.

Without that, no matter how well the sofa looks against the wall, the house will still burn down.

*************

 

This blog also appears on the Linked2Leadership Blog.  Please visit them!

Have you noticed that business, politics, entertainment, and the average person have created a culture of abdication and finger-pointing? Do you find yourself or businesses and people around you practicing this adolescent behavior? 

I certainly have!

And a recent letter that a friend showed me from their soon-to-be-adult child cemented this belief for me.

 

Childish Behaviors

The resounding undertones were:

• I didn’t make mistakes.
• Every bad thing I did was a learning experience.
• My actions weren’t bad, your interpretation of them was.

 

Everywhere we look, there are examples of this.

“I did this because of them!” Or ”my actions were their fault.”

This unbecoming attitude is shown up with Herman Cain, John Edwards, Jeff Skilling, and Bernie Madoff.

Some valuable questions:

• At what point do we/you/us/me take full responsibility and face the full consequences of our actions?
• How can we actually learn if we don’t acknowledge there are mistakes?
• When did we decide that making mistakes, failing and telling the truth were bad ideas and practices?

 

Unintended Consequences

“Just trying to be nice…”

Positive Psychology, Organization Development, and other bodies of knowledge have developed whole sets of vocabulary to alter the world of work.

The intentions were to shift language, when appropriate, to move from blame and ridicule to support and learning.

It seems like we have taken things too far though:

• Words are ‘smithed’ and sculpted outside of their original or real intent
• Messages are softened so as not to offend or create conflict
• Rhetoric is toned-down so as not to ruffle any feathers

All of this is done in an effort to make things easier to hear. But perhaps, I think we have taken this too far.

We are perpetuating an adolescent mindset that shuns or avoids the best that the maturing process brings and we are creating insufficient sophomoric future leaders.

 

Truth and Consequences 

How They Shape You

There are two truths about mistakes:

1. They happen to all of us because we are human.

2. They shape us and how we approach life.

Here’s a story to “drive” the point home…

When I was a teenager, I took my father’s brand new Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham out for a “joyride”.  I was convinced that my parents were not going to let me drive legally, so I would “show them.” Keep in mind, I was a teenager and my brain was not fully formed.

I crashed the car into…another car. Let’s just say my father was not pleased. I not only had to pay for the damages to his car, but all the other damages I caused. I had to apologize in public.

 

I was angry, hurt, and most of all remorseful.

 

My parents did not sugar coat my mistake. Yes, I said mistake. I screwed up! They were very clear that they were upset with what I had done, not with me as their son.

I faced the full financial consequences of my actions, and I was not allowed to get my license until I had fulfilled my punishment.  That whole experience taught me a lesson about life and my responsibility.  It shaped me.

 

 No Acceptance of Mistake, No Win

If a person does not accept their mistakes, then the person wronged can not move on from it, or forgive them. After making a mistake, the person will not be able to look at what they did and learn from it.

This will ultimately waste time in fabricating mitigations to the mistake and circumstances around it. It causes more stress than it relieves.

 

Saying a mistake is a “learning experience,” without acknowledging error, abdicates your responsibility in actions taken.  

 

Time to Learn

The more we sugarcoat a mistake, or try to act like we “don’t make mistakes,” the less likely we are to really change, learn, and grow.

“Learning experiences can come from mistakes, but they can not replace them.”

A learning experience is what you do in class or how you overcome a bad habit.  It is the outcome.  If you interrupt people on a regular basis, that is a fault or mistake.

Your learning experience can be the time you interrupted your wife and she called you out on it.  Once you acknowledge you made a mistake to interrupt her, you are able to learn from it.

Saying you did not make a mistake does not allow you to really learn from it.  It also works to undermine the relationship.

 

Failing Spectacularly?

It is vital that leaders understand that failure is not only an option, but inevitable.

 

The magic is not when you fail, but what you do about it.

 

There is a simple pattern that most great leaders follow:

1. Make a mistake. Generally speaking, this is the easy part.

2. Quickly admit that a mistake has been made.

3. Acknowledge the mistake and what was learned from it.

4. Implement learning publicly or transparently.

5. Repeat

 

How to Fail

Here is a great recent example of this from Amazon after they failed miserably and were blistered in the press:

“This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle.

Our “solution” to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received.

