A Handy Reference For New Managers

Source:  Dave Ulrich. “Becoming the Boss.”  Harvard Business Review.  January 2007.

Contact DiBona & Associates for a personalized management evaluation; enquire via email:  noel@consultdibona.com

or call 703.999.5277.

visit our website:  http.www.consultdibona.com

Another post with good information for new managers:  http://ow.ly/1hqvR

Manage Change, Don’t Let It Manage You

“Leaders are made, they are not born.  They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any good that is worthwhile.” — Vince Lombardi.

Organizations today are continually forced to change.  Whether it is an initiative to reduce cost, embrace a new customer service model, or shift into a new market, we are all asked to respond in a positive manner when our businesses require us to change.  Some organizations respond well to change while others are thrown into disarray.

Strong leadership sets the tone for the change initiative.  Your employees need your leadership and they expect you to be attentive to their needs when they are expected to implement a change initiative.  Employees look for sensible planning, effective decision making, and regular communication.  Excellent leaders understand this and work hard to develop a climate of trust within their organization.  Trust brings hope and hope makes coping with change much easier.

We use a simple, but effective framework to help organizations more effectively manage change.  It is built on four principles:

1. Successful organizations continuously encourage the improvement of individuals and teams, instill discipline, and foster accountability.
2. Leadership provides a top-down framework that facilitates alignment between all levels of management and effectively communicates goals so they are properly translated throughout the entire organization.
3. Improvements required for sustainable change must come from frontline managers and their teams since they are the ones doing the work.  They control the majority of the organization’s resources and are relied upon to produce services or goods.
4. Creating prosperity through change requires more focus on how people are managing their teams and less focus on policies and procedures.

The leader’s role is to provide the organization a top-down framework that includes:

• Clearly articulated goals and strategies that provide the basis for the change.
• Working sessions with direct reports to facilitate alignment between all levels of management.
• Communicate expectations for critical areas of the business.
• Take the opportunity to personally visit teams and work areas.

The role of the executive team is to bring life to the change initiative:

• Create momentum and early success.
• Get out of the office and engage people where the work is getting done.
• Promote the effort, allow people to internalize the change and listen to their feedback.
• Review weekly updates from area managers

The role of area managers is to critically assess their areas of responsibility through a new set of eyes, identify and resolve problems, delegate responsibility to frontline teams, and inspire ownership:

• Work with frontline managers to help identify barriers that will impede the change initiative.  Barriers typically involve issues concerning productivity, quality, service levels, employee skills, infrastructure, communications between line and support groups, etc.
• Resolve barriers using a team approach and involving key individuals.  Identify the root cause, prioritize, and developing action plans.
• Implement fix plans and delegate responsibility for enacting the fix to frontline teams.

The role of frontline managers and department managers is to revise their management operating systems and reinforce the appropriate behaviors:

• Eliminate duplication of efforts.
• Supervisors and managers work together to create the appropriate tools and processes.
• Provide necessary training to put concepts into practice.
• Effectively communicate expectations.
• Resolve conflicts, don’t avoid them.
• Provide one-on-one coaching to your employees.
• Daily follow-up on schedule, progress, training

Reporting and Evaluating Progress

It is important for the success of the change initiative to rigorously manage expectations and track progress by implementing a timely review system.

Area managers provide weekly updates on productivity, quality, cost and schedule. They also need to be able to engage in discussion about current and potential problems, refocus efforts as required and celebrate positive results.

Frontline managers conduct daily meetings with their staff and with their manager.  Brief, but thorough reviews each day will allow difficult issues to be dealt with before they become burdensome and threaten success.  Managers manage the execution of work.  Don’t become a manager of problems.

The executive team should meet weekly in the early stages of the change initiative.  Monthly updates and working sessions are conducted as the change initiative gains momentum.

Recapping a few key points:

• Work at your level of responsibility.  Many change initiatives fail because managers work down one or two levels below their responsibility.  Get the right people on your team and give them the opportunity to make positive contributions.  Resist the temptation to be the hero that rescues the organization; instead, ask yourself why the problem is occurring and address the root cause.
• Communicate, communicate, and communicate at all levels.  Don’t be afraid to surface problems.  Provide solutions.
• Create ownership for your staff.  Put them in charge of fixing the problems.
• Celebrate success.

