Leadership Trends and Realities

Are Your Leaders "Stuck in Stupid"?

Jonena Relth, TBD Consulting

I heard a phase recently that really resonated with me: "Stuck in Stupid."  Don't run yet, I don't intend this to be a bashing session, so hear me out.

With all the changes our organizations and employees are going through, leaders need to make a consorted effort to learn from our past mistakes and improve our leading abilities -- thus stay out of "Stuck in Stupid."  When we're Stuck in Stupid, we don't listen and we're destined to end up on the "The Boss Nobody Wants to Follow" list.  And believe me, that's not a label any of us wish to aspire to. 

Sometimes we are so busy putting out fires, we forget the basics. None of us hire people because we think they won't fit in or won't be able to master the skills necessary to do their jobs. We hire intelligent people we believe can represent our organization's mission, vision and values. We hire people we believe are teachable and desire to bring their special skills and abilities to the table.

It's our thinking that guides our actions and our employees can hear and see are actions loud and clear.  It's easy to be positive, open minded and trusting of our employees' decisions and actions when times are good and we're not watching every penny, but it's how we lead our employees during the tough times that we can set our organization on the path to success while other organizations are just trying to stay afloat.  As leaders, we are either empowering our employees to succeed or hindering their performance, which is hindering our companies.

So just in case you're hearing through the grapevine that your employees aren't happy in their jobs and performance is declining, here's a short list to evaluate your actions to make sure you're not in the "Stuck in Stupid" mindset.

Our employees are the lifeblood of our organizations. 

• Without our employees, we don't have products or services to sell or a company to work for!
• People like to hear genuine praises. Tell them you appreciate their efforts.  

Our employees want us to lead, not micromanage.

• This is true whether in good times or tough!
• Micromanaging shuts down the bond of trust we've worked so hard to build in our organizations and results in disgruntled, non-engaged employees who stop giving their best.
• Coach them how to improve their performance, but don't stand over them.

Our employees want to make a positive impact on our organizations.

• People don't want to feel like they have to be in the "Prove-It-To-Me Mode" every time their leaders walk by or invite them in to chat.
• They want to find ways to prove to themselves, their colleagues and leadership that they can and do make a difference.
• Allow people the freedom to work within the system to learn, grow and improve themselves and the company.

Our employees desire to be heard. 

• They care about where our organizations are going.
• They wish to be part of the solution not members of the silent majority club.
• Provide both scheduled and unscheduled avenues for honest interaction and open communication among all levels of the organization.

All leaders make mistakes.  Let's own up to them, listen and learn and improve our leadership skills to get our organizations successfully through these tough times. 

Jonena

TBD Consulting has a 20-year, proven track record for ensuring employee performance improvement which translates to employee performance success. Whether you need help developing an in-house training organization or simply need "extra hands" to meet your deadlines or ROI goals, please contact Jonena. She and her qualified staff are here to assist you with your organizational development, coaching and training initiatives.

Corporate Office 602-263-1961. Email Jonena today!

Talent Attraction, Retention and Development - The Business Imperatives

Jonena Relth, TBD Consulting

Recently I had the privilege of attending a Global Mobility workshop in Los Angeles hosted by Ed Cohen of GlobalHRNews. The presenters represented "cream of the crop" professionals who manage all aspects of global mobility planning, hiring and training expats to work for their companies all over the globe. The topics covered everything from risk management, legal considerations of home and host country, immigration law, intercultural support, training, ROI, and Return on Recognition (ROR) - and yes, the new issues around the use of social media, too!

One thing that struck me from an organizational development perspective was the obvious: No matter whether filling positions locally or globally, organizations need to put detailed, strategic plans in place that align with measurable business goals and that each employee need to be vetted to be sure that they are the right person for the position.

Adding the component of overseas assignments adds a whole new dimension to who is best suited for oversees assignments. The best person technically might not be the best person to send due to personal or family issues that need to be taken into consideration.  To the best of our ability, we want every expat to succeed in every assignment. This requires that we do everything possible to ensure a positive experience from the get-go. We need to take into consideration our hiring processes, training, cultural awareness and the individual's family needs. Whether bringing employees to the US or sending them abroad, great care is required to prepare our employees to succeed. Our businesses depend on it!

The costs of attracting, training and retaining the right employee for international assignments can be staggering with the average "cost" estimated to be $1,000,000 per employee. Each assignment that fails - the employee comes home early or leaves the company upon returning from their assignment - makes a huge dent to the bottom line. Additionally, a failed assignment contributes to poor morale for the expat as well as his/her colleagues, which adds a whole new HR/OD component to our already, overworked HR and OD professionals.

While the workshop wasn't aimed at change management, tried and true disciplines used today to manage change in our organizations should be a critical component of any initiative as important as attracting, developing and retaining employees. Those same employees may be the ones we intend to lead our organizations in the coming years.

It was refreshing to attend a workshop that took at inclusive approach of addressing the varied topics and then linking them together with the importance of staying on top of all aspects of global mobility including making sure we train and prepare employees to succeed.