We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission. 


With deep apology to our customers,

Jeff Bezos 
Founder & CEO 
Amazon.com”

 

Trying Not to Fail

There are countless examples of leaders that try to do damage control, “mitigate,” and pass the blame on to anyone but themselves or their company.

Here is the path they typically follow:

1. A mistake is made.

2. The mistake is covered up or shrouded somehow.

3. Mistake is made public by a government agency or the process, but blame is deflected by the organization to users, consumers, etc.

4. A non-apology apology is made, but little action is taken.

5. No one acknowledges mistakes or someone that really doesn’t have authority is blamed.

6. Repeat.

Outstanding recent examples of this “failula” (failing formula):

• Toyota blaming drivers for the brake problems in some of their cars.
• BP and their vendors not acknowledging blame during the Gulf Oil Spill.
• Netflix trying to launch a new brand and raise prices at the same time.

All of these showcase that it’s better all the way around to say, “I made a mistake,” “This is what I will do to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” and “Let’s fix what’s broken.”

If we want to survive as an intellectual society, we have to teach the next generation how to accept mistakes and recover from them. Not how to avoid them and push the blame.

 Do you find yourself accepting your mistakes and learning from them? Or do you tend to push the blame on others? What areas in your life can you improve on learning from your mistakes, and becoming a better leader by doing do? And how can you help the “teenage” adults around you grow a little more mature this year? I’d love to hear your thoughts!                                                           

 

 

This blog also appears on the Linked2Leadership Blog.  Please visit them!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

During a recent project, I ran into an issue that worried me. Not because of the issue itself, but rather for what it represents. A really big deal was made about wearing the security badge ID’s on a lanyard and not on our belts.

The Lanyard Decree

After the “lanyard decree,” lanyards were distributed throughout our company and a memo was sent out saying that all employees, contractors, and vendors must wear lanyards. Although the lanyards were passed out, we started to notice that, for the most part, not many people are wearing the lanyards.  Especially senior leaders…

I was later told the chronology of what led us to our lanyards:

• Someone saw my team without lanyards
• They went to their boss to complain about us not wearing lanyards
• Boss told them to go back to work
• They found an obscure policy stating that all people within the building had to wear lanyards
• Went back to boss and pointed out our violation
• Boss said, even though not a good use of time, go ahead and point it out
• She wrote a memo to the person(s) we reported
• Presto – lanyards…

So after about 10 minutes of calculating, I came up with the following:

• Total time  to “resolve this issue” = 2 weeks
• Total hours spent on project = 70 hours (30 just for the person finding the rule about lanyards)
• Total money spent on issue = $15,000 (70 hours at average of about $214/hour, very conservative rate for all levels involved)
• Total return back to shareholders = (-$15,000) – that’s negative boys and girls…
• Positive impact on organization = None
• Value to organization = None
• Impact on advancement of project = None

Simply Maintaining the Same 

This is a serious phenomenon that occurs when a successful company forgets, or never really understands, what makes it successful.  While becoming successful, they turn their efforts to building infrastructure to support their success.

At some point, the company’s energy goes from becoming successful to maintaining its success; through gaining market share, building new products, etc. – to becoming more efficient, effective, better leaders, etc. All of which are powerful and can make the company more productive, but not as a stand alone.

“How many other “initiatives” are there like the lanyard one?”

At what point does an organization begin to make this kind of work okay?  Never you say?  Really?  Again, using the data from the same unscientific survey, many organizations have these types of “junkets.”

There are some groups within organizations that even encourage them!

The Cycle

Organizations have a tendency, once successful, to focus inwards as much or more than they do outwards.  The cycle, which has not been tested but has been researched, has four major phases:

Inception

This is the spark that sets the eventual company in motion.  This is generally prior to even thinking of creating an organization, it is the incubation or hatching of an idea or product that sells.

Becoming Successful

The organization is generally smaller and nimble. It has developed a great idea or product. Through things such as hard work and word of mouth. The organization begins to find a level of success that enables it to grow.  The organization is focused on selling its service, product, and the customer.

Although this is not the time of “exceptional customer experience,” the organization is laser focused on making sure that each and every customer is taken care of.  There is not focus on infrastructure, but the beginnings of “back office” support begins to take shape.