Installing a repeatable change process will greatly assist organizations respond in a more positive manner when faced with change.  This framework will help to foster a more proactive and disciplined organizational culture, reduce stress levels, and improve the overall performance of the business.

DiBona & Associates

“We jump-start change.”

Improving Productivity, Quality, Service

Office:  703.723.4814

Cell:  703.999.5277

Visit our website:  www.ConsultDiBona.com

5 Common Reasons Why Execution Stalls

Getting results is all about execution.  Lots of organizations have hopes and dreams, goals and objectives.  How many ever become reality?  We have all learned this lesson from playing or spectating sports events.  Execution on the playing field determines who wins and who loses.  We can have the best game plan, equipment and facilities, but we still lose if we don’t execute well.  Businesses are the same way – especially in our current economic climate.  We have to make the most of of our opportunities and depend on our people to do the right thing at the right time.  Here are some common pitfalls that we should all learn from and work hard to avoid.

Too many leaders, not enough managers. Superior execution requires general management talent.  Many of us tend to forget about the nuts and bolts of general management. The general attitude toward career progression puts too much emphasis on managers rising to the executive team.  Companies need people that are willing to get their hands dirty and make things happen.  Perhaps middle managers need more recognition.

There is not enough time. Companies do not have the luxury of time and are forced to make organizational changes on the fly.  This requires employees that are adaptable and are able to take-on difficult challenges.  Hire employees with these personality traits.

Too difficult to fix. CEOs on average are only in their position for six years.  They tend to focus on short-term wins and leave the more difficult problems for their replacement.

We instill a “hero” mentality. Fighting fires makes us feel important, gets the adrenaline flowing and grabs the attention of executives.  However, improving a company’s execution capabilities requires that managers direct their attentions to identifying root causes and eliminating problems.  Stop supervising problems and look for ways to improve productivity.   

They don’t know how. Many general managers rise up from specialist positions. Traders are promoted to run banks, engineers to manage technology firms, lawyers to oversee law firms. They excel in their sport, but they are often ill suited for managing their team.

‘Undercover Boss’: Would Your Organization Benefit?

Today, out of necessity all businesses are asking their employees to do more with less.  Over the long term, employees tune out management and operate in “survival mode”.  Their existence becomes a means of receiving a paycheck and they become less likely to protect the interests of the company.    This is a “bitter pill” for management and employees alike.  However, not addressing these issues usually results in poor behavior and organizational culture and before long, the organization will experience a “tipping point issue” directly or indirectly attributed to poor behavior.

The first episode of ‘Undercover Boss’ illustrated the impact on workers when corporate policies are implemented by untrained managers or the volume of work is too great for the team.

The great thing about this first episode is that it also illustrated the huge impact that individuals can have on an organization and in particular the impact that “star” performers can have on the greater organization.

Do you have a personal story or know of someone else who is in a similar situation to those that were featured on ‘Undercover Boss’?

http://ow.ly/15dKM

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words – Guest Blogger Fernando Beltran

Learn what lessons and techniques from the YouTube world can be applied within your organization to help leadership implement positive change.

Since 2008, YouTube has become the second largest search engine in the U.S., surpassing Yahoo and all other search engines in terms of volume of searches. Although YouTube is a video sharing service and not a search engine, its explosive growth can be seen as a testament to the shifting trend of the way users search, acquire, and consume their information.

Many of us spend at least a few minutes per week watching YouTube videos of cute pets or babies in all kinds of hilarious situations. Most likely, we get those videos from friends and colleagues and we, in turn, share those videos with as many friends as we can.

Cuteness aside, the content on YouTube is evolving and changing the way we assimilate messages. Employees have also become more sophisticated and attention span-challenged when it comes to consuming content on any form, especially video.

Applying the “YouTube way” within the corporation:

Organizations are using video to convey more effectively their corporate initiatives, strengthen communications within the corporation, and make their messages more memorable. Here are a few suggestions of how you can apply those techniques within the confines of your own organization to implement positive change in your organization.

