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Thursday, November 5. 2009
We are certainly in challenging times in our business world today. We have been in challenging times in the past and let me make a profound prediction – we will be faced with challenging times again at some point in the future. Here’s the reality check - The fact that times are challenging is not the source of our pain. The source of our pain is the absence of great leadership based in reality. We must be willing to admit that our way of leading is simply not working – not creating the results or the quality of life that we would like. These times are calling for a new type of leader. We need leaders who are willing and able to recreate mindsets in order to change circumstances and lead in a new and revolutionary way. The revolution begins with a few good leaders practicing Reality-Based Leadership. A Reality-Based Leader is one who is able to quickly see the reality of the situation, conserve precious team energy, and use that energy instead to impact reality. Better yet, a great Reality-Based Leader anticipates the upcoming changes and capitalizes on the opportunity inherent in the situation. As with all great revolutions, a manifesto is needed, so here it is: Reality-Based Leadership is a new wave of leadership based on the following principles: We as Reality Based Leaders Refuse to Argue with Reality. The average leader spends two hours a day arguing with reality, an argument you will surely lose, but only 100% of the time. Reality-Based Leaders work instead to quickly identify the facts of the situation and focus on following the simple instructions – doing the next right thing that would add the most value. We as Reality-Based Leaders Greet Change with a Simple “Good to Know.” Today’s leaders seem to greet each and every change with Surprise, Panic, and Blame. They respond to change with great surprise. Even change that should be anticipated often elicit a reaction of surprise, shock or disbelief. The moment of surprise is followed by anxiety or a low level of panic about how to lead forward, ending with a dose of blame focused on others for lack of leadership, poor decisions, or other’s failures. Reality-Based Leaders greet change with great anticipation for the possibilities and a simple, “Good to Know.” They move quickly to understand the new reality and search for ways to deliver results in spite of the facts or limited circumstances. We as Reality Based Leaders Value Action over Opinion. In the past, leaders were encouraged to make sure that employees felt that their opinions counted – as if opinions created value in organizations. Reality-Based Leaders are clear that the highest value the talent under their leadership can offer is to implement with excellence. To deliver results time after time, leaders need the ability to resist editorializing and to move instead to lead in the execution of imperfect plans with excellence. In a nutshell, leaders add the most value when they understand that action, rather than opinion, adds the greatest value. We as Reality-Based Leaders Work with the Willing. A leader operating under today’s worn-out philosophies spends, on average, 80 hours each year on a single person in a chronic state of resistance. The average return on this hefty investment? At the most, 3 percent. By working with the willing, efforts move forward and others join up or move outside of the organization either by choice or behavior. Reality-Based Leaders play favorites – they favor those who use their talents to work with, not against the organization. We as Reality Based Leaders Lead First, Manage Second. In changing and challenging times, ineffective leaders are tempted to work diligently to perfect the circumstances of their employees. This approach that has put managers in charge of creating engaging environments and has led to a great deal of over managing and under leading. Reality Based Leaders know that engagement is correlated to personal accountability. Instead of working to perfect the circumstances of their people, Reality-Based Leaders work to “bullet proof” their employees, creating employees so resilient that they are un-phased by the challenges at hand. We as Reality Based Leaders Make the News Rather Than Report the News. It is easy to report the news, update the team on the challenges at hand and make doomsday predictions about the future. Assessing the situation in the past tense and critiquing others’ responses to the circumstances is easy, but not effective. Reality Based Leaders work instead to solve problems. Intrigued? Stay tuned to this blog as I delve into the details. Remember, Cy rocks and you rock. Lead on my friend.