Growing Market Share

• Once a company has reached a sustainable level of success, the focus shifts from becoming successful to increasing the reach of the organization.  Oftentimes that involves growing the number of customers that are reached and driving up the share of the market they occupy. In this phase this a focus on building the organizational infrastructure to support that growth and specialization of tasks or roles.  Sales focuses on bringing in clients, marketing focuses on spreading “the word” about the organization, customer service focuses on taking care of customer needs, etc.
• Somewhere in this part of the cycle, the focus turns from growing the market share, to internal initiatives. It goes from outward to inward.
• Although there are parts of the organization that still look to the customer, it is all under the veil of “what’s good for the company”.  There is growing process, bureaucracy, etc. There are a large number of employees whose roles are to manage or work within some internal function.  It is generally as many or more than or the employees that are customer facing (either for service or sales). For example: Credit Card Company – only 15% of their employees have any contact with customers, over 75% of those employees are paid $12/hour or less
• For profit educational organization – 65% of employees have no contact with current or potential students. It is not hard to imagine that if the majority of employees have little or no contact with customers, they would not understand (or care) what the impact of their actions might be.  How could they foresee the impact to the bottom line? Experiencing competition.

Changes In the Market Landscape

• With the burgeoning bureaucracy, organizations are often taken back by quick shifts in the marketplace due to changing regulations or competition.  Even when the shift is acknowledged or discussed, there is little understanding of how to adequately deal with it because the focus has been off the market and shifted to the internal workings of the organization. This is certainly natural and understandable, but detrimental.
• Too often as the organization is growing it distances itself from how it started to become successful.  Of course that is not always the case, but there are many instances where it seems as if “they are making money in spite of themselves.”
• As the market shift takes place, the organization is not prepared to meet it.  Mostly because it does not understand what really made it successful in the first place and the long denial that takes place during the decline. There is, justifiably, a focus on self-preservation.  The reaction can be to “double down” on methods or efforts that do not reap any benefits.

What Is the Best Way to Avoid “Coasting to the Cliff?”

Always stay on top of why people do business with you. Don’t be fooled by assuming that people do business with your organization for any other reason than the real one.

Key the focus of your organization outward – Make sure there is a clear “live of sight” from each employee to the customer no matter their role.

You must develop employees, make process efficient, and drive profit. It all must be at the service of gaining and retaining customers. Understand that the market is changing all the time. No company is safe from the ever-changing marketplace.

“Organizations that succeed transform.”

As stated so eloquently in the latest issue of Harvard Business Review, companies must understand what is at their core, but be able to transform as the market changes.

Just as steam turns to water and water to ice, companies must understand what “brought them to the dance” and pivot on that to regularly anticipate the changing customer and marketplace.

If you think about it like a company, your prized position in the marketplace with customers erodes.

Are you focusing on what really gains and retains customers?  Do you know if your team or organization is headed for the cliff? Are you allowing team members to hang your company’s future on the necks of an albatross with a lanyard? I would love to hear your thoughts!

********************

This blog also appears on the Linked2Leadership Blog.  Please visit them!

One of the biggest issues that face many leaders today is the lack of clarity in the direction of their teams and organizations.

This is most evident directly after a big change.

It is not that team members are not well-meaning or that they don’t try to do the right thing, it is that they suffer from something called the “follow the shiny object” syndrome.

Shiny Object Syndrome

This is not a new syndrome, it is one that is pervasive across the globe. It begins when we are children and are shown a shiny object. This shiny thing gets our attention and takes our concentration away from whatever it was that we are occupied with previously.

It takes effort and practice to not be swayed by the shiny object.

Unfortunately for most of us, we fail at this task miserably.

Causing Panic

This is no more evident than a recent client project I was working on. After a very large and comprehensive change to the organization, the first sign that the change was “not taking” caused a panic.

The group was distracted by a meaningless item of shiny proportions that temporarily distracted their focus of attention. It was not even a real business driver; just grumbling from folks that had a hard time with the change underway. As one can imagine, this “shiny object” put my client and their “minions” into a panic and put them scurrying into action.

They began surveying, interviewing, and doing all sorts of data-gathering to determine how well the “change” was going and if the “change” was successful.

Unfortunately, it was so close to the actual implementation of the change-project  that the data we collected was inconclusive. Their well-meaning action started to make me think about what it is about the “shiny object” that has us be so intrigued about it.

