Archive for the ‘Team Effectiveness’ Category

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What Makes a Good Boss?

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

Almost 25 years ago, an article in ‘Business’ magazine described the ten qualities employees most wanted their bosses to possess.  A lot has changed in the world since then, but these (with some updating by me) still look good.

1. Establishing organization clarity

a.  Establishing clear goals and standards

b.  Communicating group (not just individual) goals

c.  Involving people in setting goals (not just dictating them)

d.  Delegate responsibility clearly

2.  Encouraging open, two-way communication

a.  Open and candid when dealing with people

b.  Honest, direct and to the point

c.  Establishing a climate of openness and trust

3.  Willingness to coach and support people

a.  Supportive and helpful

b. Working constructively (and decisively) to correct performance problems

c.  Going to bat for subordinates

4.  Providing ‘objective’ recognition

a. Recognize good performance more often than criticizing performance problems

b. Tying rewards to excellence of job performance (vs seniority or personal relationships)

5.  Establishing ongoing controls

a.  Following up in a timely manner

b.  Giving ‘real-time’ feedback on how subordinates are doing

6.  Selecting (and keeping) the right people

a.  Both bringing the ‘right’ people on and exiting those who don’t fit

7.  Understanding the financial implications of decisions

8.  Encouraging innovation and new ideas

a.  Surprisingly, this was seen as important regardless of how conservative or traditional the company

9. Making decisions and ensuring the organization executes successfully

10.  Demonstrating high levels of integrity

a.  Doing the ‘right’ thing, both internally an externally

Anything you would add or omit?  Which one is the most important to you?

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Keeping the Right People on the Bus

Monday, June 21st, 2010

I’m the guest author in the June edition of the STRe Solutions Newsletter. You can find the entire newsletter here, or read my article below.

What’s your secret for keeping your best employees engaged and motivated?

In the classic business book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t, Jim Collins states that to be effective, organizations need to first get “the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and then figure out where to drive.” In essence, who you have on your team, is more important for the organization’s success than where you are headed and how you get there.

While I agree that getting the right people on the bus is as critical today as it was back in 2001 when “Good to Great” was first published, today’s leaders are faced with more complicated challenges.

Most companies have done a good job hiring highly talented, super-smart people. Especially in today’s economy, finding the “who” is not the problem. Where they struggle is keeping them engaged and focused on the “where” and the “how”. To say it another way, you can have strong individual players, but unless there is an overarching purpose that requires them to become a team, little will be accomplished.

For this to happen, organizations need to be two things.

First, they need to be smart. Smart organizations have the basics: Sales, Finance, HR, R&D, Product Development, IT, Services, Support, etc… — all the bits and pieces that keep a company running. The truth is most companies are plenty smart. In today’s world though, that’s not enough.

Organizations have to be more than smart — they have to be healthy as well.

Healthy organizations have low politics (not no politics — but politics that don’t get in the way). They have high morale, engaged employees, and no surprise, they have high productivity. Another thing I see in a healthy organization is a lack of confusion about where the company is going and how what every employee is doing fits.

I saw this time and time again in my 13 years with Federal Express where employees would regularly do amazing things to ensure that our customers were getting the service they expected — delivering critical payroll checks in a blizzard and completing customer pick-ups during the Loma Prieta earthquake are just two of many examples.

The trap that many companies fall into is that you can’t do one without the other and you can’t think about them separately. For organizations to be effective, you must embed the smart stuff with the healthy stuff, keeping the right people engaged and productive.

Employee engagement happens when four things occur:

* The Leadership Team is aligned and cohesive
* There is absolute clarity about the organization’s direction (strategy)
* Every person in the organization understands how what they do fits with the strategy
* Organization policies and practices support the above (this does not happen nearly enough)

One of my favorite quotes is from General Norman Schwarzkopf, who I heard speak not long after Desert Storm. He said: “Great leaders never tell people how to do their jobs. They set the goals and establish the framework. Lousy leaders think they know it all, and all the while, their organizations sit there, aquiver with potential.”

What are some of your best practices for keeping the right people on the bus? I’d love to hear them in the comments below.

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Best Business Advice

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

Once a month, I have the opportunity to spend a half day with about 10 CEO’s from a variety of different businesses, talking about issues they are facing and sharing perspectives. It’s a great group who really care about each other and offer thoughtful, insightful advice. Last month, on a whim, I asked them to share the best business advice they had ever received. Here’s what they had to say:

“Leaders Lead”
“Don’t do Retail”
“Don’t take it personally”
“Hire slow, fire fast”
“Hire people with good judgment”
“Don’t try to do everything”
“Make sure you know your cash position on Friday”
“You’ve got to do what’s right”
“Keep the ‘main thing’ the main thing”

What’s yours?