Thursday, November 5. 2009
How do Reality-Based™ Leaders best contribute during headcount reductions? In these challenging times, many leaders are seeking to reduce expenses through the reduction of head count. While it is important to ensure that the resources of the organization are being tightly managed, the organization’s talent still needs to be led. Reality-Based™ Leaders lead first and manage second. Here’s how: When making the decision on which employees to impact – focus on talent rather than function or position. When reducing your workforce, don’t be short-sighted and look to reduce positions or functions that no longer serve the highest good for the organization. Instead, assess your talent and use downtime as an opportunity to transition talent that is no longer relevant and/or change-resistant to outside of the organization. Work to keep employees who are high-performing, learning-agile, utility players and are willing to serve the organization in a variety of capacities. Once you decide which talent to keep, take a look at how they can be utilized to best serve the organization. Use this downtime as an opportunity to fine-tune your talent mix. When reducing head count, resist the urge to be overly conservative. If you are in a position that truly merits a decrease in head count, cut a bit deeper than the budget calls for so you can recoup the dollars from additional downsizing to reward, recognize and develop the top talent you have chosen to keep. Such foresight will ensure that you are better able to retain and develop your best people while reducing their risk for burnout. So, for example, if the budget indicates that cutting 10 to 12 people would make the numbers work, cut 15 and use the dollars freed up from the extra three positions to focus on bringing out the best in the top talent that remains through reward and development. If you are not in the position of decision maker, offer expertise – not editorials. Editorializing about any decision made by another level of the leadership team, especially when times are tough, is a cardinal sin. In many cases, there are no perfect or right decisions. All decisions have one or many downsides. The best use of your talent and energy is to help identify any risk posed by the decision and rally your team around mitigating those risks. When possible, be proactive. Offer up a variety of options to the decision makers, outlining the potential benefits of each course of action along with the corresponding risks, complete with your team’s plan to mitigate the risks of any chosen option. Resist the urge to favor any option as “right” and instead deliver with excellence on any option chosen. Think in terms of the income statement, not the balance sheet. When engaged in cost reduction, many leaders lose sight of the income statement that measures the true return on investment or profit, as they work to simply balance the books and match cost against the budget dollars available. Not all costs are equal when reviewed in terms of the potential income or benefit they will generate. The same dollar cost can return significantly different levels of value, depending upon where in the organization it is invested. Get very clear about the future value of the threatened resource and cut those expenses delivering the lowest return. Downsize the sales force to increase sales. Many leaders focus their downsizing efforts on the non-revenue generating portion of the business and resist any decrease in the sales force. These leaders are operating under the inaccurate premise that any and all production is worthy in down times. When the sales force is predominately commission-based, it appears that there is little downside to having a large, under-producing sales force. After all, they believe, the organization is only paying for the business delivered, with little additional cost. This can be counterproductive as times get tough. First, sales resources do have a cost over and above their commissions – the cost of supporting and managing them. Depending upon a salesperson’s volume, the return on investment of support and training efforts varies greatly. Also, chronic wasting begins to take place, which ensures that you will downsize your talent to the lowest common denominator. Keeping a huge sales force can lead to a wasting syndrome where too many resources are fighting for the same sales and all are starving. The “alpha” sales people will quickly realize the lack of prospects for top performance and will leave. Those less confident in their abilities to produce anywhere else will stay, thus ensuring that not only do you have a smaller sales force, but one of mediocre performers. It’s better to cut even commission-only sales people and focus on the top performers, and insist that they reach higher goals with less and then compensate accordingly. So, if you must: “Off with some heads and on to results!” Remember, Cy rocks and you rock. Lead on my friend.
Thursday, November 5. 2009
BY FC Expert Blogger Cy WakemanFri Jul 31, 2009 at 4:55 PM This blog is written by a member of our expert blogging community and expresses that expert's views alone. You probably heard of them in college – many of your favorite professors took a semester off to travel the world, do research or write a book. Now that you're in the real world, you could use a sabbatical, too – but is taking one a good move for your career? From an HR perspective, sabbaticals are a creative and kinder strategy to survey the workforce for those who are able and willing to volunteer for time off in order to avoid being forced to furlough unwilling workers.
Is a sabbatical right for you?
Sabbaticals are a great option if you have income reserves and a clear goal of something of value you would accomplish away from the office, such as writing a book, furthering your education, searching for other opportunities full-time, or taking the trip of a lifetime. The first choice for pursuing such opportunities is to use your vacation days or PTO hours. Sabbaticals are not the best option for those needing to take care of family members or to have elective surgeries. In those circumstances, use FMLA instead so your job is protected. Use a sabbatical to ensure that you are an even more valuable employee at the end of your time away. Stay in touch with the organization to keep up with changes, and be flexible about your return.
Taking a sabbatical in today's economy
In today's economy, employees should be wary of signing up for a sabbatical. Sabbaticals are high-risk ventures for the employee. Time off for a sabbatical does not come with the same legal protection of vacation days or FMLA. You are not always guaranteed a position when you are ready to return. If thinking about a sabbatical, make sure that HR policies have been updated and signed off on that outline how the organization will handle furloughs, layoffs, severances and re-entry into the workplace.