Defining the Distraction

In organizations, “shiny objects” are defined as projects or requests or initiatives that take a team or large group of people away from  a critical task. Usually, it is an action that has little up side and sometimes can be detrimental.

3 Reasons

There are really 3 main reasons why new “shiny objects” take our focus away from change initiatives (which might be considered the “original shiny object”)

1. If people cannot tell what the shiny object is they are working toward, they will go after a new one

There is not a clear definition or picture of what success looks like once the change or project or task is complete. We don’t know or don’t have an idea of what the end will look like or feel like.  Therefore, we can’t adequately describe it.

People are left with either making up their own idea of what the end will look like or being left in “the unknown”. It makes people uncomfortable and has them make up things about the change or the project or the task that makes them uncomfortable.

2. Sometimes, things are not shiny enough - The reason for the change was not made clear or is not compelling.

A fundamental of change management is convincing people that change is paramount to the success of the organization.  Oftentimes, it’s the result of showing people how bad it’ll get if there is no change. If there is no compelling reason for the change or that reason is not convincing.

People will be left thinking that it is easier to keep doing what they’re doing or what they were doing before the change…even if that wasn’t working.

3. Too many other shiny objects – There is a lack of clarity within the organization’s hierarchy about the change and its impact.

One of the places that change falls down in many organizations is the all-important communication post change. There is always energy (and sometimes enthusiasm) about the change as it is approaching and even once the change has happened.

It’s a little bit like an afterglow.

But if there is not a clear path to follow and communication about what people should expect they get stuck in the “messy middle”.   It’s imperative that no matter the work effort leading up to the change

There is constant and regular communication about the change and its impact with the senior leadership team.

There must be a cascading communication plan that hits every employee so that they know what they’re experiencing is normal.

Coupled with training or other tools that help gain the skills necessary to be successful.

Real Life Relationships

Organizations, managers, leaders, employees and shareholders have been conditioned to follow the “shiny object” of the quarterly stock report. They have all been conditioned to focus on the shiny object as important.  Making  it almost impossible to think about long-term success or planning.

Therefore, it is critical for change to be successful that the post-change has as much or more concentration than the implementation of the change itself.

Sometimes this makes me think about when I first got married. My beautiful wife was, and is, the most important thing that I have in my life. I pursued her with a single purpose in mind.

And once we were husband and wife, life’s issues began to get in the way.

As with most newlywed couples, we began to see that if we didn’t pay attention to this big change, our harmonious marriage would be difficult and we probably would face many unnecessary trials. So, with this in mind, we made a concerted effort to spend as much time working on our new relationship as we did trying to get in to it. Thankfully, that worked!

Relationships at Work

It is important that we make sure to not manage using the shiny object methodology. It wears people out and tends to make them feel like whatever they’re working on is not important because it’s probably going to change. It gives them little investment in their current project and reduces their ability to feel a sense of completion.

So, what are you going to do to stop running after the shiny object? How are you going to master the elements of focus that really beckon your attention? How are you going to be a master of your domain? I would love to hear your story!

This blog also appears on the Linked2Leadership Blog.  Please visit them!

 

Best practices and methodologies within organizations are useful and effective. It is not realistic to think that everything must be created or invented in an organization.

But, it’s important to leverage strengths and weaknesses of the organization to select and implement the practices that will have the greatest positive impact. Making sure to involve key individuals will increase the likelihood of success and reduce the chances of “practice rejection.”

The most common phrase I hear is “well, we are different”.  

I often hear this phrase when a solution is proposed, a recommendation is offered, or at the start of a project.

That phrase is like a mantra or excuse to:

• Refuse to try a proven approach
• Be unwilling to  adopt a suggested change that has shown to improve performance or
• Believe that somehow market forces will not affect the company.

After implementing a big change within a company, the company’s typical reaction or response to the change is to:

• Drift back to what is known
• Focus on “what got them to the dance“
• Focus on what they thought made them successful

What if  the tactics that the company has always used to be successful are no longer effective? Worse yet, what if those tactics are the cause of the organization’s current state of malaise, or even to the verge of forced change?

The Horrible Truth

“The horrible truth is that at the core, most organizations are not really all that different.  