Get viral:

A corporate video does not have to be boring. While you may not have to use pets to promote your initiative, you can tap into the creativity of your own employees and come up with clever ways to communicate your message. Launch a contest among your employees to get ideas for your video (better yet, let them make their own videos). Also, watch other viral videos and identify those themes that make them so successful.

If employees like your videos, they will forward to other peers within the organization, thus extending the reach and effectiveness of your message.

Use compelling stories:

Long gone are the days where a training video comprised of one or more “talking heads” reading Power Point slides. Nowadays you can spice up your video with simple, yet powerful storytelling techniques that will help you make your messages more memorable. A video that has a story with a beginning, middle, and end will always triumph over a dull video of a talking head.

Increase your production values:

There are creative ways to produce a compelling video without breaking your budget. From making use of original music compositions, digital effects, or stock photography and video, to the use of documentary-style techniques to tell your story, by increasing your production values you could create an award-winning video that your employees will remember for a long time.

Divide and conquer:

The attention span of users has narrowed down to no more than 4 or 5 minutes. If you need a 15-minute video to convey your initiative, structure your video in the form of episodes. Create three 5-minute videos that can be streamed or downloaded from your corporate intranet. Better yet, create five 3-minute videos and give employees the option to download to their cell phones!

Embrace the Internet, protect your image:

Whether it’s a memo, and email, or a corporate video, enterprise content eventually finds its way outside the four walls of your organization. Treat your corporate videos in the same way you treat your emails and do not include any sensitive content you do not want leaked to YouTube.

That said and if it doesn’t become a matter of competitive disadvantage or legal liability, do not be afraid to publish your corporate videos on YouTube. It is better for you to have an official channel with high quality versions of your videos, rather than seeing grainy, low quality versions of your videos posted anonymously by your employees.

Also, make sure you always “watermark” your videos. At a minimum, always include your corporate logo, web site, and copyright disclaimers so users know where the content is coming from.

Conclusion

Video has become one of the most cost effective ways to reach audiences and convey your messages. Even if your video is intended for internal audiences (your employees) you can borrow proven techniques from the YouTube world that will help you maximize the effectiveness of your messages and implement positive change within your organization.

Fernando is the CEO of Identika LLC, a provider of application development, process improvement, and corporate video solutions for commercial and government organizations. Identika LLC is a 2009 Finalist for the Technology Business of the Year by the Loudoun Chamber of Commerce (the largest in the State of Virginia).   http://www.identika.com/

Noel DiBona is the President of DiBona & Associates, a management consultancy helping businesses jump-start change across all industries to improve productivity, quality, and service.  www.ConsultDiBona.com

Are Performance Improvements Sustainable?

This is one of the most frequent questions asked by prospective clients.

If top leadership is not truly committed to a fundamental cultural shift, then the answer is “NO”.  However, when leadership is committed to implement a cultural change and willing to risk their political capital for change, then the answer is “ABSOLUTELY YES”.

It is a well-known fact that as many as 75% of reengineering, total quality management, strategic planning, and downsizing efforts fail entirely or create problems serious enough that the survival of the organization is threatened because the leadership of these organizations have failed to recognize the need to properly integrate necessary changes in their organization’s culture.

Although strategy, market presence, and technology are clearly important, highly successful organizations have capitalized on the power of developing and managing a distinct organizational culture.  This is why Wal-Mart killed Sears and Kmart; why Southwest Airlines prevailed when Eastern, Pan Am, and People Express went belly up.  How about Coca-Cola, Disney, General Electric, Intel, McDonalds, Microsoft, Rubbermaid, Sony or Toyota?  Their distinctive cultures create success.

A proactive organizational culture reduces uncertainty.  It creates order by reinforcing explicit goals; creates continuity by consistently communicating key values, creates a commitment to bind employees together and communicates a vision for the future.  Employees are energized and create positive change.

In other words, even when procedures and strategies are altered, or some technological innovation is adapted, organizations can quickly return to the status quo when values, orientations, definitions, and goals stay constant.