Jonena

TBD Consulting has a 20-year, proven track record for ensuring employee performance improvement which translates to employee performance success. Whether you need help developing an in-house training organization or simply need "extra hands" to meet your deadlines or ROI goals, please contact Jonena. She and her qualified staff are here to assist you with your organizational development, coaching and training initiatives.

Corporate Office 602-263-1961. Email Jonena today!

Measuring Leadership

Dana Theus, Principal, Magus Consulting

How do you measure leadership? It’s an odd question, isn’t it? Leadership is inherently challenging to even describe because it’s a quality of being human. Psychologists and Change Management Consultants find ways to measure everything and I’m sure they have some metrics for this. However, my Google research on this subject reinforced my experience that most people’s take on measuring leadership is really one of two things: 1) measuring management metrics (e.g., did revenue go up?) Or 2) measuring behaviors, absent their impact.

Leaders Do Both

So here’s a little leadership coaching on how I think about measuring leadership. Leadership is the ability to get things done and change the world, i.e., leave the world better off than when you started. So it’s not enough to get stuff done, and it’s not enough to sit on a mountaintop sending out good vibes.

Here’s how you know you’re leading:

• Revenues go up and so do employee and customer satisfaction numbers.
• Your team is more productive with less stress.
• Things don’t go as planned, but they go just fine and everyone’s happy with the results.
• You make both qualitative and quantitative impacts on people’s lives.

Get the point? Leaders accomplish both/and goals and intentions, not either/or. As a bonus, this is often the secret of innovation too!

How To Measure Both

If you work for a big company that measures stuff, make sure you’re measuring the both/and, and even more importantly, make sure you’re correlating the two. Make this part of your goals statement. Set your intention on both, and when you achieve it make sure everyone knows that it’s possible and who benefited. (If you make it a bragging all about you thing, they will discount the both/and as good luck and you want them to take on this challenge themselves, so make sure they believe it’s possible!)

Even if you work for a big company, but especially if you don’t, start keeping track of the both/ands that matter most to you, personally. Being self-aware is a critical leadership skill, so be it!

• Keep a little pad of paper by your desk and make a hash mark for your interactions with staff, vendors and customers that go well and poorly.
• Track improvement in staff productivity related to how you coached them.
• Track how many of your intentions you set and then achieved.
• Track your angry/frustrated moments and set your intention for them to go down.
• Track the favors you call in from your network and the ones you ask for.

Remember, your job isn’t to be pissed off, frustrated and angry. Your job is to get things done and change the world. The more energy you spend on being upset means you’re putting less energy into doing the job as leader. So above all else, make sure those pissed off, frustrated and angry hash marks go down!

How do you measure leadership?

 

We Can Sabotage Our System Implementation How??

Jonena Relth, TBD Consulting

Equally important to providing well-designed training is making sure people are ready for the changes they will encounter with a major system implementation such as ERP.

The adage of "Pay me now or pay me later" fits perfectly for the purchase, implementation and training of large systems.   Running a business with inadequately trained staff is simply a waste of money.  Additionally, if you deliver training without first getting your people's buy-in and acceptance of the changes broiling around them by using a proven people/process change adoption plan, you might as well not embark on the journey at all. Your efforts will be sabotaged by frustrated staff who purposely avoid getting trained and look for ways not to use the new system, thus negatively impacting the ROI of the initiative.   

What's CHANGE got to do with it?

Adding a new system to the daily work of busy professionals is asking them to change the way they do their work!  Many folks are familiar with what they are doing now and feel comfortable with the status quo - even if they have to do work-arounds, etc.  Remember, for many people change is hard to swallow, so they'd prefer to stick with the existing system rather than learn a new one. 

There are a number of change models to guide and instruct the implementation of major change in organizations.  Three of the most well known are Kotter's strategic 8-step model for transforming organizations, Jick's tactical 10-step model for implementing change, and General Electric's 7-step change acceleration process model.  My advice is always to review a few models and choose the one that best suits your organization - or customize your own with the "best" strategies for your purposes.

Additionally, to guarantee success for major change initiatives that involve new processes, policies, etc., it is necessary to include all the right people from the beginning of the process who will stay involved throughout the entire project to ensure change adoption and implementation of the expected changes.  

Organizational development (OD) and training professionals should be involved from the very beginning of the system search.  It's these folks that, if they are worth their salt, will maximize the ROI of whatever system is purchased by ensuring that the system is first and foremost "user friendly" and that the system customization, implementation and training will have as its core efficient, new workflows that work for the different user groups.   If you do this, your staff will be at much more likely to develop the necessary skills and desire to use the new system before go live to ensure the change is seamless to customers.

The bottom line:

To ensure positive ROI on system implementations takes the all the right players from beginning to end and proven change management strategies that are well-implemented.  If you do it right, I'd wager to say that your staff will be at least 80% more likely to develop the necessary skills and desire to use the new ERP quickly.

Jonena

TBD Consulting has a 20-year, proven track record for ensuring employee performance improvement which translates to employee performance success. Whether you need help developing an in-house training organization or simply need "extra hands" to meet your deadlines or ROI goals, please contact Jonena. She and her qualified staff are here to assist you with your organizational development, coaching and training initiatives.

Corporate Office 602-263-1961. Email Jonena today!