Yes, each company is unique just like people are. Within each company, you find diverse personalities.

These personalities portray specific characteristics that make people act a certain way in groups; enabling them bond well together or bond poorly together when then they face adversity. But, like people, companies at their core are not that different.

“This is why the best practices are in fact, best practices.”

They work well in many different situations. The problem is that when they are adopted, the adapter tries to do it exactly like it is written. This does not take into account the uniqueness.

The Shoe Has to Fit

Let me use this analogy to help you understand…

I’m about 5′ 1″ tall. For a man, this is considered short. I love to workout. One could say that it is a passion of mine. If I operated like some organizations, I would workout the way an NBA star would, changing none of the criteria; doing the workout exactly the same way.

In this situation, I would quickly realize that this workout does not “fit” for me, due to my height and body structure.

This would result in me getting angry. I would put all the blame on the workout, and potentially gain the mentality that “all workouts suck,” and that none of them work since none of them seem to work for me.

The problem with that statement is that it is not finished. The statement should be:

“None of them work for me, because I didn’t alter them to fit me and my uniqueness.”

This is what makes the glass slipper fit. As professionals in organizations, it is incumbent upon us to put our focus on learning about ourselves, our strengths, our weaknesses, etc.

“This attitude should be a minimum requirement.

Then we need to take the best practice, and modify it to accentuate the strengths andmitigate the weaknesses.

It could help us build “muscle” around the weaker parts.  

This coincides with what happened when I started to run. I built the muscles strong around my knees to reduce the chance of injury. Companies need to do the same with the human components of their organizations.

Increasing Organizational Effectiveness

Here are some tactics to increase organizational effectiveness:

• Learn about yourself and your organization
• Acknowledge what your organization excels at
• Elaborate on what your organization does best 
• Find out why your organization is best at what they excel at
• Find out what you are exceptional at doing

Acknowledge your weakness.

Yes, I said weakness.  It’s not an opportunity, it’s a weakness. That is like saying my height is an opportunity. It does not acknowledge reality…

Employee and customer surveys, coupled with internal and external interviews, is a good way to acknowledge your weakness. The combination will give you insight to your strengths and weaknesses.

Take on new practices, programs, and initiatives that make sense and willpositively impact your organization by doing these things:

1. Using what you know about your organization by analyzing “best practices“.
2. Eliminate those that are not a good fit, because they either don’t key in on your strengths or they don’t take into account your weaknesses.
3. Be clear about why you need it. What is the problem you are trying to solve. No problem? Don’t make one up, a real one will come along soon enough.
4. Once you have the reason and the practice
5. Modify the practice to fit your uniqueness. Make sure that it is culture sensitive.
6. Integrate the practice fully – embed it into performance structures, celebrate those that embrace it, and work hard to make it part of the “everyday” of your company.
7. Throw it out if it doesn’t work! – If you have a practice that is not working, acknowledge it and stop doing it. Make it public that you are doing so, and that you are either replacing it or searching for a new one.

Get Buy In from Key Folks On the Practice

• There are key people in the organization, both formal and informal leaders, that influence others. Bring them in early and often to develop and deploy the practice.
• Let them alter the practice to fit the organization
• Make sure to roll it out in a coordinated way utilizing these key leaders to trainand communicate it

Words of Caution

• Never say that you are adopting a practice because you read it in a book. It doesn’t make sense and it is insulting. Instead, discuss how the practice might work in the organization.
• Don’t try to institute some new management practice without people in the field/front line providing input. Although this is a standard practice, it is not done with enough frequency.

“If it’s not working, don’t keep doing it.”

So, how are you doing at sizing up your organization? Are you dealing with reality when it comes to the true issues and problems that your people face? What can you do in the coming year to help reorganize your teams so that “the shoe fits” properly? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

“What does it matter? If I get it done by Monday, that’s not going to make or break us.”

In the hyper-competitive world of work, it does not seem logical that anyone would not feel a sense of panic or anxiety when it comes to customers.  Based on the recent economic downturn, people should see the costs of not paying attention to the customer.

And yet, the notion of understanding the impact that each employee has on gaining and/or retaining customers is foreign to many.

But why?

Although I am not a trained Harvard or University of Chicago economist, I feel it is same to assume that the key to business success is gaining more new customers and retaining more customers than your competition.