Remember that, in tough times, the organization’s memory grows even shorter, and out of sight is out of mind unless you are an extreme, top talent! Sabbaticals can definitely be career suicide. “Be there when you're needed or you won’t be needed,” is a familiar refrain from bosses, along with, “What have you sold for me today?” – meaning that you cannot ride on past accomplishments to preserve future assignments. Bottom line, accepting a sabbatical temporarily puts you outside the traditional career race track, development experiences and promotions. To compensate and mitigate the risks created by your choice, you must put yourself back in the driver's seat of your career. Create a plan for yourself with a desired ROI from the time off, and have clear goals and specific timelines and follow that plan. You should be able to account for your sabbatical on a resume with documentation of the impressive accomplishments that furthered your competencies – not a travelogue of great pictures. Remember, you rock and Cy rocks! Lead on my friend.
Thursday, November 5. 2009
Over this past year of presenting the concepts of Reality Based Leadership at conferences nationwide, I often hear unconscious leaders routinely spouting off clichés that not only remain untested but are absolutely false and worse yet, are encouraging huge waste of scarce team resources. A favorite cliché of mine to bust right in front of their eyes is, “There are no stupid questions.” So I have chosen this as cliché #2 in my cliché busting blog series. There are no stupid questions!? Seriously, that statement might have been true for a short while when you were five and the teacher was a scary big person and your confidence a little low. We used this statement because we wanted to get you over that hump and encourage you to participate in class. Now it is just a workplace cliché. You are now forty five and it is a core expectation that you participate and select your questions more wisely. In fact, to ask to ask any question, uncensored, can even be irresponsible. With the wave of a single question, one employee can cost the company thousands of dollars when they do not even have signature authority to spend ten dollars on behalf of the company. A single stupid question can commission resources in the form of meetings, research, analysis, and discussions which are a total waste of time, talent and focus. Key resources are wasted seeking an answer that doesn’t exist, doesn’t matter, or re-enforces the erroneous belief that others are the source of our problems. How does the cliché, “There are no stupid questions,” live on? Well, too many leaders repeat this cliché in a measly attempt to get their employees feeling “comfortable” and to encourage employees to ask any question any time. These same leaders lament that their people focus on the wrong things, that there is too much conflict and drama in their workplaces and that they are not getting the results required. They don’t even realize that the source of their pain is their own encouragement of questions of any type. They go on to complain that they are pulled away from their main roles of developing people and driving the team for results by constant interruptions – usually from employees asking, “Do you have a minute?” followed by a really stupid question such as “Why do things keep changing?” or “Why doesn’t anyone tell me anything?” or “Who thought of this?” Really Stupid questions, in my opinion – here’s why: · There is no answer to these questions – really. · Even if you could speculate an answer – it adds no value to the situation. · They all imply blame. · They fly in the face of personal accountability as a concept, let alone a core expectation. · They are focused on other people, who last I checked are outside of the control of the employee. To spend a single second of thought or action on such questions is a complete waste of resources, period. How to know a stupid question when you hear it? A question which begins with “Why”, “Who” or “When” is pretty suspect, especially if it concerns human behaviors. The words “Why”, “Who” or “When” are only valuable when beginning questions that seek information on a process or logistical detail of a plan. Human behavior is simply not rational, although it can be very predictable. When you hear yourself or someone else asking one of these stupid questions, for the love of resources, move quickly to help steer their efforts into asking smarter questions which have actual answers, that if found lead to actions that truly deliver results. Help to re-write stupid questions. Here’s How: 1. Change every “Why,” Who” or “When” to either a “How” or “What.” 2. Follow with the words “can I” 3. End the smarter question with some action word such as “do” or “help.” Let’s practice on the aforementioned stupid questions: · “Why do things keep changing?” becomes “What can I do to get so great at change that I am un-phased by it?” or “How can I help drive the change?” or even “How can I quickly align with the change?” · “Why doesn’t anyone tell me anything?” transforms into “What can I do to get the information I need?” · “Who thought of this?” will become “How can I best support this?” or the even more proactive, “How can I provide better information to my decision makers?” Now these are amazing questions filled personal accountability! These smarter questions have a ton of potential answers, all of which will move the team forward towards results. To answer these questions is too focus efforts on what matters. With a smart question in hand, work with the employee to specifically create a list of possible answers. Write them down – presto – you now have a list of simple instructions of what the employee can use their time and talent on that will truly help drive forward, create results in spite of the circumstances and add major value. Looking for a development plan for your employee? You just created one. Now you know, we lied to you to help you when you were little – about there being no stupid questions, a little man in your chimney over the holidays and a certain rabbit in the spring. Help us correct the situation and stop spreading lies in the workplace and spread the truth instead - there really are very stupid questions. Remember, You rock and Cy rocks! Lead on my friend
