Archive for the ‘Leadership’ Category
Measuring Success
Posted in Leadership, Recruitment on August 11th, 2011
I have always been interested in the concept or possibility that success traits are inherent in the DNA of some. This article by John Leher makes an interesting case for one specific trait, grit.
E is for Empathy
Posted in Communication, Customer Service, Leadership, Vision on March 16th, 2009
The Northwest Airlines website would not let me complete the payment process for a flight I was booking. Frustrated, I picked up the phone to complete the transaction. Northwest added to the frustration by informing me there would be an additional $20 fee for the privilege of talking to a person.
This wasn’t my first poor customer service experience from Northwest or Delta or whatever it may evolve into next year. Cutbacks in services, staff reductions and just boneheaded management styles have left us awash in miserable to non -existent customer service.
I’ve always had a special place in my heart for the customer service team – hard workers who historically are one of the lowest paid. An article in the Boston Globe reminded me that some CEO’s get it.
Take Paul Levy for example. He is the guy who runs Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The moment had come when pink slips were inevitable. So he took time out and just watched some of the 8,000 people who work for Beth Israel.
As Kevin Cullen, a Globe Columnist noted, “He stood at the nurses’ stations, watching the transporters, the people who push the patients around in wheelchairs. He saw them talk to the patients, put them at ease, make them laugh. He saw that the people who push the wheelchairs were practicing medicine.
He noticed the same when he poked his head into the rooms and watched as the people who deliver the food and empty the trashcans chatted up the patients and their families.”
Paul Levy did something incredible. He did something right for his employees. He did something great for his hospital and the bottom line. Levy stood in front of an auditorium filled with anxious employees and said, “I want to run an idea by you that I think is important, and I’d like to get your reaction to it,” Levy began. “I’d like to do what we can to protect the lower-wage earners – the transporters, the housekeepers, the food service people. A lot of these people work really hard, and I don’t want to put an additional burden on them.
“Now, if we protect these workers, it means the rest of us will have to make a bigger sacrifice,” he continued. “It means that others will have to give up more of their salary or benefits.”
He had barely gotten the words out of his mouth when the auditorium erupted in applause. Thunderous, heartfelt, sustained applause.
The consensus was that the workers don’t want anyone to get laid off and are willing to give up pay and benefits to make sure no one does. A nurse said her floor voted unanimously to forgo a 3 percent raise. A guy in finance who got laid off from his last job at a hospital in Rhode Island suggested working one less day a week. Another nurse said she was willing to give up some vacation and sick time. A respiratory therapist suggested eliminating bonuses.
Levy did the right thing to help people in hard times. He also did the right thing in delivering great customer service. It is very often the front line that makes the biggest impression on customers. They are the ones who hear the problems first hand. And when given the tools and training they can be the ones to prevent a problem from becoming a lost customer.
Cullen writes this about Paul Levy, “he is trying something revolutionary, radical, maybe even impossible: He is trying to convince the people who work for him that the E in CEO can sometimes stand for empathy.”
I Can See Clearly Now
Tags: commitment, jim collins, Leadership, Peter Drucker, right thing, standards of excellence, Vision, warren bennis
Posted in Higher Education, Internal Communication, Leadership, Non-Profit, Recruitment, Vision on November 24th, 2008
I can see clearly now, the rain is gone,
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sun-Shiny day.
This Johnny Nash song (listen here) always picks me up. So when I heard it the other day, I took a timeout from the task at hand. The lyrics got me to thinking about how leadership’s vision can help everyone “see clearly”.
Authors Jim Collins, Peter Drucker and James Burns to name a few, talk much about getting the right people on the bus in the right seats. Jim Collins specifically identifies one key trait that was held by all successful leaders, humility.
One definition of leadership for your consideration is that of Warren Bennis, Ph.D., “Managers are people who do things right, while leaders are people who do the right thing.”
Doing the right thing for our businesses, employees, families and ourselves is not mutually exclusive. In fact, I would suggest that they are inextricably woven together. It defines the overall leadership quality of an individual. When you can achieve that balance in the leadership paradigm you have reached the leadership equivalent of nirvana.