But in a recent studies, the evidence is:

• 50% of professionals survey felt like retaining customers was not part of their job and;
• over 75% of those same professionals indicated that gaining customers was not their job.

Everybody’s Job

So the question is, whose job is it?

Companies have dedicated sales and customer service departments, so that must be the answer, right?  Not so fast, if it is true that the most important aspects of business is to gain and keep customers, how can it not be everyone’s job?

Many highly successful companies know this to be true.  Every person in an organization must take the customer into account when completing tasks, developing projects, giving evaluations, etc.  Why?  If employees are clear about how they impact the customer, they will be inclined to drive towards high performance AND hold others within the organization to a higher standard.

How do you get people to see that?

That is the $64,000,000 question.  Over the years executives have stated concerns about getting employees into the conversation about how to gain/keep customers if they are not directly involved with them.  Hogwash.  It has been shown that employees that feel as if their work is meaningful are more productive and actively increase organizational profitability.  Employees want to make a difference, they want to work hard to produce results.  There are two tactics to unlocking this potential and make sure employees see their impact on the customer.

Line of Sight

Line of sight is the straight line that each employee has to gaining and retaining customers.  Regardless of the role, each employee needs to see that impact.  Understanding the impact their role has on the customer adds context to their actions and decisions.

Think about it like this:

Purpose

Great managers not only tell their team a task/project that needs to be done.  They tell them why it should be done at all. What is the greater overall impact, how will if affect other teams and ultimately the customer. Knowing the purpose ensure that employees don’t feel like just another cog in the machine, but an important part of the overall strategy.

Clarity

Great Leaders provide role clarity to the folks on their teams.  It is not enough to simply be clear about what a team provides to other teams, but how they impact the customer.  Whether a janitor, programmer or marketing executive each person plays a role in gaining and retaining customers.  Some roles are more direct than others, but all have an impact.  It may mean that leaders need to do some digging themselves and determine  that path.  But each person needs to see it.  Understanding the impact on the customer will add meaning and credibility to their role and the tasks associated with it.

Outcomes

Once teams (and employees) are clear about their path to the customer and the purpose of their roles it is time to turn them loose.  In Daniel Pink’s latest book Drive, he states shows how Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose enables huge positive impact on organizational outcomes.  Since purpose has already been discussed,  let’s spend just a moment on Autonomy and Mastery.

~Autonomy

Within reasonable boundaries, employees should be able to carry out their roles (tasks and projects) in the best way to support gaining and retaining customers.  Creativity stems from the autonomy to develop, think and sometimes fail.  When held to outcomes, specifically those related to gaining and retaining customers, employees will strive to do more.

Therefore, it is better to allow employees to try, experiment and possibly fail than do the same thing that has worked (or not) for the past number of years.  It s vital to get work done, but unless you are working on an assembly line, they is probably a number of different and valid ways to get things done.

~Mastery

Employees should be pushed to pursue mastery in their role.  Mastery is all about engagement. It is immersing oneself into a particular role, task or project.  Although mastery of anything is nearly impossible, the journey towards it is enlightening and enlivening.

Now what?

As a leader, there are three steps to providing line of sight for your teams and employees:

1. Learn and explain the purpose of each project and task as it relates to the customer.  Link actions back to impact on the customer.  This may take a bit longer and may mean a little digging, but it is well worth it in the end.
2. Understand the link between what your team does and the customer.  Present that to the team and discuss what that means.  How will that impact their actions?  Make it a visual that can be seen by everyone on the team.  Start to ask the question – “How will this action impact the customer?” or  “How will this help in gaining and retaining customers?”
3. Stress outcomes.  Evaluate performance on outcomes.  In the context of supporting gaining and retaining customers, people will generally do the right thing.  Focus on what they accomplish and not on the steps taken to get there.  Allowing for autonomy and focusing on gaining mastery will enable teams to do what is best for the customer in the long run.
4. Encourage employees to talk about how they impact the customer.  Employees need to understand the link between what they do and the customer.  Encouraging them to find out on their own increases the likelihood of it sticking with them and informing their future actions.

Companies that don’t focus on gaining and retaining customers are doomed to not have to worry about either sooner than they think.  How are you going to clarify the line of sight for your teams?  What other actions can you take?  Please let me know.