Cheers,

Amelia

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Posted in Leadership, Team Effectiveness, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Business Week Debate: The recession is no time to worry about employee engagement. Pro or con?

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

Business Week recently posted a debate starting with the premise that a recession is no time focus on employee engagement.

The ‘Pro’ position stated that organizations should concentrate on the business, not the workers.

The ‘Con’ position stated that employees need a morale boost now more than ever.

Here’s the comment I added:

Healthy companies understand that employee engagement is a critical component to their success.

When employees are not engaged, more than likely the leadership team is not engaged either.

Engagement happens when four things occur:

1. The Leadership Team is aligned and cohesive
2. There is absolute clarity about organization direction (strategy)
3. Every person in the organization understands how what they do ‘fits’ with the strategy
4. Organization policies and practices support the above (this does not happen nearly enough)

One of my favorite quotes is from General Norman Schwartzkopf, who I heard speak not long after Desert Storm.

He said: “Great leaders never tell people how to do their jobs. They set the goals and establish the framework. Lousy leaders think they know it all, and all the while, their organizations sit there, aquiver with potential.”

What do you think? Cheers, Amelia

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Posted in Leadership, Team Effectiveness | 2 Comments »

“How Would You Know?”

Sunday, May 17th, 2009

That’s the question posed to Jim Collins (best-selling author of ‘Good to Great’, ‘Built to Last’, etc.) that became the inspiration for his latest book, How the Mighty Fall.

In the cover story of the May 25th edition of Business Week, Collins identifies the FIVE STAGES of corporate decline, and how organizations at (almost) any stage can identify where they are and correct. In the article, Collins goes into these in greater depth, but here they are briefly:

• STAGE 1: HUBRIS BORN OF SUCCESS, or success borne from entitlement. In this stage, companies attribute their success to their knowledge and ‘smarts’, failing to understand the real reasons why they have done so well, including the acknowledgement of luck and chance.

• STAGE 2: UNDISCIPLINED PURSUIT OF MORE. Here companies begin to compromise on their values or lose sight of who they really are, in the pursuit of the latest ‘big’ thing. In this stage, expansion is undisciplined and few (if any) restrictions are put on adding more and more infrastructure and resources.

• STAGE 3: DENIAL OF RISK AND PERIL, which begins when warning signs begin to appear, but are discounted. Positive data is amplified and ambiguous data is either neutralized or looked at in its most positive light. The light at the end of the tunnel is daylight ahead for sure. Another sign of this stage is when leaders choose to blame external factors for failures versus accepting responsibility.

• STAGE 4: GRASPING FOR SALVATION, or grasping for the ‘silver bullet’ solution. By then the signals of decline are visible to all and the company jolts around reactively In some cases, they bring in a high profile CEO to turn things around; in others, a bold new product or ‘life-saving’ acquisition (think AOL/Times Warner). Here Collins believes the solution is not more but less – he says, “If you want to reverse decline, be rigorous about what not to do”.

• STAGE 5: CAPITULATION TO IRRELEVANCE OR DEATH, when the continuous setbacks and false starts become too much, and the organization loses its spirit, becomes irrelevant or, in the most extreme cases, is gone forever.

According to Collins, while it is possible to survive and even thrive from the depths of Stage 4 (“Our research indicates that organizational decline is largely self-inflicted, and recovery largely within our own control”), once an organization gets to Stage 5, there is no turning back.

When you think about the challenges/opportunities your organization is currently facing, how would you know…?

Cheers,

Amelia

P.S. At the end of the article, Collins uses Ann Mulcahy as an example of a leader who pulled her company out of the depths of Stage 4, when most had given Xerox up as lost. See my previous blog for some additional perspectives on how she did it.

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Jim Collins on Thriving in 2009

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

Inc editor, Bo Burlingame (author of Small Giants, a great read about companies that choose to be great vs big), interviews Jim Collins (author of Good to Great, Built to Last, etc.) in this month’s edition:
How to Thrive in 2009. It’s a long article, but well worth the read. Here are some of my favorite bits:

Asked about whether he is pessimistic about the future:

JC – No, it is only in times like these that you get a chance to show your strength. In the end, I think we need to have absolute faith in our ability to deal with whatever is thrown at us. And we need to have a complete, realistic paranoia that a lot can be thrown at us. It’s our ability to put those two contradictory ideas together: We need to be prepared for what we can’t predict and, at the same time, have this total, unwavering faith that we will find a way to deal with all of it. And I believe we will. I don’t believe the world will treat us well, but we will figure out how to do very well.