Sustainable improvement is realized when management creates conditions that allow employees to adopt a different way to think about the company and their role in it.  Higher levels of productivity, quality, efficiency, and moral will follow when the culture is properly transformed and integrated with other change initiatives, such as lean, six-sigma, total quality management , re-engineering, etc.

Next month we will present a framework for managing change and producing sustainable performance improvements.  That is, a repeatable process that highlights goal development, top-down communication of goals, identification and resolution of performance barriers, and middle management’s role to facilitate bottom-up interventions.

Teamwork: Reality or Corporate Myth? Part 3 – Embrace Healthy Conflict

One of the greatest inhibitors of teamwork among executive teams is the fear of conflict, which stems from two separate concerns. On one hand, many executives go to great lengths to avoid conflict among their teams because they worry that they will lose control of the group and that someone will have their pride damaged in the process. Others do so because they see conflict as a waste of time. They prefer to cut meetings and discussions short by jumping to the decision that they believe will ultimately be adopted anyway, leaving more time for implementation and what they think of as “real work.”

Whatever the case, CEOs who go to great lengths to avoid conflict often do so believing that they are strengthening their teams by avoiding destructive disagreement. This is ironic, because what they are really doing is stifling productive conflict and pushing important issues that need to be resolved under the carpet where they will fester. Eventually, those unresolved issues transform into uglier and more personal discord when executives grow frustrated at what they perceive to be repeated problems.

What CEOs and their teams must do is learn to identify artificial harmony when they see it, and incite productive conflict in its place. This is a messy process, one that takes time to master. But there is no avoiding it, because to do so makes it next to impossible for a team to make real commitment.

Teamwork: Reality or Corporate Myth? Part 2

TRUST is the most important requirement for building teamwork.  The word “trust” can be misleading.  We just don’t mean trusting someone because they seem reputable.  The element of trust, relative to teamwork, is much more far reaching.  For example, teamwork must be built upon a foundation of trust where it is okay to acknowledge mistakes, weaknesses, failures and requests for help.  The team must be comfortable in every aspect of dealing with such issues.  In addition, each teammate must also recognize the strengths of others.  This is very difficult since most individuals in the workplace are highly competitive and do not have the ability to recognize the strengths of others when they exceed their own strengths.

What is a leader to do when he or she is faced with a roomful of accomplished, proud, and talented staff members, getting them to let their guard down and risk loss of positional power?  This is a most difficult challenge and the only way to initiate it is for the leader to go first.  If you are a leader, let me ask you:  Do you do this?

Showing vulnerability is unnatural for many leaders, who were raised to project strength and confidence in the face of difficulty. And while that is certainly a noble behavior in many circumstances, it must be tempered when it comes to demonstrating vulnerability-based trust to hesitant team members who need their leader to strip naked and dive into the cold water first. Of course, this requires that a leader be confident enough, ironically, to admit to frailties and make it easy for others to follow suit.

One particular CEO I worked with failed to build trust among his team and watched the company falter as a result. As it turns out, a big contributing factor was his inability to model vulnerability-based trust. As one of the executives who reported to him later explained to me, “No one on the team was ever allowed to be smarter than him in any area because he was the CEO.” As a result, team members would not open up to one another and admit their own weaknesses or mistakes.

What exactly does vulnerability-based trust look like in practice? It is evident among team members who say things to one another like “I screwed up,” “I was wrong,” “I need help,” “I’m sorry,” and “You’re better than I am at this.” Most important, they only make one of these statements when they mean it, and especially when they really don’t want to.

If all this sounds like motherhood and apple pie, understand that there is a very practical reason why vulnerability-based trust is indispensable. Without it, a team will not, and probably should not, engage in unfiltered productive conflict.

Click here for Part 3 – Embrace Healthy Conflict

DiBona & Associates works with clients to establish a safe environment so managers can become comfortable taking an introspective look at their own strengths and weaknesses.  Sadly, we are usually only called into situations when a massive problem has occurred.  I would like to challenge those of you that are reading this post to consider improving your teamwork as a proactive measure, rather than a fix.  Great organizations foster an environment where vulnerability-based trust is put into practice each day.