This post also found at http://tinyurl.com/goawaycustomer, authored by Anil Saxena.

dreamhost promos

I was recently sitting in a meeting watching an executive give a professional proposal for a new initiative.

The presenter, Brenda, did a great job. She was cogent, articulate, compelling, and succinct. The idea seemed plausible to me. I was optimistic that the project would be a success!

But then the winds of change began to blow. And they blew hard and swift! The decision-makers in the room began with a flurry of questions that seemed only to take the idea off the table. they fired questions like:

• “How will we make this project work?”
• “How will this be funded?”
• “How will you get this done?”

With all the questions firing at the presenter, it was amazing that she could even stand.

“It’s always like this“ Brenda told me after the meeting ended.

“Always like what?” I asked.

Brenda replied, “Before we can even discuss if an idea is good, or seemingly even contemplate the idea for just a moment, it gets killed by all the focus on how are we going to get it done.”

Killing Me Softly

As I walked away from the conversation, I wondered if we kill creativity or shoot down possibility with our relentless pursuit of fitting things into what we know. After talking to a number of people far smarter than myself I found some interesting trends:

1. Most people listen to ideas based on what has worked in the past
2. In the spirit of practicality, many ideas are discarded before even being considered
3. Many of the tools we use to make us “efficient” have a tendency to limit our attention to things that don’t fit neatly into a category.

So instead of working with people when they come to us with ideas, we kill them.  Mercilessly.

Think about the last conversation you had:

• With your teenage child about their future
• Your spouse about a fancy vacation
• A member of your team about a new project
• An intern about how to make a process work better

At what point did you start dismissing the idea?  At what point did you start asking the dreaded how?

• How you get a job?
• How will I get the time off?
• How will we get this past the review committee
• How can that be done given our current political environment?

Now, let us not be naive.  We must think about how to get things done, but only after we explore the idea, uncover the hidden, be a little idealistic, take our time.

The Same Same

Do you ever wonder why everything seems to look the same nowadays?  Really, take a look at your town.  If you drive from one city to another in almost any country, they have started to all look the same, have the same restaurants, and people all dress the same.

Why has everything become so homogeneous?

This is because we have figured out what works and what sells and just replicate it.  Over and over.  When we look at the world around us, our wish to be practical and efficient have turned us all into leadership lemmings.

Don’t believe me?  Well, think about the trends in the past few years – Who Moved My Cheese, Good to Great, Paradigm Shift, and the list goes on and on.

So what can we do?

Being More Creative

Author Peter Block provides some great insights in his book The Answer to How is Yes on how using creativity in creative ways can help get better organization results.

Here are some highlights:

1. Be more idealistic

Look to act on what really matters. Compassion, justice, etc.  Don’t get caught up in the “do this because I get or will get.” It tends to make the project or task very mercenary.

2. Work towards more intimacy

Talk to people, work with people.  Try to do it face to face or at least in real time.  Don’t rely on email, text and instant messaging. Working with people has a tendency to increase the reliance on values or idealism.

3. Act with more depth

In the effort to increase speed and make things more efficient, reflecting on what is good, different or interesting is lost.

4. Create a plan of action

Once you have teased out the idea, create a solid plan of action. When the idea or project has been allowed to formulate, then a plan can be put in place.  Now those how questions can be very valuable.

Allowing ideas to be discussed and debated can produce magical, creative, fun ideas that will move people to action.  It will draw out passion and be evident to customers.

Tired of a rehash of the same ideas and problems coming up over and over?  Try a mixture of idealism, intimacy and depth to create a solution that addresses problems once and for all.

Author originally posted on this blog on Linked2Leadership.com – please additional comments  - http://linked2leadership.com/2011/01/04/lf-how-you-kill-possibility/#comments

Have you ever been in a business meeting or conference and hear someone in the audience whisper loudly “BINGO!” If so, they were probably entertaining themself by playing along in an under-the-radar-game called Buzzword Bingo.

There is nothing more confusing than to try to figure out exactly what is meant byjargon-laden sayings.

Early on, trendy business sayings probably had meaning in a certain context.  But, like every “catchphrase” the saying gets woven into every imaginable usage, most of which make little if any sense.

Why is that?  Why do folks in the business community try to come up with “snazzy” ways to say things to get their points across?