Advancing the right thing requires effective vision and the ability to communicate. Henry Kissinger said, “If you do not know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.” It’s important to note that your vision is not the same as the company’s mission. The vision is where you are going. The mission describes who the organization is and what it does.
Behavioral research scientist and author Burt Nanus suggest that there are four characteristics of effective vision.
Attracts Commitment and Energizes People
People are willing, even eager, to commit to worthwhile projects. An effective vision inspires people by transcending the bottom line.
Creates Meaning for Followers
People look for and find meaning in their work lives. When groups and organizations share a vision, individuals see themselves not just as sales clerks or assembly workers or whatever else their job demands, but as part of a team providing a valuable product or service.
Vision Establishes a Standard of Excellence
Most people want to do a good job. A shared commitment to excellence provides a standard for measuring performance. Establishing a standard of excellence, helps followers identify expectations and provides a model for the distinctive competence of a group or organization.
Bridges the Present and the Future
By bridging the present and future, an effective vision transcends the status quo by linking what is happening now with what should happen in the future. This is why many are calling Barack Obama a transformational politician. His rhetoric has consistently linked the present with the future.
As James Collins and Jerry Porras explain in their book, Built to Last, organizations with a well-articulated vision that permeates the company are most likely to prosper and have long-term success. And isn’t that what we all want?
Look all around, there’s nothin’ but blue skies
Look straight ahead, nothin’ but blue skies
Getting Focused in a Down Economy
Tags: Leadership, marketing budget, marketing focus, sales team, Vision
Posted in Business Development, Leadership, Marketing, Relationship Marketing, Strategic Marketing Plan on November 3rd, 2008
I’m tired of all the negative news about the economy. We can wallow in self-pity or point fingers. The bottom line is negative energy is detrimental to your health and that of your company.
If your business is off 50%, that means 50% of the market is still buying. Focus on that segment while staying top of mind with those that are in a holding pattern. That means marketing and the business development team have to retool themselves.
It Starts With You
When the waters are choppy, everyone is looking to see that you have a strategic vision. Let them know that you’ve navigated these waters before. Let everyone know the challenges ahead and then remind them that they are the very people that can get it done. Be encouraging, consistent and communicative.
Sales Team
Narrow your focus to broaden your opportunity. The marketing budget and team needs to focus on opportunities that you have at least a 50% chance of winning. Look at how presidential candidates allocate their budget. If they have no chance in a given state, they cut their losses and move on.
RFP
What’s better for the company, spending three days on an RFP for a prospect that you haven’t developed a relationship? Or spending three days networking at events, writing white papers and seeking referrals from clients?
Andrew Sobel, an author and leading authority on client relationships offer these 8 tips for avoiding premature proposals.
- You are certain this is the right client and issue for you and your firm.
- You have a thorough understanding of the issues you are being asked to address, and also a clear sense of the business goals or needs which are influencing them.
- You and the client have agreed on the specific objectives of the work and the outcomes that are sought.
- You understand the client’s buying process.
- You have spoken to or met with the economic buyer.
- You understand what is most important to the prospect/client, in other words, what particular value they are seeking.
- You have discussed the essential elements of your proposal with the prospect/client
- You have an agreement to discuss the proposal with the prospect/client after you submit it.
Marketing
Set aside those projects that aren’t going to deliver measurable results over the next 12 months. Flexible and nimble marketers will turn up a much better base of prospects.
Comb the trades, blogs, and books for relevant articles about your target industries.
Share your knowledge. There is a tremendous body of evidence that proves the value of being a thought leader.
Make a concerted effort to communicate with your current and past customers. When was the last time you communicated with a client who did business with you 3-5 years ago?
Messaging must be on target. Are you communicating what you can do for the prospect? It’s great that you have vertical experience. What the prospect wants to know is what pain did you solve and is it relevant to their issues?
These are challenging times. This is a time that leadership, mentoring and consistent internal communication can help keep you moving forward. Perhaps, most importantly, it is time to get focused. Apple’s Steve Jobs had this to say about focus. “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.”
