Taking Credit – The #1 Obstacle to Getting Things Done!

Multitudes of career climbing Managers are absolutely obsessed with the mentation of securing the Credit for an Idea.  These grasping self-image constructors maneuver situations, twist conversations, compose politics, and employ devious tactics, to insure they receive the credit “they deserve”; all in the name of their own fair play.  They are convinced and believe their ideas are uniquely exceptional to the pool of creative

Taking Credit for Ideas

thought and without their brilliant sentiments the organization would be immovable in its own mire.   At best they are braggarts; at worst self-centered egotist set on marginalizing everyone around them.  Focused on “scoring points” as their primary “get ahead” strategy they calculate moves like a Chess master purposefully moving pieces into play.  Their intent of gaining the advantage and capture of “credit for the idea” sets up a win-lose game in which they must prevail.

These lustful credit abductors often become boisterous and obnoxious as they brag about the origin of their thought.  They insist the whole world fathom and concede the origination and proprietorship of their idea, so there will be no doubt who should receive the credit for it.

If the idea is fruitfully implemented, they crave the need to thrust themselves out front of the Team in an attempt to claim a personal victory.  When their boss gets credit for an idea’s successful execution, the credit monger feels slighted, undermined, and even pilfered.  Without their due credit rancor builds manifesting a bitter victim, bent getting even.  This “Go or No Go” Strategy based on credit redemption results in a half accomplished agenda at best.

These credit monger Managers promote their ideas at every turn for one primary reason.  If the idea works out, they expect recognition and praise showered upon them as an individual.  They expect their future value to increase over those around them as they take one more step up the ladder of success.  After all, without their idea, wouldn’t everyone else have lingered lost and hopeless?  Of course, should the idea fail they

Taking the Credit

quickly fade into the background orphaning the failure as unequivocally and neatly as possible.

So what is the debauchery with a little “blowing your own horn” and taking credit for a legitimate idea.  After all, there is undoubtedly nothing wrong with producing breakthrough ideas.  It is an imperative portion of every Leader’s trade to do precisely this – create great ideas.  Much of a Manager’s success will be determined not only by his ability to generate great ideas, but his capacity to effectively implement them with his Team and meet the organization’s goals.  However, when an idea’s path and strategy is manipulated and cajoled in an effort to attain the net gain of getting credit for it, a Manager has stopped thinking about what is best for the company and has selfishly focused on his own pride.

Leaders advance their position, improve their stature, and fortify their power base through the operative implementation of ideas.  It is the idea’s results that ultimately matters.  Strong and effective Leaders realize the price paid for focusing on “getting the credit” is too high to pay.  Taking credit is the #1 obstacle to getting things done.

Once rewards are secured to idea creation two things begin to happen.  First, people begin to pick and choose the ideas they put forth based on their calculated assessment of their own self-interest moving forward.  This premeditation stunts creativity, shuts down brainstorming, and undermines collaborative efforts.  Secondly, they arise to shoot down and kill the ideas of others.  Why should they work hard on another’s idea if the glory only goes to the originator?

As a Leader you must focus yourself and your Team on the execution of ideas and the accomplishment of goals if you want true enduring recognition and success.  You must be willing to forgo the boasting and the “pats on the back” for your great ideas and shift the focus continually to the efforts of the Team’s accomplishments

“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit”.

President Harry S. Truman

 President Harry Truman

The speediest and most assured method to advance momentum for an idea is to “give the credit away”! Allowing people to think something was their idea, is one of the most effective tactics for the efficacious flight of a plan.  When you permit people to share in the creation of an idea, they become personally invested in its success; their desire and personal need to see the idea prosper increases exponentially. As a Leader, if you can help 10 different people believe they each contributed to the development (even a small part) of a great idea; you will have generated an exceptionally motivated and driven Team set on triumphing over their objective.  If you are capable of duplicating this scenario over and over again, your Team will catapult itself to the top of the organization.  At that point there will be enough credit and recognition for all.

One of the common grievances, I mentioned above, is from Managers who mind their bosses taking credit for their ideas.  Exasperation over this occurrence is a fool’s folly.  Even the most reckless instances of abuse, such as a boss putting his name on a paper you have created, are losing battles.  Some so called manager advice columnist tend to prescribe two possible paths of action to console the affronted, the first being confrontation and the second a withdrawal of future ideas.  They are wrong.  Both pieces of advice are guaranteed to stop your career dead in its tracks.  The confrontation will certainly result in your boss acknowledging the idea was yours.  But the credit will be accompanied with the justification that he either verbally passed on your contribution or the explanation that as part of his Team, “it is your job to provide ideas for him” (a stance I wouldn’t disagree with).  Either way, you have built resentment with your boss.  Having been called a thief and a cheat, he will surely move you to the back of the pack.  Withholding ideas fodders the deluded dream that your boss will fall flat on his face without your great ideas.  Although this may feel virtuous to your ego temporarily, in the long run it is a self-destructive unfulfilling choice.  By withholding your ideas, you will disengage yourself, flounder and certainly move yourself to the back of the pack.

Common Complaint - Boss Steals Ideas

As to others who steal your ideas, never let someone’s bad behavior compromise your values.  You should give your company 100% effort and commitment (for your own sake).  The cream usually rises to the top, if not you should leave, knowing you gave it your all, and find another opportunity.  Turning in a less than “Your Personal Best” to satisfy a grievance just devalues you as an individual. Good Leaders can always spot the stars in their organization.  Don’t take the shine off of your own star by sacrificing your Commitment to Personal Quality for anyone.  You have only one person who is going to look back at you in the mirror at the end of the day. How did he do?

Great Leaders know that ideas are communal property.  Mutual creation produces an atmosphere and expectation from each member of the Team to bring their full experience, creativity, and intellect, to every challenge and openly contribute to the exchange of progressive ideas.  All ideas should be given value and freedom, but not significance in their premature state.  The terribly bad ones help us choose the right course to follow through elimination.  And the brilliant ones are only scratches on the whiteboard until someone executes them into a reality.  Leaders must use their best wisdom in sorting out the bad and good ideas as they determining which ones to act upon.  From there, they must focus the Team’s commitment and efforts on the accomplishment of the idea regardless of its origin.

Once an idea is implemented and becomes a reality, it is time to recognize and thank its creators.  Without the original thoughts of the creative and unique idea nothing would have changed.  But at the same time, a respected and effective Leader will also cheer and praise the Team that brought the idea home.

Giving the credit away is not about modesty and humility.  It is the effectual tactic of a Leader who wants to Get Things Done!  Ideas without implementation are frivolous leaps of fantasy.  The more credit a Leader attempts to ingest for ideas, the more he disenfranchises his entire Team.  Gaining participation from the Team in the creation and rewards of a great idea not only procures their commitment, it elevates their passion.  A Street Smart Leader understands the ultimate supremacy of a passionate, driven, and rewarded A-Team will get things done and accelerate his career far more than taking credit for ideas ever could.

 

Attitude Is Not A Time Sensitive Issue – Fix Yours Now!

I find it persistently perplexing to observe people who wastefully scourge their own futures capitulating to out-of-control emotionally charged reactive positions.  There is no doubt

Good Attitude: a C.O.E.

regarding the power of an emotionally driven passion, and its ability to create a fixated and compelled response.  When passions run positive they heighten goals, purpose efforts, achieve the extraordinary and enrich lives.  But when these emotions are thwarted towards negative passions, the results of anger, guilt, resentment, despair, and fear can have a devastating effect on one’s performance.  Their corrosive capability to dislodge critical thinking and embed negativity, as a locked-in position within one’s psyche, supplants achievement and activates a self-destructive downward spiral which inevitably destroys the success of any mission.  These destructive passions are firmly beached in what someone “feels” is their personal justified response to a perceived “wrong”.  Whether anger, resentment or one of the other passion thugs they all typically manifest themselves beneath the shroud of a Bad Attitude.

Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.
Albert Einstein

In my early executive career, I gained responsibility for the US Operations of our company-owned dealerships.  Although operational proficiency was an established forte of mine, many of the organizational managers had only discerned the context of my Sales Management responsibilities.  The new Leadership transition was un-momentous with the exception of several hold-outs from the “old guard” Operations Managers who comprised my new team.  I rigorously embarked on numerous field trips to every location to constitute a common vision, firm up strategies, focus tactile plans and build relationships.  As our team solidified around our aggressive goals, results vaulted forward and our program began to take off, with one exception.  My Operations Manager in Pittsburgh just wasn’t coming around.  His organization was healthy enough to yield tolerable numbers, but he was sluggish to adopt new concepts and promote new directions.

I decided the time had come for what my esteemed mentor at the time, Terry McGushin, used to call a “come-to Jesus meeting”.  A “put it on the line” and let the chips fall where they will, type of meeting.  I flew into Pittsburgh with a four-hour window for my return flight.  I conveyed no purpose to review branch activity or performance.  There was no agenda except to have one honest conversation with one individual.

Upon arriving and exchanging pleasantries with our team there, I sat down for a tough one-on-one with our Operations Manager.  With nothing in front of me except the determination on my face, I definitively explained I was unhappy with his unresponsiveness, undermining, and impedance of our mission and direction. As our discussion progressed he expounded his pent-up frustration culminating from events over the last 15 years of his career.  I sat back and conceded the floor as he spoke of injustices, oversights and disagreements which had led to his amassed feeling of disenchantment.  As he decelerated from the weight of his swelling baggage, I moved unwaveringly into his soliloquy.  Granting his insurmountable past perceptions, I leaned forward to encroach upon his space and ensure he was “in the present” with me.

I asked him to listen carefully to what I had to say, and then made it clear that I was unable to rewrite his history, but if he desired a future on our team he must embrace a Positive Attitude.  He retorted how he was feeling better about the current direction of the company (an instantaneous new revelation) and he felt “in time” he could improve how he felt.  At this point, I briskly halted his explication, met eye to eye, and quietly mandated my fervent resolve; “I do not consider Attitude to be a Time-Sensitive issue.  You can change it anytime you want to!  If you wish to continue working here, you have until next Monday to change yours.”  After encouraging his positive and immediate deliberation our exchange ended and I promptly headed to the airport.  Unfortunately, rather than embrace the opportunity for a New Outlook, he sulked and piled our conversation on his heap of grievances and was terminated within 30 days.  I promptly hired an exceedingly bright new Operations Manager with no baggage and an inspiring uplifting can-do Attitude who quickly turned the location into our performance flagship and became a rising star in the organization.

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.

Thomas Jefferson

Leaders must eradicate Bad Attitudes from their team without sympathy or conciliation.  Bad Attitudes are a contamination which embitter and attempt to exterminate all life around them.  Sometimes it is convenient to forget that Leaders are people too.  They accumulate their setbacks, disappointments, struggles and resentments just like everyone else.  So your first step as a Leader in slaying Bad Attitudes is a self-awareness check.  Leaders must bring Passion to the arena in order to mobilize their team to extraordinary achievement.  But those Passions must be grounded in the positive inspiring experiences of your past and the unconquerable hope of your future.  Acknowledge your baggage and leave it at the door so you are able to arrive for work in the present.  Stop feeling sorry for yourself.  Be serious, be truthful, and be genuine.  If your own Attitude needs an adjustment, do it Right Now!

Destruction of Bad Attitudes

Good attitude is contagious bad attitude is infectious.  We are not talking about someone who is having a bad day or going through a difficult time.  A Bad Attitude is one which is engrained in someone’s daily behavior.  It appears as sarcasm, complaining, apathy, negativity, pessimism, undermining, defiance, insubordination, bad moods, and unscrupulous behavior.  A Bad Attitude affects your entire team and distracts them from their focus.

Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.

Lou Holtz

Additionally, a Bad Attitude perpetuates a decline in the quality of someone’s work.  It sabotages the ability to deliver one’s best effort.  Whether birthed from self-pity or the Blame Game, it becomes impossible for these negative passions to be set aside in the best interests of the company’s pursuits.  A Bad Attitude is costly to positive energy, momentum, achievement, and results in a loss of real dollars and cents.  Once someone abandons their Personal Commitment to Quality with the justification that it is not their fault they become a liability to you as a Leader.

You cannot tolerate a Bad Attitude regardless of your understanding of their position.  Doing so will only enable their behavior.  It is a Condition of Employment (C.O.E.) for someone to enter work with a Positive Attitude.  A-Teams are built on Positive Attitude and as a Leader you must set this expectation in stone.  Remember, it is not your job to fix people.  It is your job to find A-Players and build a successful team with them.

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company… a church… a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past… we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you… we are in charge of our Attitudes.”

Charles R. Swindoll

Leaders must be capable of dealing with a full range of human passions and emotions to be effective at gaining maximum performance.  They must deeply care about the concerns and difficulties of their team in order to support them in a thriving atmosphere.  But when emotions turn negative and begin to burrow into someone’s psyche, your team becomes threatened by a Bad Attitude.  A Street Smart Leader doesn’t blink.  He looks Bad Attitude eye to eye and asks it to leave right now … one way or the other.

 

Performance Plus Planning – Next Level Accountability (Part III)

(This is Part III of a three part series on the Performance Plus Planning System which focuses on the Four P’s – Plan, Platform, Process, People, to create synergistic accountable organizations.)

 

Each of the architectural elements plotted below warrant their own detailed explanations, however, in this article I am attempting to provide only the “framework” to build a prosperous integrated business operation capable of achieving Next Level Accountability.  

THE PROCESS

A Leader must insure his team distinguishes how to operate with competence and consistency in order to harvest a level of “competitive:” quality which outstrips the anticipations of

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clients.  The Team must appreciate “who does what when” and possess the competency to produce impregnable outcomes.  The formation of a rock-solid Plan and investment of a superior Platform is squandered without a proficient, smooth, trustworthy, Process to carry it out.

Process improvement is one of the most conversed necessities for any business attempting to advance performance.  A pure and present Plan and an organizationally supportive Platform momentously intensifies the likelihood that Process improvement will have an evocative and enduring impact.

Reengineering and Continuous Process Improvement programs employed by a fixated Leader require a company-wide effort to scrutinize all tasks and their relevancy in achieving Strategic Goals.  Team based approaches which gather information, seek out solutions and accumulate buy-in should be used as an imperative portion of Process Development.

Since most organizations lack resources to apply a complete re-engineering approach, Leaders must look at set systems and develop Processes generating more resourceful and operative results.

As a part of the planning process, measurements should be developed to determine progress to the plan.  A Leader must also fix metrics that can be effortlessly and habitually monitored for results of the Process Improvement Program.

The Process

Re-engineering

A Leaders commitment to the continuous advancement of Quality is indispensable to long-term Customer Value Proposition.  Involvement and solutions for these advancements should be pursued throughout all expanses of the company.  Process Leaders should acquire proficiency and usage in Kaizen based events to ascertain and implement these improvements.