Likely, people use catch-phrases or jargon because it is meant to make them sound smarter. But, in the end using such business buzzwords can cause more confusion and sometimes even resentment.

————————————-

Generate Your Own Business Buzzword Bingo Card Here

————————————-

Less is More, More or Less

Recently, I worked with a client that was trying to tell his team that the VP they were presenting to wanted to see concise presentations that got their points acrossquickly and effectively.

He told them that, ”Remember less is more.”

One of his employees was confused.

To explain himself, my client said “You know… you have to be able to do more with less.”

As you can imagine, that did not clear things up at all.

His employees created a presentation with no more than 3 bullets on a page, using abbreviations and pictures.

The end product was confusing.

Less, in this context, ended up being less.

Post Mortem

Later, I thought about what happened. It was confusing because less is, actually, less.  However, if my client meant that his VP wanted to see short, effective presentations that came to the point quickly then his employees would have beenable to grasp that right away.

As a leader, it is incredibly important to be clear and precise with wording choice.  Using jargon-laden sentences does not make you sound smarter, really.  It actuallycan add to confusion. Often people have no idea what the saying means, because originally it was said in a particular context.  Outside of that context, the saying does not have the punch or power that it did.

It just sounds limp and pretentious.

If you are trying to say something important to which people should pay close attention, use words and phrases that everyone can understand quickly and easily.

In most cases this means use real words in the way they were intended.  Buzz words are fun and sometimes funny.  But in our global economy, it is important that we are careful about our word choice.

Remember the bottom-line is that you have to take the low-hanging fruit by addressing the 800 pound gorilla in the room.

(Translation – say things directly in a few clearly understood words is important.)

So how often do you have to listen to business buzzwords at your organization? How bad does this get in particular departments or in specific industries? Are you guilty of looking for that “out-of-the-box win-win-win” line in your dialect or directives?

Do you ever wonder if we are in the age of corporate insanity?  Einstein said that the definition of insanity was trying the same thing over an over again and expecting a different result.  Corporations seem to do this frequently.  It is as if they are using the same beat no matter type of song they are playing.

A recent example of learned helplessness in organizations is the use of layoffs to prop up profits and drive stock prices.  Even though it has been proven time and time again that layoffs do not work companies still use them as a method to cut down costs.

(For those of you unfamiliar with Learned helplessness – A term developed by Martin Seligman, pioneering researcher in animal psychology, to describe what occurs when animals or human beings learn that their behavior has no effect on the environment.)

Of course when business is lost costs need to be cut.  For most organizations the majority of costs are in people.  Therefore, the quickest and easiest reduction is to eliminate them.  But, that has been proven to reduce productivity, creativity and loyalty to the organization.  Then when the economy picks up, which it always does, employees leave as quickly as possible.

Can you feel the stupid?

But, in the defense of these companies, that is common wisdom.  It is like bloodletting used to common practice among physicians.  Now it seems ridiculous, but at the time it was an acceptable and even promoted practice.

What to do then?

Look for a way out of the learned helplessness pattern  - grow the business.  That’s right; actively look for ways to get more and different customers.  Successful companies grow their businesses and take market-share in down economies.  There is no way to cut or reduce expenses to grow the business. You can’t cut your way to profitability…ever.

Here is an easy (and therefore hard to implement) way to break out of this learned helplessness cycle:

1. Find out what the state of the state is

An organization can only improve when it knows the truth about itself.  It is important to look for an organizational and customer assessment or survey that will give a sense of how engaged the organization and customers are to the strategy.

2. Give managers the tools to drive engagement and find new ideas (for revenue and cost containment)

Front line leaders are the key to driving success and growing the business.  It is IMPERATIVE to give them the tools in a practical, easy to use method.  This same tool should be used to drive alignment and find new areas/ideas for growth.

3. Push accountability for growth down to the lowest level

Don’t try to make all the new ideas come from one part of the company. No one department has the lock on creativity (another example of learned helplessness).  Organizations that grow, like 3M did with Post-Its, look for ideas from everywhere. Give everyone ownership to innovate and grow. It will drive passion and increase loyalty.

Don’t fall into the trap of cutting to save the organization.  Focus energy on increasing customers, growing market-share and keeping the customers you have.  The rest will take care of itself.