Leadership, Clarity of Message
Tags: clarity, Communication, discipline, diversity, ethics, four agreements, good to great, Leadership, motivation, values
Posted in Communication, Internal Communication, Leadership on September 26th, 2008
Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success.
If every job description was as direct as this one by explorer Ernest Shackleston in an 1890 job ad for the first Antarctic expedition there would be no issue of getting the right people on the bus and most likely in the right seats. However, contemporary business dictates that leaders possess an intuitive understanding of the human psyche and the compelling motivational issues of each member of the executive team.
Understanding the individual executives motivation of beliefs, values, interests, fears, and moral positions provide leaders the strategic insight to maximize executives skills and to ensure that they occupy the correct seat on the bus. In an article on Motivation and Leadership (Leadership.org), a person’s motivation depends upon two things:
1) The strength of certain needs.
For example, you are hungry, but you must have a task completed by a nearing deadline. If you are starving you will eat. If you are slightly hungry you will finish the task at hand.
2) The perception that taking a certain action will help satisfy those needs.
For example, you have two burning needs -The desire to complete the task and the desire to go to lunch. Your perception of how you view those two needs will determine which one takes priority. If you believe that you could be fired for not completing the task, you will probably put off lunch and complete the task. If you believe that you will not get into trouble or perhaps finish the task in time, then you will likely go to lunch.
So how do Level 5 leaders align human resources with the strategic goals of the company? Understanding the motivation of the individual is key. Additionally, there are four tactical hiring strategies.
The first is to realize that a great organization embraces diversity. This is a tremendous challenge because from the moment we are born, we learn about our environment, the world, and ourselves. Author Miguel Ruiz notes in the book The Four Agreements, “Families, friends, peers, books, teachers, idols, and others influence us on what is right and what is wrong based on what previous generations told them.” These early learning’s are deeply rooted within us and shape how we interact and how we view the contributions of people different from us. People who embrace diversity are right candidates for choice seats on the bus.
The second hiring strategy is communication. A quote attributed to Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe says, “No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.” Effective communication of responsibilities and measurement metrics ensures that the right applicants will fill the job description for each given seat.
The third hiring strategy is self-discipline ¬- the self-discipline to wait, to be patient and conduct a thorough search until the right candidate is found. The second component of the self-discipline strategy is relative to the prospective executive. According to Jim Collins in Good to Great “great companies hire self-disciplined people who didn’t need to be managed”. Thus they managed the system not the people.
The fourth hiring strategy to ensure that the right people are in the right seats is to hire candidates who look beyond task and seek to find their unique contribution to the success of the company. They are not necessarily concerned with where the bus is headed today, but more with how can they keep the bus moving towards it ultimate destination.
Getting the right people in the right seats requires that a Level 5 leader be part psychologist, humorist, teacher, philosopher, and pragmatist. It requires a person who has the vision of greatness and the willingness to achieve that regardless of the time it takes to get there. Getting the right people in the right seats requires an entrepreneurial environment where executives are rewarded for risk taking within the framework of the long-term goal. Leadership is a process by which a person influences others to accomplish an objective and directs the organization in a way that makes it more cohesive and coherent.
Kenneth Boulding in The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society states, “Leaders carry out this process (inspiring executives) by applying their beliefs, values, ethics, character, knowledge and skills.” Mahatma Gandhi said, “Every moment of your life is infinitely creative and the universe is endlessly bountiful. Just put forth a clear enough request, and everything your heart desires must come to you.” For the Level 5 leader the ultimate quest for filling the seats correctly is the clarity of message.
A Smile is the Shortest Distance Between Two People.
Tags: laughter, morale, productivity, revenue, workplace
Posted in Business Development, Communication, Employer Branding, Internal Communication, Leadership on September 10th, 2008
Recession? Economic slowdown? Market correction? It doesn’t matter how you categorize the current economy. The fact remains; it is very difficult to find anyone who is enthusiastic about the current market conditions. The resulting pressure to be more productive and profitable has never been more difficult.