A Street Smart Leader preserves an “external focus” on improvements which are driven by customer needs to pilot the organization to a leading industry position. The conveyance of a performance based organization must be cultured continuously to insure costs are driven down and the competitive position is enhanced.

Quality improvement programs should be examined to determine if customer satisfaction is the driving force behind any new processes and ideals.  An introverted quality program that focuses only on reducing costs without regard to customer impact will produce a company which profitably goes out of business. The effectual organization is able to conceive methods of accomplishing more with less.

The Re-Engineering

Systems

Deliberations of Systems tend to be framed in terms of information processed on computers and through the Platform Structure.  But often much of the information vital to the realization of an organization’s project or strategic plan is processed through a multiplicity of people and offline systems.  These offline systems can vary to a wide degree depending on the individual in control, possibly creating serious fissures in productivity and quality.

Often these online and offline systems are treated as separate entities resulting in a “disconnect” throughout the entire process.  Leaders must work with their teams to map both process types into one all-inclusive exploration.  Once this is completed all team members involved will now understand the entire picture.

Understanding where online systems and offline systems intertwine with each other is a Leaders first step setting the groundwork for process improvement.  Once understood, he can then begin to construct connections safeguarding check and balances are built-in to the systems to prevent the “ball from dropping” thus creating true widespread organizational productivity.

The Systems

Metrics

The establishment of a resilient Metrics program conveys accountability upon an organization.  Performance gains are based on knowing where one is starting from and where they desire to go.  Comprehensive Measurement is the best methodology to track and communicate headway.  A Leaders challenge is in determining what to measure, how to measure it, and what the results really conclude.

Developing a “root cause” mentality from the onset of Strategic Planning sets the stage for determining what to measure.  Your team will focus attention and effort in the areas the company measures.  Therefore, it is imperative to insure Measurements support goals directly without creating conflict within the organizational factions.

Leaders should concentrate Measurements in the areas of Quality (external measurements), Productivity (internal measurements), and Growth (financial measurements).

The Metrics

THE PEOPLE

A Leader’s greatest Plans, Platforms, and Processes will spiral into a tailspin without an A-Team in place.  And probabilities are, his customers will notice it before he does.  Becoming a performance based organization is reliant on people strength at every position within the organization.

Team members must unmistakably apprehend the big picture strategy and their roles within it to realize triumph.  The quality of their character, drive and skills must consistently meet the highest standards.  And the Leader must generate and sustain a workplace in which team members surpassing these criteria excel to heightened levels of personal and professional culmination.

A-Players are the “competitive advantage” of the future.  The ability of a Leader to attract the “best” and provide them with ongoing inspiration is reliant on a Vision and Plan which is stimulating, a Platform that does not get in the way and a Process which allow the A-Team to deliver superior results of which they can be proud.

People focused Leaders must evaluate the capability, drive and character of their team.  Leaders also need to assess the future probability of success each team member is likely to attain in the organizations “next level’ and determine if they are adept to “step up and grow”.  The cultural elements that positively and negatively affect performance must also be evaluated and acted upon by the Leader.

Roles

The performance based organization desires to recognize the needs of customers more piercingly than customers themselves. They not only strive to comprehend what is imperative today but also what will be compulsory tomorrow, and the day after.  Leaders must work with their teams to see they become ultra-sensitive to the essentials of the customer.  As management, sales, and marketing uncover customer desires a system must be in place to disseminate this information throughout the team so that all team members accept responsibility for satiating these requirements.

Every team member must become personally engaged in customer fulfillment.  Each team and function must apprehend the customer’s needs and be devoted to delivering only the best they have to offer; not only understanding their role but also the role of others who they are responsible for functioning with and supporting.

Leaders must instill in their team that performance based service must be recognized as an imperative consequence everyone partakes in.  It is not just the job of some other department. Politics, the Blame Game, shifting and other disastrous behaviors must be sought out and eradicated.  The “common goal” of delivering Customer Value Proposition must be the focus and stand as the pinnacle for company integration.

The Roles

People Quality

A performance based organization must be strenuously unyielding in communicating the Customer Value Proposition to each team member.  Education and training must be carefully planned to insure all team members are capable of conveying customer value.  This training and education must go beyond job function and include elements that teach team members about the needs and requirements of the customer from their perspective.  Teams should then be given an understanding on the company as a whole and how each area’s goals contribute to the Customer Value Proposition.

There are many ways in which to communicate, train, and educate employees, from formal classes and seminars to on the job activities.  The strongest bond in developing team involvement is to have a strongly oriented performance based culture that creates a tidal wave of positive attitude towards the company’s Mission and wins.  A Leader must lay the foundation for this cultural strength.

World Class Organizations demand the best from each team member.  For this phenomenon to perpetually renew Leaders must be committed to the personal and professional development of each team member.  A learning environment must be created in which team members feel free to grow their careers without risk.  At the same time it must be understood that performance problems will not be tolerated and will be dealt with swiftly and professionally.

People Quality

Morale

The most effective plan will not flourish without stout Team Morale.  Perhaps nothing is more telling of the climate of the company’s culture than to perform an employee audit.  Leaders should look for outside assistance to perform a credible audit as a part of the internal analysis.  Leadership should address problems creating low morale before long-term performance improvements are affected.  In areas where Leadership cannot enact changes due to external forces (such as challenging economic times), strong internal communications and support should be provided to fortify the understanding and acceptance of the team.  No organization can move towards “being the best” without a exceedingly motivated work force.

The culture should be one that strives to deliver the Customer Value Proposition.  It should strive for internal effectiveness and constantly search for areas of improvement.  Since quality of work becomes a reflection of the quality of working conditions, a Leadership must commit himself to providing top working conditions for his A-Team.  Everywhere quality becomes the top priority for delivering value.  Team members should have a fundamental understanding of the importance of the customer and the direct correlation of the customer’s fulfillment on their personal career and future prosperity.

The Morale

Developing proficient Processes and building a fantastic A-Team of People allows a Leader to catapult off of the prodigious Plan and Platform they have developed and achieve previously undiscovered summits as a Performance Organization.  Leaders capable of building an organizational architecture on the principles of the 4Ps will establish an enduring, prosperous, and mounting organizational model.  The Performance Plus process is a comprehensive hands-on approach into your organization’s depths to gather information, solve problems, create new ideas, and discover breakthrough possibilities while directly leading your people “into the fold”.  A Street Smart Leader knows the Performance Plus Process is about realizing results.  In striving to create Next Level Accountability, he moves past the conference room “feel-good” banter and materializes real Deliverables to propel his Performance’s progress and Teams success.

4P Deliverables

THE PERFORMANCE PLUS SYSTEM

NEXT LEVEL ACCOUNTABILITY

The Performance Plus System

Related articles

• Performance Plus Planning – Next Level Accountability (Part II) (streetsmartleader.com)
• Performance Plus Planning – Next Level Accountability (Introduction) (streetsmartleader.com)

 

Your Departments Are Killing Your Business!

Time and again we are bewildered by strong and capable managers beleaguered in their attempts to achieve organization results.  These managers may have painstakingly built

The Blame Game

an A-Team of rock-solid performers and advanced dazzling plans with effective implementation, yet the fruits of their labor continue to evade a prosperous outcome.  When “good people do the right things” without achievement, vexation sets in and the “Blame Game” activates.  A Leader’s proficiency, causes, communication, and energies all come into question as frustration builds and the organization lingers in a downward spiral towards disaster.  When the A-Team is efficiently stalking the right plan without results, rather than find fault, a Leader should look towards the Structure of the Organization.

Structural problems can be some of the most testing to solve.  An organization’s structure is often deep set in years of subterranean unquestioned paradigms.  Structural tribulations can become such a monolithic impediment that even in the face of its delinquency most Leaders cannot start to fathom the idea of changing it.  An overhaul of the Organizational Structure is a colossal undertaking not for the faint of heart.  But as long as it remains scathed and broken all other attempts to improve performance are only temporary Band-Aids doomed for long term failure.

Structural problems usually raise their ugly heads in the form of Organizational Dysfunction.  Prevalent organizational dysfunctions, such as caustic internal competition, bottle-necked workflows, and fractionalized self-interests become mainstream currents throughout the organization.  Managers build their power base by successfully fighting for the benefits and domination of their own groups, willingly forsaking the well-being of the entire organization.  If this is the case with one manager, a bad apple exists.  But if virtually every manager within an organization seems to be at “locked horns” with each other, the Organization Structure requires a stark assessment.  A Street Smart Leader knows you cannot run the right plays from the wrong formation.

Un-Accountability - The Blame Game

The most widespread creator of organizational dysfunction remains the antiquated “departmental” structure.  I immediately become suspicious of a company structure when I hear employees using the expression “department” over and over again throughout the daily discourse.  Sales department, operations department, order entry department, service department, accounting department, marketing department, and all the rest of them are the code words for a stifled and frustrated organization.  Departments imply groups of people which are separated by function from each other for their particular purpose.  This separation generates a sightlessness which prevents each department from realizing the comprehensive advanced organizational functionalities which are essential such as growth, customer retention, and profitability.  Departments establish a configuration where those within the department strive for the department’s achievement as the paramount objective.  “I’m okay as long as my department is doing its job”, is the mantra.  Communication, vital information, and knowledge are repressed from other groups to be used as competitive weapons in the games of political capital and personal power.  Although we have been aware of the unhealthy consequences of departmental structures for decades, they continue to persist in organizations everywhere.

The principal problem with departments is what has been called the “Silo Effect”.  This term comes from the imagery of looking at a row of grain silos stacked next to one another.  Information, cooperation, and workflow must rise up through the top of one silo over to the top of the next one and then down inside of it.  In simple terms, a group of employees requiring the assistance of another department must first go to their Department Manager who then negotiates with his counterpart Manager before engagement becomes operational.  The Silo Effect creates a myopic environment in which employees only concentrate and comprehend the tasks within their immediate jurisdiction.  Their inability to see the whole picture causes them to believe that their isolated tasks exist in a vacuum unrelated to a larger, more vital goal.  Typically those working in departments are encouraged to focus on the objectives of the department’s success.

The Silo Effect - Departmental Structure

Since a Department Manager is responsible for constructing a successful department, they become very protective of their group permeating the conception that the other departments are the enemy.  Enhanced gamesmanship and political choreography stimulates a Department Manager to maneuver his group to gain a stronger “image” than the other departments.  These mounting Fiefdoms subvert the goal of real performance and diminish the reality of the “external” competitor.  Since the Department Manager is in control of every activity which enters and leaves the department a culture of unaccountability prospers within the department’s employees.  They begin to rely on their manager to tell them what to do and when to do it.

The problem inflates when Upper Management places department-based incentives in front of the Department Manager as a reward system.  Now the Department Manager is financially rewarded for making sure their group comes out on top regardless of the overall organizational effectiveness and success.  This scenario routinely causes such a high degree of political infighting that Upper Management ceases to focus on vision and strategy and relegates itself to the role of managerial referee.

Department structures are hierarchical and their basic structure.  Work flows in a vertical up-and-down methodology which is controlled by the Department Managers.  Ask to see most company’s Org Chart and you see the basic philosophy of this hierarchical structure which has been so embedded in our minds.  Leaders they must recognize that this archaic organism destroys the progressive mind share which is necessary for success in today’s highly competitive and advanced environments.  Leaders who are serious about creating a cohesive structure where A-Team Players can thrive must realize the negativity spawned from the departmental philosophy and strikeout to eliminate the very idea of “department” from every aspect in the business.  “Department” is a dirty word.  Do not even allow the use of it within your organization.

As a Leader you must tear down the divisive walls which block the cross functionality of your organization.  Good Leaders build structures which allow cooperation and information to flow without the need for management intervention.  Strong structures focus on the “delivery systems” of your goods and services to your customers while providing the company with a profitable outcome.  They generate a cohesive platform where different functions must come together to create a unified solution which results in an incomparable success.  Leaders are not the gatekeepers of work product rather they are the facilitators of workflow.  Today’s Leaders can find innovative success in denouncing the power coveted department roles of the past and embracing a larger, more momentous responsibility of establishing results across the limitations of traditional functional boundaries.

Cross functional work teams have been used over the last several decades to create a holistic approach to attain project success.  Members from different functional disciplines have been pulled from their daily responsibilities to participate on teams with multiple skill sets to improve a particular area of performance.  Originating within the Japanese models of Continuous Process Improvement, these methodologies have continued to evolve in today’s Six Sigma programs.  In many of these programs the managers send a member of their department to the process improvement meeting to be led by a Facilitator while they sit back continuing to manage from their power base.

Most Leaders compartmentalize this improvement process and fail to explore the opportunities it presents as a permanent Organizational Structure.  Cross Functional Structures take the traditional hierarchical model and transform its vertical silos into horizontal systems of self-managed workflow.  It removes managers from their role as the “Ruler” and challenges them with the responsibility of “Facilitator”.

A Cross Functional Organizational Structure begins with the focus of customer needs.  Various disciplines which support the needs of the customer are then teamed together as Strategic Business Units.  Each member of the business unit is accountable to work together with the other members of the team to plan, shape, and complete the team’s work for their customers.  The blame game terminates as each member of the cross functional team equally shares the responsibility for the accomplishment of goals.  As a Leader you have replaced the infighting of departments with a customer centric business unit which must work together if it is to be successful.  The Teams become protective of their customers and their results.

Accountable Organization - Cross Functional Structure

The ability to employ a Cross Functional Structure throughout your organization will also greatly flatten your management ranks.  Understanding customer’s needs, setting goals, and then expecting teams to deliver on those goals builds an Accountable Organization which is non-reliant on parental style management structures.  And as an added benefit you will find Cross Functional Structures are scalable.  In good times and bad you only need to add and subtract teams.  Teams also become “used to” each other creating “soft” efficiencies and “automated” communication which increase productivity.  Finally, C-Players, who often find hiding places within departments, are quickly exposed through peer pressure once they are on a team.  This places an upward pressure for managers either to get people “up to speed’ or replace them.  Believe it or not, your business units actually make firing decisions for you.  Cross Functional Structures produce lower structural costs, higher accountability, and stronger players.  A win – win – win!

As Facilitators, your manager’s focus shifts from empire building to team building.  Their focus is on improvement and progress.  They are able to manage daily work on an “exception” basis, getting involved when a Team asks for help.  And they are able to spend valuable time supporting and growing the A-Players within their discipline.  Cross Functional Structures allow managers to become Leaders.