On why some entrepreneurs are so successful:

JC – …think about the leading entrepreneurs of the past three decades: Steve Jobs, Ken Iverson, Herb Kelleher, Anita Roddick, Yvon Chouinard, Howard Schultz, Jeff Bezos. What jumps out at you as being consistent across all those people?

BB – The larger purpose of what they were doing.

JC – Right. They defined success on a very big scale. For Steve Jobs, it was about much more than selling computers. For Yvon Chouinard, more than clothing. For Anita Roddick, more than cosmetics. For Howard Schultz, more than coffee. For Jeff Bezos, more than online retailing.

When asked if the basic principles of building a successful business have changed….

JC – I would say that the basic principles have largely not changed, but the skills are always changing. For example, nothing would suggest that the importance of the who has changed. If anything, our turbulence research reinforces the idea that the most important decisions are always who decisions. Whether you’re running a business in 1812, 1886, 1925, 1950, 1975, 2000, 2050, I see nothing to contradict the principle that who comes first and what comes second, for a very simple reason: If you cannot predict the what, you have to be able to do a good job with the who, because the what is going to be constantly shifting.

BB – What exactly do you mean by doing a good job with the who?

JC – Do you have a culture of people who A. share a set of values, B. have very clear responsibilities, and C. perform? Those who build a culture around those ideas are building upon something that is largely unchangeable.

He goes on to say that now more than ever, it’s critical that individuals (and teams – AT) need to be continually learning and making clear choices about what you are and are not going to do.

Anything here resonate with your business? I’d love your thoughts and comments. Thanks, Amelia

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Leadership Observations from the new eBay CEO

Friday, April 10th, 2009

Last Sunday’s New York Times had an interesting interview with John Donahoe, the new CEO of eBay. In it he talks about leadership (you can’t change someone – only help them help themselves), tough questions for job candidates (when have you failed and what did you learn), the importance of open, objective feedback (it’s okay to say thanks but no thanks) and the need at eBay for ‘agile development’.
He also referenced the following quote from John Gardner, which he keeps on a laminated card in his wallet, to remind him how to win in the right way.

“Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.”

Pretty cool. Hope you and yours have a wonderful Easter! Cheers, Amelia

Posted in Strategy Execution, Team Effectiveness | 1 Comment »

Guest Post from Andrew Trotter

Friday, April 10th, 2009

Andrew Trotter, a Washington, D.C.-based freelance writer, who has covered education and technology issues for more than 20 years, is guest blogger today, writing about his recent trip to the Consortium on School Networking. A major focus of the conference was how social networking tools like Twitter, Facebook, blogging, podcasting, Wikipedia, open content, curriculum wikis, online video games, and smartphones fit together with the traditional school staples of assessment, curriculum, student privacy and safety, budgets, and so on. You can read Andrew’s entire article here, but below is a synopsis of his comments:
The international symposium made clear that the role of social networking in education is a topic of concern among educators from around the world.

According to one panelist, Stephen Breslin, chief executive of Futurelab, a nonprofit group based in Bristol, U.K. that supports innovation in education, schools aren’t typically good at preparing students for three skills that are vital in today’s workplace: the power of conversation, the power of groups, and the power of the network. Schools are ill-equipped to teach those things because they are geared for assessing students individually.

Like other speakers, Breslin acknowledged dangers to children posed by Web 2.0, but believes educators should not be paralyzed by fears. People are responding to Web 2.0, just as to earlier digital innovations, “polarized between panic and blind digital faith.” He added, “The answer is balanced in between.”

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How to Make Layoffs Worse

Sunday, March 15th, 2009

As many of you know, The Thornton Group is fortunate to be consulting partners with Patrick Lencioni’s company The Table Group. Pat has been doing a lot of writing lately, and this ‘point of view’ entitled How Executives Botch Layoffs from the March 6, 2009 Wall Street Journal is particularly relevant these days.

In this article Pat talks about the three most common mistakes executives make during lay-offs:

  1. Don’t allow employees to leave with dignity
  2. Segregate ‘survivors’ from those who are leaving
  3. Assume that the survivors don’t need extra attention

I agree with all, especially the third point. In fact, I read somewhere that most companies spend 80% of their time and attention on the people leaving versus those who remain — counter-intuitive, don’t you think?

I’ll write more about this another time, but in the meantime, I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas.

Thanks, Amelia

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Posted in Leadership, Strategy Execution, Team Effectiveness | 5 Comments »

I’m back….

Saturday, March 14th, 2009

I’m back after a wonderful trip ‘down under’. Primary purpose was to visit my son, but I also had a great meeting with Noel Posus, an executive coach based in Sydney. He’s just been named 2008 ‘Coach of the Year’ by the Australian New Zealand Coaching Institute and I can sure understand why. Check out his Coaching Blog when you have time. It’s terrific. More from me soon. G’Day! Amelia

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