One often-overlooked tool to aid productivity is Humor.
A study by Dr. David Abramis at Cal State Long Beach concludes “people who have fun on the job are more creative, more productive, better decision makers and get along better with co-workers. They also have fewer absentee, late and sick days than people who aren’t having fun.”
Laughter releases endorphins that are more powerful than morphine. How much more energetic and engaged would the workplace be if everyone enjoyed a daily endorphin high?
Integrating humor in the workplace is a strategy that enhances employee morale, enhances the customer service experience and re-energizes us as individuals and as a team.
Launch a Humor-Relations Program
A humor relations program starts at the top, doesn’t require a large budget and engages everyone within the organization.
First and foremost consider the Power and Purpose of Wit.
P-Place- is this right place and setting
P-Person – Is this the right person? Humor must be appropriate to all audiences, those in the room and those not in the room. One never knows the diversity, social or historical issues of the extended family.
W-Workplace-Does this fit with workplace ethics, rules and agreements?
I-Integrity-Does it uplift the integrity of others and myself?
T – Timing-How is my timing? Both comedic and professional?
Implementation Ideas
1. Even school administrators recognize the importance of recess. Breaks/recess is a great stress reliever. It allows employees to gain a new perspective and reduces boredom of tedious task.
2. Encourage customer contact representatives to employ humor. Southwest Airlines is a continual leader in overall customer satisfaction surveys. They employ a program encouraging professional yet playful attitude by its flight attendants. Example “Thank you ladies and gentlemen for flying with SWA today. I know all of you will want to give a big applause to a very special person on board today. He is 90 years old and making his first flight. Please join me in welcoming our pilot on board.”
3. Allow pets in the office occasionally. The documentation on the therapeutic effect of pets is endless.
4. Create a funny moments email from senior level executives – it shows that they are human, vulnerable and approachable both to internal and external customers.
5. Encourage bizarre random acts of customer kindness. Encourage staff to go beyond the normal. Give them perks to give unhappy customers. Give them rewards for providing alternative solutions.
6. Encourage people to laugh. Again, who would not want an office full of endorphin filled people enhancing the customer experience?
Phase in small components of a humor campaign – then observe the changes. Slowly you’ll find ways to integrate humor specific to your organization. Happy, productive people drive revenue. And that’s something you can smile about.
Growth Through Outsourcing and Diversity
Tags: diversity, execution, outsourcing
Posted in Globalization, Leadership on June 5th, 2008
Discussing growth opportunities at a Honeywell plant in Freeport, Illinois authors, of the book Execution, Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan make the case for outsourcing and diversity as a vehicle for growth. Referencing a competent but static work force, Bossidy and Charan comment on recommendations to the plant manager, “He had to get a mix in people so they didn’t all go brain-dead talking to each other. He could not have so many plants. He had to do more outsourcing to get his cost competitive. And he had to integrate his systems”.
This advice is especially valuable for small to medium size companies or a division such as is the case of Honeywell. Jennifer Mears author of the article SMBs: Outsourcing a growth tool for Network World notes “Companies with 100 to 499 employees now account for just 7.8% of the $50.5 billion business-process outsourcing market, but that number is expected to grow to more than 8% of a $78.8 billion market by 2009.
Small business that execute this strategy will find that they may in fact be more nimble and better able to respond to the changing needs in the marketplace in areas that larger corporations have ignored. Mears points out that smaller companies “have built their businesses by focusing on small and medium businesses, that big-name providers such as Electronic Data Systems and IBM have yet to carve out a niche in” (NetworkWorld, 2006).
The outsourcing of resources also increases the opportunity to integrate diversity of people and ideas into an organization. “To succeed, companies will need to embrace the available workforce in its entirety – with its rich texture of age, race, religion, socio-economic background, etc. Without that, the likelihood of melding a successful pool of talent to drive the company into the future is in question’
Outsourcing and diversity can drive growth but not without the key ingredient of execution by leadership. As Bossidy and Charan comment about the role of the leader in executing this strategy, “She has to not only announce the initiative, but to define it clearly and define its importance to the organization”.