It may seem a daunting task to consider the revamping of the Organizational Structure you have lived with for years.  But as a Leader in today’s economy you are challenged with creating a Customer Value Proposition which lowers cost while improving deliverables and quality.  It is a waste of time and a neglect of a Leader’s responsibilities to be the referee of the Blame Game.  If you believe you have built an A-Team of people and results are lacking while frustration and politics are increasing, it is time to examine your structure.  An effective Leader will understand the needs of his customers and the goals which must be accomplished for his company’s prosperity.  A Street Smart Leader will shape the organizational structure around these needs and goals to form an Accountable Organization.  He knows that A-Team players are success driven and have no need of protection, politics, or babysitting … they just need someone to help knock down the walls so they can do their job.

 

Building Teams With Character Matters!

An enormous amount of concentration has been spotlighted on the ethics, values, and beliefs of today’s Leaders.  The world is clamoring for Leaders to set the standard of what is

Lack of Individual Character

virtuous and authentic.  Companies have been forced into developing obligatory governance and ethics policies in an attempt to verify their collective contrived morality.  These guiding principles are designed to control the actions and profit motives of the organization.  Unfortunately, this righteous battering of our institutions has only served to dissuade the accountability of personal actions from individuals to the un-accountability of monolithic non-human entities.  The masses easily point to the corruption of the Corporation, the Government, or the Society as the “root of all evil” and painlessly exculpate themselves from the personal responsibility of accountability.  A societal top-down expectation of morality has developed allowing individuals to “sit back and wait” for ethics and values to come to them.

Much has been espoused regarding the significance of Character as a requisite for a Good Leader.  Yes, if you do not comport and demonstrate a Strength of Character, you will never truly Build and Lead an A-Team.  And with People as the key differentiator in today’s competitive business universe, you must compile an A-Team of Players for you and your business to succeed and prosper. But Character at the Top of an organization does not propagate Values throughout the ranks.  Character is not transferable.  The distinctive Character of an Individual is the building block to the Values of any organization or institution.

In today’s politically charged culture we are admonished for judging others.  We are to be understanding of the failures of virtue of those around us and give deference to the possibility of circumstances they may have encountered.  But if you aspire to excel as the Leader of an A-Team, you must embrace the obligation of judging the Character of others.  As I have said before, it is not your job to fix people.  A Street Smart Leader is not a builder of character; he is a Collector of Character!

A man’s character is his fate
– Heraclitus

Character represents those attributes we expect our employees to stride through the door with. They include integrity, work ethic, quality, caring, accountability responsibility, cooperation, etc.  Character goes beyond just knowing what is right and perseveres in “doing what is right”.  Character is a habit which defies adversity and prevails with fortitude.  Leaders can count on people of Character to make the right decisions in the tough “moments of truth” even if it does not personally benefit them at the time.  People with Character allow you to focus on productive solutions instead of emotional motives.

The accomplishment of a great many things is possible with Intelligence, Skills, and Attitude alone.  So why is Character so vital?  First, Character assures that you and your team will embark on endeavors that are the “right things”.  Secondly, it is the presence of Character that makes sure those “right things” are actually successfully implemented through accountability and work ethic.  Character transcends one’s best intentions and is finally defined by one’s actions.   It is the fundamental difference in why we do, what we do.

Character is an A-Team Requirement

A Leader’s time can be “sucked dry” with people-issues emanating from Character related non-performance and drama.  Employees who simply fail to do what they are “supposed to do” create a ripple effect around them which proliferates and disrupts the entire team.  Eventually these diverters of productivity necessitate management’s time.  A Leader can teach someone a new skill and act to rectify an attitude lapse, but once a violation of Character takes place, trust is permanently lost.  Without trust, a Leader has no choice but to micro-manage an employee in an atmosphere of growing resentment and frustration.  His focus moves from enhancing performance to “fixing up” situations fraught with emotions.  Take notice of the amount of failures that are Character related.  Start accounting for the squandered time you spend on these worthless and wasted lost causes.

The force of character is cumulative.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is tempting for Leaders to become trapped into trading off Character for short term performance achievement.  Extraordinary performance is possible by extremely talented employees who lack Character and are focused on selfishly motivated objectives, but their cost is extremely high.  These crippling trade-offs can extend for years with a remarkably gifted employee.

We have all witnessed them.  The classic “ends justifies the means” people.  Those who disrupt, unravel, and generally blow up the work environment around them.  They take no prisoners and pursue personal agendas at the risk of accomplishing overall company goals.  They are people users, often burning out their team over and over again.  They are stress machines who develop turmoil and generate confrontation at every turn.  Others feign from the prospect of working with them.  Eventually teamwork is eliminated as the Cycle of Fear increases.  If we were talking about non-performers or average performers, the answer to this dilemma would be a simple termination, but sometimes these passion-killers are the highest performers of your organization.  They possess special, unique, and not easily replaceable skills and performance which create a make-or-break situation in your company’s success.

High Performers Without Character

What they lack is Character.  Regardless of the coaching, micro-managing, and manipulating you are willing to put into modifying their behavior, they will eventually “burn” you as a result of their lacking Character.  Success masquerades their flaws, but again and again they will make the wrong ethical choices presenting you with substantial liabilities internally and externally.  Ultimately you will be faced with losing them, losing your Team, or losing Yourself.  Decide early not to empower these individuals.  Be smart, be skillful, keep a great attitude and then present the Force of your Character at every challenge.

“Evil flourishes when good men do nothing.”
—Edmund Burke

Your first priority is to make Character based hiring decisions by asking and listening to specific examples of “how” someone has dealt with the adversities in their career and in their life.    Next you must be courageous, make Character judgments about the people on your team, and diligently “weed out” those who are deficient.   As a Leader you are expected by your team and your company to exemplify a strong and moral Character.  But do not be fooled into believing this will create Character throughout your organization.  Setting the standard, cannot improve upon another’s Character.  Character is an individual accountability.  A Street Smart Leader knows the value of Character and requires it as a “condition of employment”.  He relinquishes the false ego gratification as a potential Builder of Men and focuses on the genuine results to be gained as a Builder of Character Based Teams.

 

Stop Bad Ideas from Running Off the Cliff

As a youthful gent of nine or ten years old,  I would bounce from slumber at the break of an unused fresh Saturday outfitted in my printed PJs and swing through the kitchen preparing a “Capitan Crunch” feast before bearing straightaway towards my morning’s mission.  Capitalizing on my brother’s never-ending zzzs and Mom’s weekly programmed chore ritual, I would swiftly lay claim and appropriate that enchanted place my family had christened the “TV Room”.  My throne embodied a post on the hard floor, cross legged, as close as I could risk without the perpetual admonition of “you’re ruining your eyes”.  Finally!  After tortuous weeknights of my parent’s “Million Dollar Movie” boredom, I possessed power and mastery over the magnanimous magical machine.  I would conduct my colorless, make believe travels enthralled in the lands of heroes and villains.  With their nail-biting gunfights, glorious horses, chair -breaking barroom fights and murderous bank robberies, Westerns became the beloved genre for my inaugural immersion into the human condition.  And if you wanted to make me jump, splash some of Captain’s milk, and smash the daybreak’s tranquility with hyperventilating yelps, just start a Stampede.

Out on the prairie, right when all seemed tranquil and noiseless, rustlers up to no-good would infiltrate the herd and scatter the cattle into a panic.  In a split second, before you grappled it, the entire herd of cattle was racing over the plains; quaking the very ground I sat on.  As the unruly panting mob swung closer to me, kicking up dust and throwing rocks, I could see their blinding determination to run-over everything in their way.  As the camera drew back from the crushing hoofs and snorting horns I could see the thundering mass headed for the edge of a cliff where they were certain to meet a bloody mangled ending.  Then with a shift in music, the Cowboys would kick into action.  And in a flash, the movie’s star would appear from nowhere.  Thrusting his lurching horse forward with his white hat flapping in the air, the Cowboy would begin gaining speed alongside the runaway herd.  With his neck straining forward, he would endeavor to sight the lead renegade bull, and plunge toward that key position right on the herd’s shoulder.  And as he overtook the reckless followers and met the behemoth eyeball to eyeball, the Cowboy would courageously lean into the rush slowly moving it sideways.  Then, with cereal now falling from my mouth, the climactic moment would arrive when the Cowboy discovered himself in front of the herd and on the brink of the cliff ready to plummet to his own peril.  But as his steed tumbled rocks into the deep canyon below, the Cowboy would make one last blood and guts challenge and round the herd towards safety.

In business, a Leader is often faced with having to thwart an out of control stampede headed for danger.  This business pandemonium usually manifests itself as a runaway idea or reckless emotion which can become uncontrollable once set into motion.  As these wild upsurges pick up more and more muck, they elevate a sense of urgency driving energy to a single-minded purpose.   A dangerous purpose that is willing to run over anything that gets between it and the edge of the cliff.  As a Leader you need to be able to turn a bad idea without forsaking your own safety.

Anger and surprise can be strong initiators of rash calls to action.  When confronted with the realization of a major blunder, many managers will look for blood.  They fly into a rage almost with nostrils flaring, and demand to know who made this mistake.  They want someone to go out there, find out what transpired and come back with someone’s head on a platter.  “And if it was so-and-so they better be written-up or they better be fired!”  Most times the situation is more complex than just one individual.  Although it might bring momentary gratification to sacrifice an easy mark, such an oversimplified solution rarely resolves your real dilemmas.  But these are not rational moments.

Sometimes the stampede emanates from a group of people with a runaway idea.  A ringleader decides to go after some person, some program or some concept because they have decided it no longer works.  They quickly enrage the group and generate movement.  As a group, they are forceful.  They can run full speed and they can run people over in their quest to see that nothing gets in their way.  They can easily lose perspective and become unconcerned with collateral damage in pursuit of their personal agenda.

Or perhaps you have seen the stampede that begins of nothing more than pure enthusiasm of a new idea where everyone becomes immediately excited about the possibility of its potential.  All of a sudden, everyone wants to start running and making it happen without thoughts, without plans, and without any attention to the consequences or pitfalls the plan may have.  They are running wild, kicking up dirt and headed for failure.

As a Leader you need to be able to recognize an out-of-control stampede and develop the skills to turn it around before it drives itself and you to the bottom of nowhere.

Begin by staying alert and understanding that stampedes are concocting all around you.  In order to retain your own survival and not be run over, you need to be ready and able to move fast.  Once you perceive the initial rumblings, crank your brain into overdrive, get those synapses popping, and your adrenaline pumping.  If you do not possess the energy, the speed and the stamina to run with the herd they will run away and you will be watching the catastrophe from the back.

Now remember, if the herd breaks they will have the jump on you; so you have to react quickly.  You need to swiftly run alongside of them and gain speed as you out-think them.  Their emotion will slow them down; keep your thoughts moving.  Stay calm and look for your “shoulder” position.  As you reach the eyeball to eyeball position get ready to make your move. Right here is where most managers make a crucial gaffe.  They run in front of the herd and standing with their heels on the edge of the cliff, commence waving their hands in the air trying to convince a bad idea to stop in its tracks.  As you can imagine, these managers end up on the bottom of some devastating results.

Verbalizing your convictions and pontificating your objections will only put you on the edge of the cliff to be run over.  The secret to negotiating the “shoulder position” of an argument is to ask the right questions.  It is the right questions that will turn the debate.  You only need to “lean in” enough to get the emotion to flinch.  From here, you can begin to control and turn the conversation away from those runaway ideas.

So next time your boss wants the head of an important member of your team or you are faced with a run away group, you won’t answer that you “don’t think they are right” or you “don’t think that it is fair”.  Instead, you’ll start by running alongside of them while discussing and agreeing with the problem.  You will ensure they understand that you understand the gravity of the situation and their cry for action.  Share and engage their emotion while always staying on an intellectual plane, all the while gaining ground and preparing to take another direction.  At the right moment you will begin turning the discussion.  Start asking questions!  Go beyond the immediate rush and explore the after-effects.  Open up the perspective of the entire judgment.   “Well if we fire Joe, who’s there to take over and properly manage the program he’s running?”  Or, “That is a great idea.  With our other commitments, how can we find the time to implement it properly?”  Getting a bad idea to stop and think for only a moment about the consequences of stampeding is enough to begin the turn.

As you turn the stampede you will sense the energy drain out of them.  They will suffer with a letdown as they realize the goal they were charging so hard for has been diverted.  A good leader will bring his run-away herd back into the fold gently.  You need to take the fragments that were right and good and direct them back to safety where they can live for another day.  Your boss wanted accountability – this is a good thing.  And your group wanted to improve a situation – this is a good thing.  It is your responsibility to preempt a repeating panic by improving the root causes with a controlled plan that will succeed.

Stampedes are exhilarating and exciting.  They are filled with moments of passion and deep convictions.  But if you watch the movie in slow motion and look into the eyes of the cattle you will see their conviction and passion are really misled fear and anger.  Your job is to be constantly on look out for the possibility of your A-Team stampeding.  If they start running, you need to kick it into high gear, run alongside of them, and gain the “shoulder position” with intelligent provoking questions.  Demonstrating your ability to stay calm in the face of an impending disaster will build your team’s confidence in you and encourage them to run full speed in the right direction next time.  They will trust that if they put their passion, energy and drive into the sprint of a project, you will lead them to higher ground.  Ride tall, keep your eyes open and remember, sometimes you have to “Cowboy Up” if you want to be a Street Smart Leader.

 

Business is Easy … People are Hard – The Change Proposition

I have witnessed some of the best and brightest MBAs crash and burn, like Icarus with his wings of wax,never to again ascend.  They are extraordinarily smart individuals.  They are amazingly articulate.  And damn if they do not know the answers to all matters. These confident and glassy contenders are able to decipher complex business conundrums and possess the facility to deliver sophisticated presentations to corroborate their campaign.  These managers are extremely proficient, cogent, brainy businesspeople. But repeatedly they take off towards the brightness of their ideas only to tumble back to failure.  What is it about their “book smarts” that thwarts their flight from soaring with their strategies?   Street Smart Leaders embrace an imperative truism, the sine qua non: Business is easy – People are hard.

All of the acumen in the world falls short if one does not understand the enigmatic component created once “people” are introduced into the equation.  There are a few exceptional careers where an individual’s solitary efforts are developed in a bubble to produce results.  But in the overwhelming majority of situations, people are necessary if we are to materialize concepts into actions.

So often, I see competent managers charged with a task fail to coalesce their team of people.  They self-sabotage their own brilliance and watch their plan plummet from the sky.  They focus on the plan, disregarding the importance of connecting their strategy to their people.  This snubbing of the human component creates an undercurrent of defiance leading to an imperceptible revolution.  The insurgency occurs because the manager has included “people” as one of the “things” in his plan.  For a Leader to implement a strategy or idea, the Leader must grasp he is asking “people to change”.  His plan’s success is reliant on his ability to mobilize human beings into action and construct change.