Thursday, November 5. 2009
Have you ever noticed that many of the leadership clichés we live by are not living up to their reputation? Leaders flippantly throw around sound bites of so-called “wisdom,” picked up at conferences or from leadership books and use them without truly questioning whether or not they are true or even useful. Bit by bit, these clichés have reached the status of “conventional wisdom” – widespread beliefs that are not only untested but untrue – also causing havoc in the workplace. So as a lover of what’s true, I begin the campaign to eradicate the old clichés and update these concepts to be useful in our new realities: Cliché # 1 – There is no “I” in Team. I often hear leaders reminding their teams, “There is no ‘I’ in TEAM.” And the way I see it, this is the exact problem with teams. While no one is ostentatiously taking all of the credit, they are still allowed to think that they have worked harder than others, are far more valuable than others, or were not to blame for the lack of results. While they may no longer be discussing these beliefs publicly, they are spending a great deal of organizational resources colluding with co-workers behind the scenes, meanwhile not improving their own approaches or performances. Far worse is the fact that no one is taking accountability for their part in creating the current results. There may not be an “I” in the word “TEAM” but there certainly is an “I” in WIN! And in “PRODUCTIVITY,” “IMPROVEMENT,” “DRIVE FOR RESULTS” and “COMPETITVE.” In teams that are able to succeed in challenging circumstances, there are plenty of “I’s” being used – with the account of how we got to where we are today with the current results. How Do Teams Win? Leaders need to set clear expectations and goals. They then need to focus the energy of the team on either achieving the desired results or learning what to adapt next so that the desired results can be achieved. Learning and results will only come when each team member is able to honestly assess their results without considering the circumstances. Next, they need to ask themselves whether or not they hit the mark and then account for their own actions, assumptions, behaviors and choices that contributed to the shortcomings of the team. Only with this clear line of sight directly acknowledging what “I” did to contribute, can one know what exactly they need to change so that they can choose to respond differently in the future.
1) Leaders must be very clear about the results that are required from teams. Team projects were approved and budgeted resources based upon a business case that outlines which results are necessary to even justify the investment. Do not allow the team to re-write the business case mid-project. 2) Subsequently, leaders need to be incredibly honest about a team’s results. If the team nailed it – great! Celebrate and reward. But if the team did not reach the mark, stop giving them credit for effort or allowing them to applaud lackluster results and justify shortcomings by “considering the circumstances.” There will always be circumstances and teams need to learn to succeed in spite of circumstances – that is the value they add, mitigating the risks of the circumstances while implementing and executing. 3) Lead the team through a thorough accounting of their contributions to the results. If the team had great results, ask each member of the team to account for the decisions, choices, approaches and behaviors that led to the success so that they can intentionally duplicate it in the future. If lackluster results were delivered, ask each member to identify ways in which they contributed to the end result. Their responses need to begin with, “I chose,” “I denied,” “I assumed,” “I did,” “I didn’t,” “I needed to have” and “I acted” (This is where the “I” in TEAM comes in and the magic starts to happen!). Once each individual can identify how they specifically contributed, they can then commit to what they will do differently in the future – facilitating great learning, individual development, and better future results. And most importantly, the team becomes immune to circumstances when it comes to results. Every great leader needs to firmly insist on quite a few “I’s” in team. So, please, leaders, go today and correct your teams. Tell them you lied to them just to make them all feel better and it backfired. Be very clear with them that we need to put the “I” back into TEAM in order to restore results back into the workplace! Cliché # 1: Properly busted. On to Cliché #2: “There are no stupid questions.” Remember you rock and Cy rocks! Lead on my friend.
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