Balanced Scorecards: Bind Short-Term Activities with Long-Term Objectives

A balanced scorecard supplements financial metrics with performance criteria in three nonfinancial areas:

•    customer satisfaction

•    internal processes

•    learning and growth

The result is not only a broader perspective on the company’s health and activities, it’s also a powerful organizing framework that aligns all activities with the company strategy.

The balanced scorecard relies on four processes to bind short-term activities to long-term objectives:

1. Translating the vision.

By relying on measurement, the scorecard forces managers to come to agreement on the metrics they will use to operationalize their lofty visions.

Example: A bank had articulated its strategy as providing “superior service to targeted customers.” But the process of choosing operational measures for the four areas of the scorecard made executives realize that they first needed to reconcile divergent views of who the targeted customers were and what constituted superior service.

2. Communicating and linking.

When a scorecard is disseminated up and down the organizational chart, strategy becomes a tool available to everyone. As the high-level scorecard cascades down to individual business units, overarching strategic objectives and measures are translated into objectives and measures appropriate to each particular group. Tying these targets to individual performance and compensation systems yields “personal scorecards.” Thus, individual employees understand how their own productivity supports the overall strategy.

3. Business planning.

Most companies have separate procedures (and sometimes units) for strategic planning and budgeting. Little wonder, then, that typical long-term planning is, in the words of one executive, where “the rubber meets the sky.” The discipline of creating a balanced scorecard forces companies to integrate the two functions, thereby ensuring that financial budgets do indeed support strategic goals. After agreeing on performance measures for the four scorecard perspectives, companies identify the most influential “drivers” of the desired outcomes and then set milestones for gauging the progress they make with these drivers.

4. Feedback and learning.

By supplying a mechanism for strategic feedback and review, the balanced scorecard helps an organization foster a kind of learning often missing in companies: the ability to reflect on inferences and adjust theories about cause-and-effect relationships.

Feedback about products and services. New learning about key internal processes. Technological discoveries. All this information can be fed into the scorecard, enabling strategic refinements to be made continually. Thus, at any point in the implementation, managers can know whether the strategy is working—and if not, why.

You can read more details on this subject by following this link to the Harvard Business Review article.

DiBona & Associates

“We jump-start change.”

Improving Productivity, Quality, Service

Office:  703.723.4814

Cell:  703.999.5277

Visit our website:  www.ConsultDiBona.com

Visit our blog: http://ConsultDiBona.wordpress.com

References:

“Using The Balanced Scorecard As A Strategic Management System.”  Harvard Business Review.  July 2007.

Teamwork: Reality or Corporate Myth? Part 1

The overwhelming majority of leaders will say they believe and practice teamwork.  However, very few of them actually build organizations that substantially employ teamwork.   Unfortunately, many of them end up creating environments where disharmony and silos are the norm.  Only a small fraction of companies truly understand and embrace teamwork.  More than one in three of the Fortune 500 publicly state their core values are based on teamwork.

Human Resource Departments make matters worse because they consistently extoll the virtues of teamwork to the degree that most executives feel that they must endorse teamwork even if they don’ t understand how to build effective teams or believe their organizations need teamwork.  Even those executives that truly desire to build a strong team fail to realize how difficult and painful it can be to actually implement.  Unfortunately most executives that say they believe in teamwork while demonstrating actions to the contrary only causes employees to view their leadership as hypocrites and are ill equipped to make difficult decisions.  As a result, the vast majority of organizations become less effective because of these ambiguous messages sent by their leadership.

Building a leadership team demands behavioral change from people who are typically set in their ways and strong-willed. We will evaluate the necessary steps required to build a strong team in a series of 6 segments.  The first of these segments will examine the importance of trust.

Click here to see Part 2

Click here to see Part 3 – Embrace Healthy Conflict

DiBona & Associates

“We jump-start change.”

Improving Productivity, Quality, Service

Office:  703.723.4814

Cell:  703.999.5277

Visit our website:  www.ConsultDiBona.com

Visit our blog: http://ConsultDiBona.wordpress.com