People are vital to accomplishing your goals.  They are diverse and complicated.  To be an effective Leader you must focus a significant part of your studies on the behavioral sciences.  What are the motivations of people?  The application of behavioral concepts to real world situations crafts a “business psychology” of people at the “street level”.  The more proficient you are at understanding the personal motivation of each member of your team, the better change agent you will become.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

As a Leader it is your obligation to make change happen.  You are dealing with change issues involving broken and ineffective practices or you are moving your team in a new direction towards a competitive advantage.  Developing the strategies and plans for your program are characteristically a straight forward process.  You can ordinarily figure out what you need to do in business.  Getting people to embrace and carry out your plans is where the Leadership Challenge lies.  So let’s start with a fundamental of business psychology that you need to understand if you are going be successful with moving people to Change.

Fundamental Number One:  People love their misery.  Yes I’ll say that again, people love their misery.  I’m amazed at how often I see people in miserable conditions.  Nothing is going their way, they are frustrated to the extreme and at the brink of emotional (sometimes physical and deadly) breakdowns and yet when you approach them and start to discuss the idea of a change taking place, they seize their misery and clutch it tight to their guts refusing to release it.  What could be so petrifying about change?  They are unconsciously terrified to move from something they know so well, to something having an ambiguous result.  For most human beings this is a very scary proposition.  For them to let go of their misery they must trust that you, as their Leader, have a better place to go.  Many of them have been disappointed throughout their entire careers and they will only let go of the misery when they have no other choice.  A good leader knows how to inspire trust in the plan and emancipate the misery.

As time passes, with some attention to the subject of business psychology, you will get an overall general feel of what you need do as a manager to move people one way or the other.  But if you truly want to excel with the “people” factor of business, it is necessary to get involved with the people.  This means getting down to an individual level with the people on your team and taking the time to think about who they are and what makes them tick.  What makes them happy or excited and when are they skeptical and resistant?   You do not need to have a psychology degree to understand the elementary drivers of an individual’s inspiration.  It is a matter of dedicating generous time and paying close attention to your team.  It entails more than the time in your office with them sitting across the desk.  It necessitates time in their environments where you can listen and hear what is imperative to them. 

Remember it is your people who are going to assassinate your plan, often for reasons they do not even comprehend.  It’s your obligation as a leader to be proactive and stay ahead of them.  Understand what the motivations of each member of the team are.  There are those that have seen it all before.  They feel they have heard of all the changes you describe and invested themselves only to find disappointment.  They would rather hold onto their misery than put themselves out there gain and suffer another disappointment.  Or there are those who hold their misery because they are content with the routine; a daily routine which has become manageable and “easy” for them to navigate.  And there are those who will just refuse to accept someone may have better ideas.  There are thousand, maybe a million, different situations like this, each connecting someone’s resistance to the idea of change.  Regardless of the reasons for their confrontation to change, they are really suffering … miserably suffering. 

To become a strong leader you need to be strong on the people level.  Regardless of your talents, IQ, education, or your planning ability, if you are not able to move people forward, you will fail.

Leading people from misery to change involves three steps.  First, you need to build trust with people.  This comes from having a personal relationship with them.  Someone has to feel they know you and that you understand them before they are going to trust you. Once you have this basic trust established, you are then able to use it to leverage a Change Proposition. The change proposition is quite simple to extend.  The essential element is to remove the risk from the situation.  Your team must understand that the success of the project is their success.  They will have dedicated themselves to an outcome they can be proud of.  But more importantly, they must trust that if they give their comprehensive effort and the projects fails, the accountability will rest squarely on you, their Tough Leader.   It will be your failure.  Think about how many mangers you have seen set up the change proposition 180 degrees from this.  They quickly take the credit for success and blame the team for failure.   This is an anticipated misery far greater than the one they are clutching onto.  The change proposition is victorious when you generate a situation where people have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Next, build a roadmap of your vision to inspire your team.  It is important for them to see your vision of the end result and how much better they will be, but they are not leaving their misery to jump off of a cliff with you.  You must illustrate a piece by piece methodology where they can see realism and success in incremental steps.  Only then will they begin to ease the grip on their misery and grasp change.  By moving them through your change process one successful step at a time, you will find that they begin to take each new step faster and faster.  Eventually you can lead a team to running if they trust you and see the firm ground ahead.

Finally, celebrate the successes with your team.  Too many managers fail to become great leaders simply because they do not know how to distinguish their team’s achievements.  Changing is difficult.  Even success can leave a team exasperated and drained.  Without acknowledgment, your goal has been accomplished but the prominent opportunity has been squandered.  Each successful change should propel the next one.  It is important to replenish, re-invigorate, and re-inspire your team for the next challenge.  Celebration doesn’t mean you should throw a party for every small accomplishment.  But it does mean that every small accomplishment should be recognized allowing each person to absorb a moment of pride.

The change proposition is a circular event.  Trust strengthens (both ways) with each success and builds for the next project.  The next roadmap becomes clearer and your team becomes more willing to move forward on faith.  And everyone learns that change is not daunting as they celebrate progress.  With each cycle your team picks up speed, momentum, and efficiency and your pursuits become easier.

People really aren’t so hard, if you begin with the realization that it really is all about people.  Everyone has plans and everyone has ideas.  Everyone has great products and services.  But in reality, nothing changes until people change.  You need to mobilize your team in order to deliver change.  You need to gain their trust, show them the plan, and create a perpetual cycle of success for your team and for yourself.  There are many other business psychology issues you’ll have to learn to become a great Street Smart Leader.  But if you can disentangle the bonds of misery among your team, you will witness a remarkable proliferation in your A-Team’s accomplishments.  Business is easy – People are hard… Until you realize it is the people who take flight that change the world.

 

What we have here is …Failure to Communicate

LUKE

Yeah, they sure do make a lot of

cold, hard, noise, Captain.

The Captain feeds his fury staring, then reaches out his

hand and Boss Paul lays the blackjack in it. As the chain

guards finish and stand up, trembling with rage, the Captain

takes a convulsive step forward and brings the sap down behind

Luke’s ear. As Luke tumbles down the littered embankment

toward the men:

CAPTAIN

Don’t you never talk that way to me!

You hear? You hear? Never!

His rage subsides and his voice becomes calm, reasonable.

CAPTAIN

(to the men)

What we got here is failure to

communicate. Some men you can’t reach,

that is they just don’t listen when

you talk reasonable so you get what

we had here last week, which is the

way he wants it, well he gets it,

and I don’t like it any better than

you men.

Click for Movie Clip

Many of you will recognize these famous lines from Stuart Rosenberg’s 1967 movie Cool Hand Luke starring Paul Newman.  For those of you under the age of 35, you really should check out this classic from Netflix.  Cool Hand Luke is the moving character study of a non-conformist, anti-hero loner who bullheadedly resists authority and the Establishment.  One line of the film’s dialogue from Strother Martin, who plays the prison warden called Captain, is often quoted: “What we’ve got here is…failure to communicate.” Anyone seeing the movie realizes that Luke is very aware of what Captain is communicating; he just doesn’t accept it.

For years there has been a colossal focus around the concept known as a Lack of Communication.  The prevalence of the so-called communication deficiency has become a magnetic reason for which to attract every problem.  The more heed I give to this issue, the more I am convinced there is no such thing as a “lack of communication”.  This vague ambiguous term has been propagated to justify every fault from why the paperclips ran out, to the Strategic Plan’s failure, and the company’s underperformance.  The communication failure movement has become one of the great “cop-outs” of our time.  As a Leader, you must eradicate this excuse from your business.  The elimination of this one term from your business will immediately improve cooperation, attainment of goals, and your overall business performance.

I recognize the implication of my position.  It concludes all of those classes and seminars you have participated in, from all of those communication consultants were an immense waste of time and money.  And even worse, rather than aiding problematic situations, they have been harmful.  Yes, that is exactly my conviction.  Communication facilitators who have come to your company and lectured about listening, personality styles, diversity, the role the sexes, etc., were misguided.  Sure there is value in being a better listener and understanding others perspectives and traits, but the basic premise, that if we just learn to “talk” to each other correctly everything else will work itself out is vastly erroneous.  Communication experts and consultants are today’s business “snake oil” salesman.

Anyone who works with me will hear me refer to the concept of “root cause” analysis. The root cause is the underlying reason a problem exists.  In my article, Creating Great Ideas by Exercising Your Mind, I compare root cause methodology to a four year old asking, “Why?”  If you’ve studied and implemented this concept, you already realize that unless you get to the root cause of situations, you really are just putting impermanent Band-Aids on potentially permanent problems.  You are reacting to fires and creating the subsequent emergency.  The idea or concept of “communication problems” is about as far away from a “root cause” analysis as you can get.  Communication problems are only symptoms at best.  If you are going to be a Street Smart Leader you need to realize that communication is never the problem.  You need to start asking “Why?”

Let me give you an example: Joe and Sally have a project assigned to them.  They both go off and begin to work on the project.  Two weeks later the project is due and after reviewing their work you discover you are completely disappointed with their product.  Their work is inconclusive, incomplete, inaccurate, and you are baffled by their inability to have concluded the assignment properly.  As you expound your frustration to them, they begin to ponder the excuses as to why they should not be held accountable.

First, they remember the communication consultant who came to the company last quarter.  And since it was made clear in the classes that communication problems are the “root of all evil”, they quickly go there.  They assert there must have been a communication problem between you and them for the work to be so far off from your expectation. Somehow you didn’t explain the task properly or they took away the wrong information or concept of the task. Now you know better, and although it would be uncomplicated to concur with them, endorsing the communication consultant’s viewpoint, your stomach binds into a knot.  As a leader, you know this isn’t right.  You know they were furnished clear concise directives.  You expected them, with their level of experience and competency, to fill in the blanks and perform; because after all it is not your job to hold their hands through every step of an assignment. You make this clear.

Next, they look at each other and begin to discuss the communication failure they must have had between themselves.  Apparently they didn’t have enough time to meet, or when they did meet couldn’t agree, or maybe they just miss understood what each other’s was going to be doing in terms of completing the task.  Regardless of the excuses, they are trying to avoid accountability on the basis of a communication problem.  As a leader you must crush the notion that communication problems can be used as the excuse for non-performance.

If you want to propel beyond communication problem excuses and solve issues, you must drive down to “root cause” analysis.  Often the root cause is simple; Joe and Sally just don’t like each other and so they can’t work well on a project together.  This is remedied by sitting them down and enlightening them on the realization that their personal disputes are the reason why their communication broke down.  Clarifying how petty differences will not constitute a motive for underperformance in their jobs and that regardless of how they feel about work towards each other, you expect them to leave-it-at-the-door and do their work professionally.  If this reoccurs you need only make it clear that if they cannot perform, irrespective of conflicts, you will find someone else who can.

The root cause of communication difficulty can often be a more complex reason such as the constraints of poor organizational structure or a non-cohesive gravely designed process.

Organizational difficulties can be one of the more impenetrable root causes of poor communication.  Most likely, you do not possess the authority to reorganize the company.  But you can understand where organizational breakdowns are occurring and why.  For example, does your company have a highly compartmentalized structure with different departments pursuing diverse goals and incentives?  Is the structure counterproductive to the pursuit of inter-departmental cooperation?  You may not be able to change the structural drivers that are reinforcing uncooperative behavior, but you are able to reach across those departmental walls and build bridges which heighten your team’s attainment of goals.  Some of those bridges will be from personal bonds with the leaders of other groups, grounded in mutual respect, trust and concern for the mutual welfare of each other.  Some bridges may just be the result of creating win-win situations completely motivated by the self-interests of both people on either side of the wall.  Regardless, you must find a way for your team to succeed with whatever organizational challenges exist.

Let’s take a moment and look at where a process problem is sometimes blamed on communication.  Process improvements and re-engineering efforts are major subjects and there is an abundance of books and expert programs which can be engaged to streamline your company efforts.  One of the simplest and most effective tools to evaluate your processes is a Deployment Chart.  A Deployment Chart is a matrix based flow chart showing the relationships between process participants. Learn to examine how you are asking people to do things to determine where the breakdown is originating.  Evaluating and redefining your processes to ensure a smooth flow can eliminate what may appear to be a communication problem.

There are many other “root causes” that disguise themselves as communication problems.  Some of them are complex and multilayered and require in-depth analysis.  More often than not, they are the progenies of lack of commitment, lack of focus and lack of creativity.  Once you barricade “lack of communication” as an excuse for non-performance and demand to understand the root cause of your team’s failures, you will activate an immediate acceleration in accomplishment. I realize there may be some communication consultants out there, who upon reading this, will conclude that I just do not understand communication issues.  I would contend it is the superficial ideology of these consultants that is at the “root cause” of many communication issues.  I challenge you to think seriously on this subject and dismiss the tide of brainwashing which has overcome us in recent years.

You need to be a Tough Leader and deal with the hard subjects behind your problems.  You need to scrape back the artificial answers such as “lack of communication”, and excavate your genuine challenges.  Only then are you going to discover tangible solutions. Avoid the “feel good’ fallacy of better communication. Deal with the material issues and produce substantial results.  Those real results will be the building blocks for your Winning A-Team.  And one more thing… it is amazing how well a Winning A-team can communicate!

 

Shut Down Workplace Drama and Save Your Culture’s Soul

 There are few evils which contend in destroying a Culture’s Soul more than Workplace Drama.  This wicked fiend slithers throughout an organization leaving a trail of overwhelmed, frustrated and resentful people.  Rapidly, processes break down, tasks cease to be completed, and everyone is exhausted.  The fun, the pop, the trust of a team is supplanted with a focus stealing chaos that consumes the team’s lifeblood.  Many managers living with Workplace Drama are easily confounded and can lose faith in their passion.  Their Vision becomes clouded and they begin to give up the cause.

Dealing with Workplace Drama is one of the least rewarding parts of being a Leader. It has the potential to suck the life out of you, and to eradicate your motivation.  Often it leaves mangers wondering: “Why did I choose this career?” “I just don’t get it. What is everyone’s problem? Why can’t they just do their work? It’s like dealing with children.”

Occasionally people need to blow off some steam.  They huddle around the water-cooler sounding off about a particular boss or co-worker.  Mostly it is momentary harmless banter.  The water-cooler tête-à-tête provides an outlet or release which can be healthy venting in measured doses.  But when the line is crossed and your team becomes stirred up, immobilized, upset, unhappy and otherwise dysfunctional, you have a calamity on your hands.    The culprits will begin to withhold information, manipulate situations, steal ideas, or act helpless so that others will come to their aid and give them extra help. Individuals are depicted as fools or villains and all of a sudden, everything is a big deal to the point of exhaustion. Everything is elevated to crisis proportions.  And your boss is looking at you and wondering why you can’t keep your team “under control”.

Workplace Drama must be eradicated immediately before its malignancy spreads.  Unimpeded, Workplace Drama will scathe productivity and foster a detrimental effect on accuracy and quality.  It will dissect a Team’s unity and become the focus of their work activities and priorities.  Those directly involved in the drama will take their “eye off of the ball” and induce costly mistakes.  This time waster, founded in bad behavior, prevents everyone from being great.  It reduces everything you are trying to build.  Unless you are prepared and equipped to contend with Workplace Drama, it will draw you into it as well and denigrate your standing as a Leader.  As usual everyone knows the score, and they are waiting.  Waiting to see what you are going to do about it.

Let’s start off by gaining a basic understanding of Workplace Drama.  Believe it or not the Drama is a predictable plot with predefined roles.  The moves of the “Game” are always the same.  In 1968 Stephen Karpman developed the Drama Triangle as a psychological and social model of human interaction in transactional analysis.  Karpman’s Triangle conjectures three habitual role-plays which drama seekers adopt:

● The Victim – The person who is treated or accepts the role of being vulnerable

Victim’s Moto – “I’m Blameless”             Victim’s Need – Love

● The Persecutor – The person who pressures, coerces, or persecutes the Victim

Persecutor’s Moto – “I’m Right”              Persecutor’s Need – Power

● The Rescuer – The person who intervenes; ostensibly wishing to help the situation or underdog

Rescuer’s Moto – “I’m Good”                   Rescuer’s Need – Acceptance

The Victim appears depressed, fearful, needy, having low self-esteem and looking for help or answers from others.  The Victim’s nemesis, the Persecutor, finger points, finds fault, has angry outbursts, a lack of compassion, clams perfection and judges others.    And the Rescuer demonstrates controlling tendencies, giving unwanted advice, over-extending, taking on other people’s problems while trying to be the hero.

Karpman explains a game of “con” and “hook” setting off a “switch” and finally the “payoff”.  The moves continue as the drama progresses.  In this Drama Triangle the players act out an unstable and emotionally competitive “mind game” which generates misery and discomfort for each other.  The covert purpose for each ‘player’ is to get their unspoken (and frequently unconscious) psychological wishes and needs met in a manner they feel justified, without having to acknowledge the broader dysfunction or harm done in the situation as a whole

Important in Karpman’s observations is the occurrence of the players frequently switching roles as the game progresses.  The drama plays out with the protagonist starting off in one of the three main roles: Rescuer, Persecutor, or Victim, with the other principal player (the antagonist) in one of the other roles. As the drama game progresses the two players move around the triangle switching roles, so that for example the victim turns on the rescuer, or the rescuer switches to persecuting.  Perhaps the victim goes on the offensive and begins to persecute the persecutor who then becomes the victim.  And it goes round and round.  That is, until you step up and do something about it.

So now that you realize this is a game with predetermined roles and routines, you can stop the insanity before it demolishes your team.  Your first move is a preemptive strike.  You need to firmly set the expectation in every team member’s mind that you will not tolerate “Drama”.  This should be one of your compulsory attributes for being on the A Team.  It should be discussed in Company Meetings, Team Meetings and Individual Counseling Sessions.  Make it crystal clear that you have a “No Tolerance” policy towards Workplace Drama.  Openly denounce gossip and backstabbing as inexcusable actions.  And let it be known the perpetrators, regardless of the drama role they choose, will be dealt with with severely.

Next identify your Drama Queens (or Kings).  These are those in your organization who reveal a penchant towards adopting one of the three drama roles.  In fact, they may even go further and want or need to play out the roles.  The drama queen may be a neurotic and self-centered perfectionist.  Often they are considered to be exceptionally talented, but this is not always the case.  A drama queen may be jealous or envious of others, which can make any personal failings even more painful and trigger irrational thoughts of revenge.  In a drama queen’s world, people can be either with her or against her; there are no stages in between.  The Drama Queen or King collects followers with similar proclivities and initially holds court to entertain while attempting to pull them into the game.

While a drama queen might find her forceful personality and manipulation skills useful in some situations, her inability to control her emotions and to form meaningful relationships creates a liability for you if left unchecked.  Watch your drama queens and kings for sign of instigation.  Understand the situations that will launch them into action and anticipate their play.  By thinking ahead of these divas, you will be able to control the outbreak when it happens.

In managing a drama situation, begin by ensuring you are not a participant in the drama.  Check yourself against the roles and objectively remove your emotions from game-play.  Karpman’s theory states that if you play one role, you eventually play them all. But here is the biggest eye opener of all. If you are in the midst of interpersonal challenges and you still can’t identify your part, then you are in the middle of the triangle, and that is called denial.  Know that you stand on firm ground as a Tough Leader, and you can act with integrity and authority.

Once the game is on, commence your counter attack by bringing the entire Team together.  They too, have been witness to what is going on and know far more than you about the situation.  In your meeting, treat the group as a whole.  Do not deal with the drama players specifically.  Re-establish your “No Drama” expectations and restate your no tolerance policy.  Show your dissatisfaction with the lack of teamwork in solving the current situation (without going into the details).  Reinforce to everyone that time and money is being wasted with destructive personal agendas.

Now pay attention. One of your drama players is going to try and put their issues on the table to justify them.  Your Victim is going to start off with, “Well, I just don’t think its fair when…” or your Persecutor is going to start with a direct attack or your Rescuer is going to try and make peace.  You know the game and you’re ready for it.  They are trying to drag you into it.  Now shut them down hard!  Firmly state that you are not going to get into the details of the situation.  Instead, the Team is going to reaffirm rules of behavior to go forward with.  Make clear the Team’s need for functionality is your priority and not an individual’s claim on righteousness.  Then lead the Team in developing “Rules of Engagement” for the Team.  Write them on the board for everyone to see.  Facilitate a healthy outcome by focusing on principles of respect and honesty.   Specifically discuss and agree as to how conflict situations will be handled going forward.  Starting now!  Usually they determine to first try and work out a problem directly between themselves and then elevate to management if this does not work.  You need to make sure the result is that they talk with the person they are having the problem with or they talk to you.  They are not allowed to talk to anyone else regarding their complaint.  Stress this rule!

You would think in our current world of tolerance, collaboration, and “can’t we all just get along” philosophy that this would be the end of it all and everyone would go back to work and progress.  Not even close.  In fact, I don’t ever remember one of these meetings working out.  So why did you go through all of that?  Because, remember, it is game and you are playing.  The meeting was you move to set up the final play.  Your winning play!  You didn’t take sides, you didn’t mediate, you didn’t get emotional, and most importantly you didn’t join the drama game.  All you did was establish proper standards for conduct.  After all, the issue at hand is distinct from the bad conduct of Workplace Drama.  Now sit back and watch for a few weeks.  One of your drama players will recidivate.

It is time for you to pounce into action.  Now you set up a meeting with the offender.  Get ready.  They will come armed to plead their case on the merits.  As they embark on their reasoning, let them know you are aware of the situation and you are handling it.  But this is not the purpose of the meeting.  You want to talk to them about their unacceptable conduct.  They are disregarding the company’s “No Drama” policy, they are breaking the Team “Rules of Engagement”, and they are a problem to you.  Acknowledge the difficulties they are having with the situation or the person, but reiterate the proper way to deal with those problems is not through divisive backroom games.

Look them straight in the eye.  Are you ready to win this game they want to play?  Tell them directly and honestly that they will lose their job if they do not put an end to the drama.  Let them know that if they continue to threaten the culture, productivity, and teamwork of your Team you are going to fire them.  Explain this is not a time sensitive issue and you expect their attitude and behavior to change starting tomorrow.  End your session by reinforcing their value to the organization and your hope that they will take your honest warning seriously.  Check Mate!  Whatever path they choose to take, you have eliminated them as a drama player.  And everyone else watched you fortify a key value of the company.

Workplace Drama can steal your company’s soul and dishearten your personal drive.  It damages everyone associated with it and renders poor performance results.  In the end it drives a stake through the culture and any ability to have fun.  A Street Smart Leader shuts down the drama game, sets the tone of personal accountability, respect, choice, and principled behavior in the organization and work culture.  He protects the value of trust which allows people to grow and excel.

 

Creating Great Ideas by Exercising Your Brain

My truly worthy ideas usually come to me as a very clear concise image in the predawn moments between when I awake and before my eyes open.  They flood into my consciousness from their nightly hovering in the same way, a moment later, my eyes open and my vigilant puppy, Buck, pounces to ravenously lick my face.   Great ideas!  Where do they come from?  How do you know they are great? Or that they will even work?   A successful manager must be able to create ideas.  Ideas which move his team forward and establish higher levels of performance and competitiveness.  He must develop thoughts that can be believed in by others and successfully executed.

All managers depend on their experiences and what they have been taught to make decisions and deal with difficulties.   As trusted as this concrete footing may be, it limits the possibilities of breakthrough concepts which can markedly create advancing change initiatives.  Situations become trapped by repeating the same solutions to the same problems.  We have all been dared to “think outside the box” as if this is a reflexive response.  If divergent spontaneity was indeed simple, abundant development would emerge continuously.  Good ideas require work.  Even “Eureka” moments of brilliance are the result of thoughtful substructure.

A Street Smart Leader continually sharpens his skills of Abstract Thinking.  Abstract Thinking involves thinking about situations that are removed from the facts of the “here and now”.  Abstract thinkers are able to reflect on events and ideas, and on attributes and relationships separate from the objects that have those attributes or share those relationships.  Strong Leaders move beyond concrete thinking based on only seeing the facts and instead focus on ideas under the surface and their multiple meanings.

The study of abstract thinking is a vast subject which I will leave to the expertise of others.  But there are some very straight-forward pragmatic concepts that you can employ to strengthen and shine your ideas.

You need to begin to think of your problem solving methodology as a creative process.  And unless you are just a naturally gifted creative person, you will need to stretch and exercise your brain to be more creative.  I am amazed at the amount of time people will dedicate to mindless pursuits such as watching television, reading gossip magazines, or sports activities.  How much time are you spending training your mind?  Gain an understanding of the basic propensities of your mind.  Are you an intuitive or a structured person?  Do you prefer direct or indirect action?  There are many profiling tools to help you gain insights to your natural strengths.

If you are going to stretch your thoughts, you must train your brain to be more versatile.   Embark on specific exercises and courses of study which will expand your mental capability.  Learn to play an instrument or a foreign language.  Do crossword puzzles or learn a new artistic skill.  Find ways to look at the same situations differently.   For example, one of my predispositions is towards “directness”.  I am inclined to approach problems head on and compete with a “take no prisoners” mindset.  Although I can win many encounters with these natural tactics, there are time when these strengths work against me; especially if I am crusading from an inferior position.  So for several years I have been endeavoring to master the game of GO.  It is a 4000 year old ancient Chinese board game centered on indirect battle strategy.  It focuses on acquiring territory in addition to capturing opponents.  It is the anti-Chess game and forces a different train of thought for me.  It takes me out of my comfort zone.  If you want to create, you must dedicate yourself to discovering a way to exercise, strengthen and tune-up your brain every day.

With your brain sharpened you are ready to create great ideas to solve problems and take advantage of opportunities.  But it is important to begin by asking the Right Questions.  Many failures are the orphans of misplaced efforts.  Dig into your situation deeply and understand what problem or need you are attempting to solve.  Do you have a productivity problem or a morale problem?  They could both show the same symptoms.  Do you need more customers or better customers to improve profitability?  Different strategies would relate.  Verse yourself in the methods of “root cause” analysis; the tactics of drilling down on a situation until you understand what are the real drivers behind the complications.  There are many six sigma courses and tools to assist you in sharpening this skill.  But if you don’t have the time for them, just let a four year old train you by asking you questions.  They will keep asking, “Why?” until they get to the root cause.  Why did we give up this vital inborn instinctive programming to the impatience of others?  Crystallize what you want to do.  Start with the Right Question!

You’re still not prepared for creative ideas yet.  Next you need to craft a vivid Vision of your successful outcome.  Your Vision is more than setting a new goal.  You must be able to visualize what the outcome will look like, how it will feel, what will be different.  Your mind must be crystal-clear as to the Vision it wants to achieve for it to become a reality. Those of you who are Stephen Covey fans will recognize this philosophy as his habit of, “Begin with the end in mind”.  Too many meetings are adjourned with managers rushing off to solve a problem they do not unequivocally understand without a thought to what the “winning” outcome would really look like.  The concept of “something is better than nothing” is erroneous.  False-starts and band aid fiascos only ruin your reputation and shut down your future creativity.  Construct your vision of success before you begin thinking of ideas to get there.

Along with your Creative Thinking, you should possess a strong groundwork of Critical Thinking.  Critical Thinking involves logical thinking and reasoning.  As ideas surface, you will need to critically scrutinize them for soundness.  Understanding principles of inductive and deductive reasoning as well as logically fallacies are valuable tools with which to build your thoughts.  If you begin with an invalid premise you will find yourself pursuing a lost cause.  The application of critical thinking to your creative process will result in reality based attainable solutions that work. Find additional checks and balances to your thought process.  If you are a natural critical thinker, find an intuitive person and ask them how they “feel” about your idea.  And if you are intuitive by nature, find a logical person and ask them what they “think” about your idea.  Your idea will be tested – either before implementation or after.  You choose.

Are you ready to begin your Creative Thinking?  You should make time each week in a place where you can concentrate on thinking.  Great thoughts do not come in between the hurry of hectic activities.  When is the last time you took an hour and just went off by yourself to think?  Sometimes when I am doing this, someone will walk up on me and hesitate wondering if they should interrupt.  They always have a surprised look on their face when I look up from my concentration and say, “I was just thinking.”  Isn’t it peculiar how little quality time we make for one of the most important activities we have as Leaders?

Now get away and think.  Remain focused on the “right question” and keep your Vision in the forefront.  Challenge the existing prevailing thoughts.  Imagine possibilities.  Develop every option and re-think your preconceptions.  Trust your feelings as you look down every path.  Look for relationships with seemingly unconnected resources.  Open up your mind and let everything on the topic pour out.  Do not settle for a quick fix.  You are looking for a breakthrough.

The preeminent tool I use to get the abstract juices flowing is a personal brainstorming session known as Mind Mapping.  Mind Mapping provides a flexible, fluent, image based methodology to elaborate on associative and metaphorical thinking.   Mind Maps start with a central topic and then branch out into possibilities.  They allow the freedom to start new and divergent ideas anywhere in the thought process and provide a visual format to link and weave commonalities.  Mind Mapping technique is easy to learn but takes practice to master.  Create Mind Maps for everything.  Flush out all of your thoughts, experience, lessons, advice and intuitions.   Remember you have a vision, a destiny, to fulfill with a new and original thought.

MIND MAP EXAMPLES

To become a prominent Street Smart Leader you must, Learn – Think – Lead.  Learning to Think is a part of your craft.  Become dedicated to the ideology of expanding your mind and thinking great thoughts.  Not every idea seeking venture will end with a brilliant result.  Often you will leave your creative sessions with only an exasperated and scribbled Mind Map.  But if you commit yourself to critical and creative thinking, someday, just before you feel that lick on your face, there it will be, Eureka, a Great Idea!  And guess what?  If you only have five or six Great Ideas in a year you will run far ahead of your competition and you will be a Superstar.

For Mind Mapping software go to mindjet.com or thinkbuzan.com

Related Articles

• How to Generate Creative Ideas? (socyberty.com)
• Creative Thinking Techniques (socyberty.com)
• The Creative Power of the Mindmap (suzemuse.com)

 

Managing Others – Managing Yourself – Managing Your Boss

I entered management believing that as long as I was able to develop my department’s performance and meet company goals, I was doing my job and the rest would take care of itself.  So I did my job and waited for my career to move forward.  And of course it did, but not always as quickly as some of my contemporaries who didn’t appear to have my list of accomplishments.  It took me a few exasperating years to study their advancements and realize they were doing more than taking care of their jobs.  They were taking care of their careers.    

If you are to develop a successful career plan you must constantly concentrate your efforts in a three pronged attack.  Just doing your job well will only result in being able to do it for a very long time.  Eventually the mundane will take root and either you or your boss will tire of it and execution will diminish.  Inevitably your goal must be to advance stronger and faster than those surrounding you. You are in a race against time for success and the longer it takes to move up the chain of command the more unmanageable and improbable it becomes.  Launching a comprehensive campaign that showcases your talents and accomplishments will set you on the road to advancement. 

You must learn to manage three different entities every day with efficacy.  They are: 1) The Others you work with, 2) Yourself and 3) Your Boss.  Your ability to concurrently contend with the challenges of these three competing interests is essential. 

MANAGING OTHERS

We naturally imagine our subordinates when thinking of managing Others.  But just as importantly are our peers, staff members, and those in the company who are postured to observe our performance.  It is crucial to have this group’s Respect!

The easiest way to gain the respect of Others is to Win.  People love winners and thrive on the opportunity to be connected with triumph.  Focus your efforts on being a Tough Leader who accomplishes problematic strategic issues.  Do not be concerned with “being liked”.  Victory is more important.  Others will notice who is winning and who is losing.  Your success builds influence and influence in turn creates cooperation.  With the cooperation of Others, you are armed to take on your next challenge with momentum.

Gaining cohesive long-term cooperation depends on being an advocate of Others’ needs.  Support your team and your peers with passion.  Too many managers make the mistake here of keeping score and waiting until they owe someone a favor before throwing in.  This egocentric approach only diminishes your short term effectiveness and slows your own progress.  Gain the respect and cooperation of Others around you by “paying it forward” when it comes to support.  Acquire a deep understanding of what they need to win and contribute everything you can to their success.  They will not overlook it and you will have increased your own power-base.

If you win and are supportive, you will gain Others’ admiration, but you really need their respect.  This requires bonding with them.  You cannot expect someone to run through walls for you if you do not have any bond with them.  Get to know the people around you.  Know their interests and passions.  Understand what makes them tick.  Care about them!  Running into them a few times a week in meetings is a disingenuous attempt at a relationship.  Relationships are of consequence and they matter.  Build them with the people around you.  Enrich your team’s and coworkers’ daily experience with a giving and caring atmosphere.

MANAGING YOURSELF

I have seen managers who are utterly out of control when it comes to managing themselves.  It is a spectacle they are even making it through the day.  They storm through what should be normal daily activities as if they were drowning.  If you are habitually disorientated, people will mistrust your capacity.

Managing yourself is a principal of Quality.  You must grasp the concept that Quality is not a part time thing and it must permeate all you do.  You cannot ask for or demonstrate quality in some things and ignore others.  Quality is a Value.  Episodic deviation from the value of Quality only creates hypocrisy when you try and enforce standards on others.  A commitment to quality elevates the game and demonstrates to others the expectations you command in all things – all of the time.  

Start with your personal organization.  Are you together?   Are you prepared?  Have you thought issues through?  You must become impeccable with your time management.  Know where you are supposed to be and know what needs to be done and when.   Meeting deadlines should be a “no sweat” routine with which you never falter.  Look at your personal presentation, your office, your briefcase, and your organizational system.  Do they tell people you are devoted to Quality?  Clean-up any chaos.  Think about how you are perceived in meetings, how you order lunch.  Make sure you are a self-reliant, prepared, and poised Leader.  No one will want to follow you if you can’t even find your keys.  Simply put… be professional!

Although a large part of your responsibilities revolve around the work of others, inevitably, you have work of your own to produce.  The production of your work should be skilled and precise.  The quality of anything leaving your desk must be first rate, accurate and presentable.   Believe everything you create will be posted on the bulletin board in the lunchroom or your boss’s door.  Set a goal to produce the preeminent work within the company.   Anything less lowers the bar for everyone and questions your credibility.  This is a tangible opportunity to create career distance between you and your peers.

As a professional producing striking work product, your next self-management focus is to demonstrate the attributes and values you require in others.  If you expect a strong work ethic, demand one of yourself.  If you desire positive attitudes, mandate yourself to be upbeat in the worst of times.  As your career expands, you leave behind the ability to “do everything you ask your employees to do”.  But you always retain the obligation to exhibit how to comport oneself in difficult situations and to ensure your organization’s Values are alive and well every day.   

MANAGING YOUR BOSS

This essential concept is often a surprise to many.  After all, isn’t my boss beholden to manage me?  Isn’t he answerable for me in the same way I am responsible for my subordinates?  The answer is, “No”. We just discussed how you were responsible to manage yourself.  If you want your career to thrive, you need to own it and not be complacent with anyone else having accountability for your success.  Managing your boss safeguards your accomplishments and profiles them before the organization’s executives.  Here is where your career takes flight.

You need to become your boss’s Star; his “Go To” person.  This originates with understanding and being proactive to his needs.  Yes, you heard me correctly.  It is not his job to make your duties easier for you. It is your job to make his life easier for him.  Think about that for a second.  What does he need?  What is important to him?  What are the organizational goals he is focused on?  You want to be the first one to the table with real deliverable solutions to make him successful.  Forget the idea that he is there to care for you.  Your goal is to ultimately assume his position.  Start to think of yourself already in his job.  Who is going to take care of you then?  If you understnd my point, you realize relying on your boss for your needs is a self–limiting proposition.  Get out in front of helplessness and stay there.  Also, it isn’t your priority to change your boss.  All bosses have their quirks and difficulties.  Accept them, for if you don’t already, you will have your own challenges for others coming soon.  It is your duty to lead your team to success despite any shortcoming of your boss.  Waiting for a change in his habits is only placing your career on suspension.  Learn to make your system work around his imperfections.      

To become his “Go To” person, you must have ideas; well thought out ideas that can be put into action with winning results.  You need to be able to discover the methods and means for improving your organization.  Your team must produce “standout” performance.  When an initiative of your boss is meeting resistance in other parts of the company, show how your team can break through the barriers and make it happen.  As you create innovative ideas and your team outperforms the norm, your accomplishments will be noticed.  But don’t be surprised when your boss gets a certain amount of credit for this.  After all, you are on his team.  Don’t get stuck here; just keep moving forward and your star will continue to rise and shine.

Too many managers never learn how to “Get to Yes” with their boss.  They think of an idea and throw it up.  They run into their boss’s office on Monday morning and excitedly spew out, “I have an idea. I need people.  I need money.  And then I can do so and so.”  Usually their boss impatiently listens for about 15 minutes and then says something like, “We’ll see.”  Doesn’t this sound familiarly like our Parent’s response when we were ten years old?  It should, because these managers are acting like ten year olds.  If you have a well thought out winning idea, then you need to guarantee it will get approval.  It is your responsibility to get the “Yes”.  Managers who sit around complaining that “nothing ever changes around here” have failed.  They are incapable of putting forth a compelling and unquestionable argument to get a “Yes”.  Commit to yourself that you will never receive a “No” from your boss again.  “Yes” isn’t just about being right.  It is about timing, presentation, and competing interests for resources.  It is about ROI, Values, and your Boss’s agenda.  If you’re not ready to win on all of the fronts, don’t pitch your idea.  Once an idea is pitched and denied, it usually dies.  Be patient, properly prep your idea, wait for alignment, and wait for your boss to be ready to say “Yes”.  Only then should you go for it and present.  If you can acquire this skill you will be among the few who can say, “My boss never says “No” to me.”  And your boss will learn to trust in the strength of your ideas and your abilities.  He will be able to count on you as a solid thinker and contributor.

 Managing Others, Yourself and Your Boss may seem like too many balls to keep up in the air.  It requires careful forethought, diligent planning, and unswerving implementation.  It entails an awareness of the priorities going on around you which you may not necessarily be involved in.  But most of all, it requires a commitment to being the best manager you can be in all areas of your working life.  If you’re not up for the challenge, you might continue to succeed at your job.  But if you want to be a Street Smart Leader, you will keep an active focus on these three priorities and vault past your contemporaries for that next promotion.

Related Articles

• Ten Archetypes Of A Terrible Boss (blogs.forbes.com)
• Fred Whelan and Gladys Stone: Take Your Boss’s Job – With Their Help (huffingtonpost.com)

 

The Challenge for Your Authority

At some point in a career every manager has his authority challenged.  Typically the challenge comes towards the beginning of a new relationship with an employee.  But if it is not successfully dealt with, it can last for years. These encounters come in different forms and with varied methods.   Such contests are completely demoralizing and can leave many managers with self-doubt and asking themselves why they are in management in the first place.  Learning to deal with the undermining of these challengers is a survival skill of a Street Smart Leader.

First, let’s define when a challenge is a problem.  It is perfectly acceptable for people to challenge your ideas and methods in a professional and respectful way.  You should promote an open atmosphere which encourages vigorous and passionate debate regarding the best strategies and practices for your business. Healthy combative interaction in the arena of ideas makes them stronger and increases the likelihood of their success. A good Leader will learn to facilitate these discussions with astuteness and confidence in order to get the most out of a high performing team.  We are also not talking about someone who just makes a mistake and is out of line.  A good leader takes the higher road here.  He pauses the conversation or activity, creates an uncomfortable moment, then continues and let’s this one pass. 

When someone questions your authority on an ongoing basis, they are purposefully sabotaging your existence. They are rebuffing your ideas on the basis of rejecting your rightfulness to oversee them.  For whatever reasons they have decided, “You are not the boss of me.”  But you are and they just don’t like it.  Maybe they believe they should be the boss or maybe they want you to prove yourself or maybe they just have psychological blocks. Regardless of the reason, they are planning to undermine your effectiveness.  You are in Street Fight!

Their number one weapon in this battle is your inaction.  They are counting on the presumption that they are too clever, or that you will avoid confrontation, or that they can build an unassailable coalition.  They plan to diminish your power by ignoring your authority. They are counting on you forfeiting your power and allowing them to subsist.  Power is not lost it is relinquished. 

This point was driven home to me years ago while I was attending a charity dinner event.  The draw that evening was that business leaders were able to enjoy dinner with Professional Athletes at the table while we watched the program.  I am not one who is easily star struck, but still I attended as a part of our Executive Team.  Not knowing who he was, I found myself sitting next to Pete Vuckovich.  I quickly read the program and realized he had been a Cy Young Award winning baseball pitcher who had played in the World Series.  As I saw those at my table engaged in lively conversations with these sport’s idols, I wondered what I could say to Mr. Vuckovich.  I was far from a baseball fan and not really interested in his celebrity.  However, I didn’t want to miss an opportunity with a real Pro who was once at the top of his game. 

After some awkward silence as dinner was being served, I finally leaned over and asked, “Pete, do you mind if I ask you a question?”  He graciously smiled and replied, “Sure. Go ahead.”  I continued, “Have you ever stood on the pitching mound … against such a formidable opponent, who was on such a hot hitting streak, that you didn’t want to throw the ball?”  Mr. Vuckovich began to transform in front of my eyes.  As he lunged to within four inches from my face, his 6’4″, 220 lb frame and full Fu Manchu moustache took on an intimidating and intense bearing.  His eyes were penetrating and his posture was snarling like a charging bull on the brink of losing self-control.   Seconds seemed an eternity. He almost began shaking when he grabbed my arm and squeezed.  Then without raising his voice, almost in a whisper, he bursted, “Why would I be afraid.  I’m the one with the f—ing ball!”  Later I learned how Pete Vuckovich was famous for his intensity and competitiveness.  That night I learned what it meant to not resign your power.

Not if, but when, you find yourself in this predicament there are a couple of overall guidelines to follow.  Most importantly, you must remain “cool-headed”.  You cannot become emotionally reactive and let the perpetrator push your buttons.  You are in a battle for credibility and the fastest way to lose it is to over-react to a situation.  Be committed to defeating your challenger, but make sure you let them escalate each level of the interaction.  It is never long before such a contest enters the public square, so your boss will be evaluating your actions.  He will be watching to see if you are in any way “going after” the employee to settle your own grudge.  It is important for you to demonstrate the truth of your reluctance to participant in this conflict.  Make sure you are on solid ground. 

When someone is continually challenging your authority they provide many opportunities to make themselves look bad.  You don’t have to take them on at each one.  Wait for the battles where you are on firm unquestionable ground.  Be patient and be right – chose winning conflicts with which to discredit your opponent.  In truth, it is difficult not to be emotional when under this kind of attack.  It is personal but your emotions will work against you.  This is a time to “out-think” your opponent.

Usually their tactics fall into one of two general buckets: Direct Confrontation or Indirect Manipulations.  If you are to defend against these tactics, you must be able to recognize them and counter attack with veracious action.

Direct confrontations take several forms.  They include obvious hostile behaviors such as rudeness, inappropriate complaining, sarcasm, and insubordination.  Less visible, but just as aggressive, are the plots of backstabbing and gossip which are designed to build a collective resistance.  Direct confrontations are usually exploited by the arrogant.  They believe they are either “untouchable” or that they will gather support from others which will corroborate their bad behavior and disentangle you.  They are bullies and they are counting on you to avoid the confrontation.

As a Leader, you need to meet this confrontation head-on.  The trick is to do it in a way that is non-confrontational.  They are baiting you with their bad behavior and setting the trap.  The mistake many managers make in this situation is to react and take the bait.  They make a spectacle of the situation drawing the attention to their own behavior.  The over-reaction replaces the bad behavior as the topic among employees, peers and their boss.  Instead, you must have a plan thought out and be ready to execute it in an ultra-professional way.

Let’s look at a few examples of the Direct Confronter:

1.)    Take the person who challenges your authority in a meeting with sarcasm or anger.  You are sure this is no mistake and you have been waiting for it.  Instead of taking the bait, you stop the meeting with silence and allow that uncomfortable moment to sit with everyone and then continue the meeting.  Just before the meeting adjourns, while everyone is still seated, you look directly at your offender and calmly say, “Dennis, I’d like you to stay for a few minutes.” Be prepared, for he will most likely tell you how he can’t because he has something urgent to do.  With your eyes focused on his, tell him this will only take a moment and to please sit down. Watch everyone’s faces as they get up leaving Dennis sitting in the room.  Then you handle Dennis’s misconduct in an ultra-professional manner.  With no emotion, you point out how his behavior was unacceptable and that it will not be tolerated in the future.  Let him know if it does happen again, he will be asked to leave the room immediately.  If this happens again, you are on very firm ground and can begin replacing Dennis.

2.)   Having successfully shut Dennis down in a way that curbs his public grandstanding, you can next expect Dennis to concentrate on building his collective through backstabbing and gossip.  Backstabbing is most effectively put into play by going around you to your boss and complaining.  Nothing can be as upsetting as when you realize this is going on and your boss is listening to your adversary behind closed doors.  In today’s world of “open door” policies this is a predictable route for them to take.  Well since it is predictable, you will have a plan.  Whether or not your boss initiates a discussion with you, let him know you think it would be good for the three of you to get together and discuss Dennis’s unhappiness.  Dennis might relish the opportunity to “take you on” with the boss.  But you have chosen you battles carefully and you are going to focus the conversation on the indefensible – Dennis’s behavior and not on your ideas or style which he disagrees with.  Through your preparation, you make certain this meeting is about him.

After a few such interactions the Direct Confronter will lose credibility and will recognize your authority and the personal cost of challenging it.

CHALLENGING AUTHORITY

Those who use Indirect Manipulation characteristically rely on “Passive Aggressive” tactics.  These tactics will usually manifest themselves as helplessness, procrastination, stubbornness, bitterness, moodiness, or deliberate and repeated failure to accomplish requested tasks for which one is responsible.  They do not disagree or confront you.  Instead they wear you down with friction and attitude.  They wage their war with deliberate actions of resistance which, individually do not justify a response from you.  With these employees you find yourself terribly frustrated and insecure.  The good ones are masters at making you think there is something wrong with you as a manager.  They accomplish their jobs proficiently enough to make any application of your management over them seem trivial and as if you are picking on them. 

Learn to recognize the manipulations of the Passive Aggressive employee and prepare yourself to again deal directly with them.  Let’s look at some passive aggressive situations:

1.)    Many passive aggressive employees constantly test your will by not following policies and procedures, but still get the job done.  They don’t agree with the rules and they are not going to follow them.  When you call it to their attention, they’ll say they forgot, or they will try and improve, or they don’t see why it is such a big deal, but okay.  Just like their confrontational counterparts, they are baiting a trap for you.  They have set you up for a false choice.  You either become upset with them and appear completely irrational by making a big deal over such a small thing or you let them off the hook not wanting to deal with it.  They are very good at knowing where the line is drawn and running right up to it.  As a Leader you must take on the passive aggressive with a deliberate, constant, non-wavering campaign.  You need to move the line back.  Keep your responses proportional and do not over react.  This doesn’t mean you let things slide.  You risk looking aggressive if you go after everything at once.  So again, pick your battles and fight them.  Concentrate on policies that are already being followed by everyone else without a problem.  This eliminates any controversy on the right and wrong of the matter.  Find several areas that you are going to enforce “every day”, from everyone, even if it kills you.  Set deadlines and follow-up on them.  You must “break” your passive aggressive employee methodically, consistently and relentlessly. Without any emotion, excitement, or drama. 

2.)   Once they lose this battle your passive aggressive will most likely fight back with a bad attitude.  Since they are passive in their choice of weapon they will not be openly disgruntled.  Instead they will choose moodiness, sulkiness, irritability or the like.  Even worse they may try apathy or setting up others for failure.  All of these are unacceptable and should be dealt with immediately.  A serious conversation in your office with them will fix it for a week.  They will be dismissive and defensive and they will again test your will.  Do not let them get away with it.  As uncomfortable and upsetting as these meetings are for you, rest assured, they are hell for the passive aggressive.  If they persist in forcing you to meet with them again and again, begin taking notes of the conversations right in front of them.  Make it clear that you would rather not escalate the situation, but if they insist on it, you are prepared to win.

If you are constantly dealing with authority challenges, you need to take a strong deep look at yourself and ask if you are the problem.  Otherwise, you must be prepared to take on the occasional Underminer.  They are dangerous to you, your team and your company.  They focus attention on themselves and detract from the goals your team is working so hard to accomplish.   Take notice, everyone is aware that the game is on and they are watching how you deal with it.  They are evaluating your Leadership capability in these situations.  If you can conquer adversity without becoming emotional and reactionary, your team will respect you.  Take your victories with grace and silence.  There is no need to showboat or strut.  Everyone has noticed what just transpired.  Remember no one wants to follow a Leader who can’t stand up for himself when he is right and win!  Play it Street Smart and as Pete Vuckovich taught me – don’t relinquish your power.  You’ve got the Ball – KEEP IT!

Related Articles

• When Creative Conflict is A Good Thing (sixrevisions.com)

 

Presenting Winning Ideas with Vision

As a young Vice President I found myself continually positioned to present my ideas.  I was running meetings involving those who worked for me, collaborating with team members on my level, and most importantly partaking in Executive Meetings.  I had surpassed the stage of my career where just accomplishing tasks was my main source of recognition.  No longer did people just want to know what I could do; they wanted to know what I thought.  My profession was beginning to transform from actions to ideas.

Luckily one of my most important mentors was my Mother.  She spent her career as an Executive Assistant and started to groom me for business early on.  She saw from the inside what made the difference between respected successful leaders and those who were quickly discounted.   From Junior High School on, she encouraged, forced, and cajoled me to participate in public speaking classes and speech competitions.  As painful as it was, she made sure anytime there was a family gathering I was strutted out to give a speech for all of the relatives.   If you thought your niece’s dance routine was trying last Christmas, you should have been there to hear one of my original speeches or my rendition of General  Douglas Mac Arthur’s Farewell Address.  Through public speaking, debate club, rhetoric studies and extemporaneous presentations, I learned to hold my own in a discussion.

Equipped with these tools, I thought it would be effortless in the Boardroom to reap the same praise for my ideas as I graciously received from my aunts and uncles in years before. But instead,  I discovered that I was not the only one with ideas and I certainly wasn’t the only one who knew how to talk about them.  I found my ideas competing in a battle with other manager’s agendas.  Unfortunately, I quickly realized the best idea in the room didn’t always “win the day”.  Often the survival of an idea was dependent on the quality of the presentation.

I would see some colleagues present great thoughts in a utterly boring fashion, only to be flattened by better orators.    Or I would watch the financial gurus present brilliant analysis (spreadsheets were still relatively new) while sideline discussions broke out and everyone clamored impatiently to get to the “bottom line”.  I listened to the post meeting gossip as we left those conference rooms.  And more often than not, Bob who gave a great presentation was being talked about as an “up and comer” and people were questioning what Tom was even talking about.  The dirty little secret was that often the opinions had more to do with persona and presentation skills than with content.  I knew I worked hard on my ideas and realized my career as a Leader depended on getting them on the table, focusing other’s attention on them, and bringing them to life.

I began to study presentations and what I noticed, was how everyone stopped and gave their attention when a picture or graph was put forward.  The graphic captured the conversation and immediately added credibility to the idea being presented.  So, I set to learning everything I could about graphic presentations.  This was in the days before Powerpoint and the only programs available were some mongrels named Freelance and Harvard Graphics.  But their primitiveness forced me to learn about graphic presentation from the ground up.  Armed with my charts and graphs, I walked into the Executive Conference Room and watched my ideas become realities.

WORD CLOUD GRAPHIC

To be a Leader you must be able to build supporters for your ideas.  The most effective way to accomplish this is to be able to “show” the idea to someone and create a picture of it in their minds.  Exceptionally crafted graphics in your presentation allows you to create these visions.  In some ways good graphical presentations have become much more difficult than when I started.  They are no longer unique.  We have become over-run with poor mundane Powerpoint Presentations and the same over-done templates.  The problem is presenters just pop open the program, pick a template and begin a brain dump of bullet points.  Do not confuse fancy bullet points with good graphics.  They are polar opposites.

Good graphics are a visual pictogram of an idea.  They focus attention and bring clarity to the conversation.  When you present a quality graphic on the screen, people stop their shifting, quiet down and stare.  When you try and switch to the next slide, they ask you if you can wait a second while they absorb the image.  They say things like, “that makes sense”, or “I get it now.”   Worthy graphics grab imagination and elevate your message.  They are Billboards for your ideas and they sell you as a Leader!

In your search to improve your graphics begin with simple things.  Look at your spreadsheets.  Do you use color and borders?   Is attention immediately centered on the points you are trying to make as compared to a data dump?  Next start concentrating on the graphs and charts you encounter.  Spend time at a bookstore on a Saturday and page through all of the books in the Management Section.  You will see hundreds of professional examples.  Copy them in a notebook like an art student sketching in a museum; this is your artistic medium.  Get serious about drawing ideas and practice.  Look at the different charts and ask yourself, “How could I use this one or that one.”  Make a scrapbook of the charts you come across.  Duplicate the interesting ones you see in other’s presentations.  Understand and learn the tools necessary to create these charts yourself.  Know what a Venn diagram and PERT chart are.

As an example, I have been doing this for about 25 years and I am still finding new and interesting ways of graphically presenting my thoughts.  A few months ago I ran into a new concept called Word Clouds. And just the other day, I came across this Bubble Chart below.  I can’t wait to incorporate these into my future presentations.

 

BUBBLE CHART

Here is your challenge.  Next time you have a great idea, do not open Word and start writing about it.  And please don’t open Powerpoint and start making bullet points.  Instead take out a blank unlined piece of paper and “draw” your idea.  That s right!  See if you can get your idea graphically displayed on one piece of paper.  If you can do this, you will have something to talk or write about.  Then see if you can make your next presentation without using any bullet points at all.

These days there are great programs to help you make your ideas look professional.  Actually if you stop using bullet points, Powerpoint has strong graphical capabilities most people never use.  In the end, what counts is your ability to get your idea into a picture.  You should be able to make a convincing presentation on a blackboard … or more importantly, on the back on a napkin.

I am amazed at  how when I catch up with former colleagues, they are often able to recount a diagram I drew for them in the past.  Very few talk about the prodigious 50 page White Paper I wrote.  Your ideas are your lifeblood.  You need to create a Vision of them and give them life.  My Mother was right.  Having strong verbal communication skills and being able to write about your ideas is a mandatory leadership requirement.  But if you want to control the room, make a great impression, display your expertise, and get people enthusiastic about your idea, show them a picture.  A Street Smart Leader knows there is a competition for ideas in the world and learns how to guarantee his ideas win!

To make your own Word Cloud go to wordle.net.  Click the create button and type in a group of words and hit “Go”.  The number of times you repeatedly type a word determines its size.  Now just click the randomize button to see dozens of variations.  Have fun!

Related Articles

• Bullets are dead. Long live PowerPoint (zdnet.com)
• How to Avoid Death by Presentation (blogs.hbr.org)

 

Sales vs. Operations – The Epic Battle?

I began my career in Operations and was very good at it.  I took great pride in being able to manage tough projects to successful outcomes.  The logistics of time, manpower, tasks and budget were my domain.  I developed a strong reputation as the Operations Manager who could get extraordinary things done. There was only one problem.  Those damn salespeople. They would say anything and expect for me to somehow make it happen.  Their bosses always seemed to have strong political clout so I knew I couldn’t ignore them completely.  Instead I developed a clever game of “cat and mouse.”  I played well enough to keep the playing field level and survive politically, but didn’t give in to their crazy demands unless it was absolutely necessary.  Frustrated, I managed to pull off even the most impossible of their promises and went on complaining about them.

Then one day, when I was about 24 years old, the District Manager, Dave Oliver,  came up to me and told me he wanted me to take over the open Sales Manager position.  At first I couldn’t believe it.  Why did he think I should do this job?  He explained how well I did with customers selling (a dirty word at the time) our services on sales calls.  Hell, I was just getting out there in front of customers to stop the sales people from giving away the store.  Then he went on to tell me how much he thought of the new Customer Service Program I had put together.  Although pleased with the compliments, I had to finally admit, “You are asking me to manage the people who I have the most problems with and least respect for; the enemy.”

Then Dave said something I would never forget and it changed the course of my career forever.  He sat me down and told me, “You will never progress in business to your potential if you do not understand the Sales side of the fence.”  He even went further to make the point; I not only needed to understand sales but I needed to embrace and be able to lead sales.  He closed me by saying, “You know… your job doesn’t even happen until the sale is made.”  So with no sales experience I became the Sales Manager of 12 Salespeople, 3 of whom were in the Top Ten of the company’s National Rankings.

Upon taking the job, I carved out a small territory for myself where I could learn the craft of cold calling, presenting and the like.  And very quickly I began to see the other side of the fence.  Wow, this wasn’t easy!  The need to differentiate ourselves from the competition and the need to say “Yes” to our customer’s emerging demands was eye-opening.  I found myself guaranteeing customers the same services, that only months before, I cursed salespeople for giving up.  For the first time, I saw what Dave was talking about.  The business didn’t exist so I could perform adeptly at operations.  It existed to serve the needs of our customers.  It didn’t matter what I could do – what mattered was what they needed.  And could we do it better than anyone else.

Years have passed and I have spent much time Leading on both sides of the proverbial Sales vs. Operations fence.  And I have come to one conclusion; there is no fence! There is only the customer.  And whatever side of that fence you think you are on, your job is to find out what your customer needs and deliver it to them better than anyone else.

By now Sales Managers who are reading this are jumping up and down at my tale of conversion, and Operations Managers are hanging their heads deprecating, “We lost another one.”  Neither of you are correct.  You need to understand that Sales is the most important part of business and everyone is in Sales.

Many companies have adopted this ideology and have started calling themselves a “Sales Organization.”   In most situations this grand inspiration falls on the rocks of very poor implementation.  The program is usually announced and the new idiom of “Sales now Rules” takes over.  New Sales Programs are embarked upon  and new organizational structures are  formed.  A power shift is perceived and a power struggle ensues.  Sales Managers embrace their new charter of the Sales Organization with new demands from their “subordinate” Operations Managers.  And Operations slides into a passive aggressive war of the wills, believing once this new-fangled fad passes, they will once again regain the power they rightfully deserve.  Because after all, without them nothing will get done.

 

This supposedly great Sales Organization instead becomes a stalemate where often sales goals are not met and operational quality diminishes.   Who is to blame?  Just ask either side and they will gladly point their finger at the other.  Some companies add to the chaos with Matrix Style organizational structures which scatter and divide responsibility even further.  In the end, rather than a Sales Organization, they have successfully created a No Accountability Organization.

Whether you find yourself on the Sales or Operations side of this epic battle, you need to realize what I came to know many years ago.  Sales isn’t about salespeople or operations people; it is about the customer.  A Sales Organization is one where everyone, regardless of their position, is focused on performing for the customer.

Here is the part that counts: There is the “First Sale” and there is the “Last Sale”.  Too many emerging Sales Organizations put all of their focus on the “First Sale” and coaxing the new customer in the door.  Activities are focused on this goal and the battle lines are drawn as Operations is mandated to “support” Sales better.  But if you are to grow your business, you need to keep your new customer satisfied and develop residual business opportunities.  This is what is meant by the “Last Sale.”  You are re-selling your company to the customer every time you are asked to perform for them.  And in today’s competitive arena, You are only as good as your “Last Sale”.  Very few business models can succeed with a one-time sale.  Residual business creates healthy growth and a profitable business.  So who is really doing the selling?  Everyone! All of the Time!

If it is necessary for Operations to support the “First Sale”, then it is Sales who needs to support the “Last Sale”.  Instead of a Sales Organization, you need to focus on the idea of a Customer Centric Organization.  Both sides (all sides) need to support each other for short and long-term performance.  The idea one side has the upper hand over the other is a foolish power struggle which leaves the door wide open for the competition to beat you.

Your job as a Sales or Operations Leader is to make sure you understand the support your “Teammates” need in making the “First Sale” or the “Last Sale”.  Then you must lead your team, by example, to delivering 100% of what the customer needs.  You must stop talking about how they are setting you up for failure or don’t know what they are doing.  You must stop talking about how upper management has lost the roots of what made this a good company to begin with.  You must aspire to reach new heights and deliver unreasonable results.  You must start performing the most basic function you are responsible for as a Business Leader – GROWTH.  First and Last!

 

So if you are an Operations Manager, get out in the car with the sales people and help them say “Yes!” to customers.  Take a sales training course.  Train them, encourage them and thank them for making that first sale.  And if you are a Sales Manager spend some time in the back office and understand how things really work.  Get involved in offering deliverable solutions.  Understand systematic difficulties, available resources, and thank them for making the “Last Sale”.  Ask each other, “How can we make this customer love us?”

These exchanges are not to understand and accept the inadequacies of your organization.  You can’t win by accepting sales or operational failures.  The goal is to discover the sales and operational challenges your company has in meeting customer’s needs and then work together to bring innovative and paradigm-changing solutions to the table.  Your competition is struggling with the same issues of customer demand.  Solve the problem and jump ahead of them!  If you do this you will discover, as I did from Dave Oliver, that your enemy is not the Sales or Operations group.  They are on your team!  If you want to be a Street Smart Leader, you need to put internal political struggles behind you and discover how to unite and build your company’s team into a first class competitive machine who wins new business and then keeps it growing.

 

Implementing Strategy with a Work Breakdown Structure – WBS

How many meetings do you attend over and over again where the same topics are discussed but nothing changes? If you’re like me, you find these  maddening.  Once we decide we are going to do something, why is it so often the idea is left to die on the conference table? Great ideas that can make a constructive difference to our business are just buried with the assumption our idea is now working because we talked about it.  It is D.O.A. and we do not even realize it!

Here is why.  Ideas cannot be implemented!  Yes those strokes of brilliance, no matter how earth shattering, no matter how dazzling, cannot be executed.  It would be like saying, let’s make a great dinner tonight, and then going over to the table, sitting down and waiting for the food to show up.  Your idea starves to death.

Great ideas, by themselves, are useless.  Everyone has them (or thinks they do).  The “genius” lies not in the idea but in the ability to implement one.  Your job is to take that flat-lined idea and breathe life into it so it can walk and talk and become an agent for change in your company.  We call this, “making things happen”.  With smaller ideas, you usually need only to take disciplined action for implementation.  Larger ideas, often called Strategies, take a more complex approach if we are to see them survive and thrive.

We have been taught to start by taking our Strategy and establishing goals, understanding objectives, and identifying the initiatives.  We have all heard of these things, and have used them.  If these traditional techniques are effective, then why are our Big Ideas and Strategies still on meeting agendas from year to year?

 

Years ago, when I was serving as the U.S. President of a large multinational, we created a Big Idea.  Our new Strategy was going to significantly shift our market segmentation through a redefined sales focus and new product introduction.  If successful, our strategy would deliver additional gross profit without any increase in costs.  It would turn around the financial performance of this “barely getting by” company.  We set objectives and tactics, knew we had to hire different salespeople, establish a new structure, re-train, revamp our marketing plan, develop new compensation plans, the new product, etc.

I was very excited regarding our new Strategy.  I knew we had developed a breakthrough idea and I was ready to go.  I prepared my slides, boarded an airplane and took off to present the plan to my boss, the North American CEO.  I delivered an inspired and passionate presentation.  Instead of the enthusiastic reaction I had expected, my boss looked at my slides on the table as if they were dead already.  He asked me one question, “How do you plan to execute this?”  With a little sweat forming on my brow, I quickly started to explain how I was planning a meeting with my Vice Presidents and Regional Managers.  They would be so excited with the great idea; they would take it back to the field and implement it.  We would have monthly progress reports and follow ups.  He stopped me, looked at the slides again, looked back up at me and said, “You need to take a Project Management Course.”  Then he left the room.

My flight back home was a frustrating trip, to say the least.  I knew he completely understood the Strategy.  We had talked about it together for months.  He was one of the smartest men I had ever worked for, so why wasn’t he excited we were moving forward with this plan?  I was the President, what did I need with a Project Management course?  I’ve been getting things done my entire career. I could make this work.  I wasn’t erecting a building or an aircraft carrier.  Project Management?  What did that have to do with anything?  In turmoil, I walked up and down the airplane aisle, took out paper and wrote everything I recollected from the meeting and drew up some new diagrams.  I knew there was something I was missing here.

Before we landed, it came to me.  He wasn’t questioning the Strategy at all.  But he didn’t think I had a chance in hell of executing such a wide sweeping imperative plan which would challenge our culture and traditional mindset in an absolutely new way.  So after getting over the fact I had traveled over twelve hours to get a two-line response, I hypothesized, maybe those two lines were pretty important.  And yes, the next day I enrolled in a pretty intense Project Management training program.

I learned many things about Project Management including, critical paths, sequencing, resource deployment, task constraints, GANTT and PERT charts, etc.  But the jewel I took away to facilitate implementation of our Strategy was the Work Breakdown Structure or WBS.  I learned a vital methodology for getting things done, especially immense and complex strategies.

Remember, Ideas and Strategies cannot be implemented. So you must find a way to “breakdown” the Strategy into “actionable accountable tasks”.  Many people develop the Objectives and Tactics we discussed above.  But they don’t necessarily connect the dots and pull the Strategy together.  They are often times just smaller disassociated ideas which also go nowhere.  You need to get past the Idea and get into the action.  A comprehensive integrated plan of attack that will create action and accountability must be developed.

At first glance a WBS looks like an Organizational Chart.  You begin with the Strategy in the top box and then list the objectives immediately underneath in a branch-like structure.  Then you take the objectives and break them down into initiatives.  Like the traditional model above we still aren’t at a place where action can be taken!

 

Next you take each initiative and breakdown the actual “actionable” task that someone is going to do.  You breakdown these with as much detail as possible, working further and further down the branch..  When you feel you have broken down all of the actionable tasks ask, “If I do all of these, will the box above on the chart be completed”.  If the answer is no, return and put more work into your WBS.  Go over and over it until there are no holes.

Here is an example of breaking down just one initiative.

 

Now here is the WBS secret formula.  The items on the bottom of each branch are called “Terminal Elements”.  Since Terminal Elements are “actionable”, this is where responsibilities and timeframes for delivering results are assigned.  As the results come in, they are checked off in the Terminal Element boxes as complete.  Accountability is driven at the Terminal Element Level.

If each terminal element is accomplished the next highest box above (the parent) is completed.  Do this across the entire chart and everything continues to roll up completing your project.  What does this mean?  All that is necessary to implement a big idea Strategy is execution of the smallest Terminal Elements.  The Terminal Elements become your deliverables.  And if your WBS is built correctly, they are all that is needed.  The rest of the chart can be in the background.

 

Practice! Practice! Practice! It takes practice to build proper WBS charts.  It takes practice to develop your career.  I have been at WBS charts for over fifteen years and it is still the first tool I reach for when I need to implement great ideas.  Start using them for everything.  Your WBS charts will get better and better.  Make a WBS for doing the laundry, washing your car, or preparing the meal we mentioned earlier.  I am often amazed how much time managers will spend practicing their golf swing or teaching their kid to kick a soccer ball.  And how little time they spend practicing their real craft (which by the way, most likely paid for the golf clubs and soccer ball).  Practice building WBS charts until they are second nature; until they are the foundation for how you think about implementation.

In case you are wondering how that first WBS application turned out for me.  I had our entire management team take the Project Management course.  We built a strong sales program and were successful in shifting our market segmentation.  The resulting 7% growth per job created a margin climb which increased pretax profit from .9% to 5.2%.  Using these implementation methods we took an underperforming company which was in the bottom six of the 42 world-wide companies and brought it into the top eight performers within three years.  A twelve-hour flight, two lines of hard-hitting wisdom … Project Management for a President, a Strategy; who would have thought?  What a great mentoring moment for me.

Learn to use a WBS with expertise and you will go to the “head of the class” and become a true professional implementor, a rare specialty among most Management Teams.  Put your WBS on the wall in your office so everyone can see the plan and the progress you are making.  You’ll be surprised at the attention it receives.  You will be known as a Street Smart Leader who can take those dead ideas lying on the conference room table and give them life.  Once you see those ideas walking and talking throughout your organization, you will have something to be proud of!

for more info on Work Breakdown Structures see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_breakdown_structure

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Strategic Issues vs Critical Issues

Some managers confuse being busy with getting things done.   Or worse, they confuse getting things done with making progress.  These have nothing to do with each other.  It is easy to be busy.  Advancing a Team towards the achievement of company goals takes a Leader.  The difference between activity and results can often be a product of the nature of issues receiving focus.  It can be in understanding the difference between Critical Issues and Strategic Issues.

All activity is not equal.  To gain long-term success, managers need to examine the activities they are dedicating time towards and determine whether they are “running in place” or aggressively moving forward.

Let’s start with understanding Critical Issues.  Critical Issues are those problems that if you are successful solving,  return right back to where they should have been in the first place.  Read this again…“right back to where they should have been”.

Typically you are fixing something’s or someone’s deficiency.  The pattern moves from a problem occurring, to problem resolution, then back to where things started.  If you’re incessantly dealing with Critical Issues,  you are likely feeling very reactive either “putting out fires” or “draining swamps”.  And feeling overwhelmed by the lack of time to make meaningful improvements.

Replacing an employee who has been fired or has quit is a good example of a Critical Issue.  The employee leaves then you: have multiple meetings; get their workload covered; begin interviewing; hire the replacement; train the replacement; deal with the people issues of adding someone new to the team; redistribute the workload; the new employee begins performing. All this “busy” work and where is the situation?  Right back where it started.

A strong manager has to be adept at dealing with Critical Issues.  They always exist and can hit in a variety of unexpected ways.  But taking too much pride in yourself, as a Critical Issues problem solver, can be a dangerous trap.

 

Strategic Issues, on the other hand, advance your company to a better place from where it started.  Strategic accomplishments improve your Team.  They increase productivity, competitiveness, selling results, profitability. These are the initiatives that will make a definitive difference for your company.

It is important to start comprehending the key strategic directives of your organization.  Then you must find a means to spend quality time with your Leadership to understand and set specific goals for your team which will form the building blocks for driving strategy forward.  These are your Strategic Issues.  Own them!

Examples of Strategic Issues are: creating a new marketing campaign, developing a more streamlined process, a new sales deployment strategy, or improving customer service and exceeding the capabilities of your competition. They each take your company to a higher level of achievement.  They put the company in a new place ahead of where it began.

 

Again, I am not suggesting you can ignore the Critical Issues.  Quite the contrary, you must efficiently and expeditiously deal with them and put them behind.  Don’t look for too much praise for fixing broken things.  Your responsibility is to run your business unit proactively and with incomparable quality so these problems do not come about in the first place. I have dealt with managers who are constantly running around in crisis mode playing the role of Superhero, beating their chest, and claiming the place couldn’t survive without them.  In due time their ineffectiveness shines through.  It becomes apparent to their Leadership that someone with so many problems to solve may be the problem themselves.

Realizing the difference between Strategic and Critical Issues provides the capacity to really make a difference and distinguish yourself.  Think about this.  A great Street Smart Leader looks for the opportunity to take a Critical Issue and develop it into a Strategic Result.  In doing so, they are able to leap past problem resolution and find a new opportunity to advance the company to a higher level of performance.  Turning a Critical Issue into a Strategic Result creates true value and progress for your organization.  These are the exceptional turn-around situations you can build a career upon.  They are the rungs of your ladder.

Let’s take the Critical Issue of replacing an employee mentioned earlier.  Imagine instead, you were able to develop a new streamlined process allowing the restructuring of your group while producing a better quality deliverable without replacing the employee at all.  There is a Strategic achievement!  Now you can take a bow!

 

Begin using this knowledge by taking out your task list, notebook, priority matrix, or whatever you use to keep organized.  Then next to each entry write the letter ”C” (in red) for Critical Issues and “S” (in green) for Strategic Issues.  Even use red and green folders for your work on these issues.  If you only have “C’s”, I would suggest you take a hard look at your company’s strategy and re-dedicate yourself to making a difference.  Look at your “S’s”.  I bet you have been meaning to get to several of them for quite some time.  It is easy to put these on the back burner when you’re in problem solving mode.  Don’t let this happen.  Good intentions are just that – intentions.  Leaders demand results!  Make sure you are spending time each week advancing Strategic Issues.  And remember to rack your brain and dig out the opportunities concealed in Critical Issues.  With Strategic Focus you can break the pattern, stop “running in place”, and leap forward.

Strategic Issues are the differentiating factor in business.  As you move up the chain of command and gain additional responsibility, you will see your task list become filled with more and more Strategic Issues. They are worth your extra time, even if it requires late nights and Saturday mornings. To be a truly successful Leader, you must adopt a “No Excuses” attitude towards accomplishing Strategic Issues.   Take the leap!