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Category Archive: Strategic Planning

Being A Strategic Leader Is About Asking The Right Questions

Posted by on January 23, 2017

By now, I have lived through four major leadership theory transitions that have all shaped my effectiveness. One of the single greatest advancements today is that key leaders are no longer seen as the answer person but the one who can ask the great questions. Great questions force everyone to think deeper and provide better outcomes. This HBR post is excellent:

If you asked the world’s most successful business leaders what it means to “be strategic,” how many different answers do you think you’d get? Consider this number: 115,800,000. It’s the number of unique links returned when I searched online for “strategic leadership.” There’s a good reason for all of those links: Strategy is complex.

Categories: Leadership Development Strategic Planning Strategy | Comments Off on Being A Strategic Leader Is About Asking The Right Questions

How To Change Organizational Culture

Posted by on January 11, 2017

According to John Kotter there are many reasons change initiatives fail especially in large organizations. The number one reason is there is not a clear sense of urgency for change that makes everyone willing to pay the short term price of pain due to change to gain the long term benefit of progress.

Many times the communications part of the process breaks down and the implementers do not get enough information to really buy in. The importance of creating short term wins for establishing credibility for the entire process cannot be overstated.

When the new of change becomes the norm there are several key factors that let you know it is now firmly in the D.N.A. of your organizational culture:

More change, not less: The guiding coalition uses the credibility afforded by short-term wins to tackle additional and bigger change projects.
More help: Additional people are brought in, promoted, and developed to help with all the changes.
Leadership from senior management: Senior people focus on maintaining clarity of shared purpose for the overall effort and keeping urgency levels up.
Project management and leadership from below: Lower ranks in the hierarchy both provide leadership and specific projects and manage those projects.
Reduction of unnecessary interdependencies: To make change easier in both the short and long term, managers identify unnecessary interdependencies and eliminate them.

When everyone in the organization starts to articulate the new vision in their own words as if it were their idea then you know they own the process. It is time to start looking for what needs to be changed next, the process never stops.

Categories: Organizational Culture Strategic Planning | Comments Off on How To Change Organizational Culture

6 Roles Of Short Term Wins

Posted by on January 6, 2017

One of the major mistakes we make in major change initiatives is that we oversell the long term goal at the expense of dealing with the short term problems. People do want to know where they are going but they want to know even more what does all this mean for me right now?

Once the new change plan has been implemented it is critical for everyone involved to experience the benefits of short term wins so they can stay motivated for the future and the change that is yet to come. John Kotter list several roles that short term wins play:

Provide evidence that sacrifices are worth it: Wins greatly help justify the short term cost involved.
Reward change agents: After a lot of hard work, positive feedback builds morale and motivation.
Help fine-tune vision and strategies: Short term wins give the guiding coalition concrete data on the viability of their ideas.
Undermine cynics and self-serving resisters: Clear improvements in performance make it difficult for people to block needed change.
Keep bosses on board: Provides those higher in the hierarchy with evidence that the transformation is on track.
Build momentum: Turns neutrals into supporters, reluctant supporters into active helpers.

Therefore it becomes critical in any change planning to build into the strategy several things that can be done within the first six months that may be small in scale but clear wins that everyone can celebrate.

Categories: Leading Change Storytelling | Comments Off on 6 Roles Of Short Term Wins

4 Ways To Improve Your Strategic Thinking

Posted by on January 4, 2017

One of the greatest challenges I face as an executive coach is to help leaders see the difference in operational efficiency and strategic initiatives. Improvement in process and profit margin is extremely important but so is spending time on innovation and creativity. If you are always working on the margins of incremental improvement you will eventually lose your competitive advantage. This HBR post is very helpful:

“If you’ve ever received feedback that you “need to be more strategic,” you know how frustrating it can feel. To add insult to injury, the feedback rarely comes with any concrete guidance on what to do about it. One of my coaching clients, Lisa, a vice president of HR, was in this situation and explains, “I was just told to think bigger picture and to be more strategic.”

Categories: Strategy | Comments Off on 4 Ways To Improve Your Strategic Thinking

5 Steps To Get Honest Feedback

Posted by on December 26, 2016

One of the things I experience in my executive coaching over and over again is the tremendous negative cost of leaders not having a willingness to tell people the truth. People really do want to know what is expected and where they stand but insecure leaders can’t seem to have the honest conversations. This Forbes post will help you get the feedback you need:

“As an executive coach, some of the saddest moments I witness is when someone gets feedback…too late. “I was shocked” said one leader to me recently. “It felt like a kick in the stomach coming from someone I trusted.” Her voice cracked as she said this to me. It was clear she was trying to contain her emotion.”

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6 Reasons Why Change Initiatives Fail

Posted by on December 15, 2016

Someone has well said that the pain of the present must be greater than the fear of the future for change to actually take place. Even with that level of motivation, many times change initiatives don’t work regardless of how bad the current reality may be. I have made all of these leadership mistakes and this Forbes post was a good reminder:

“In today’s more volatile and unpredictable business environment, change management has to become part of the culture and business plan. Not just something that leaders decide they need to adopt at some point when their business model is threatened or failing. I have led my companies through significant transformations and made many of these mistakes. Don’t do the same thing.”

Categories: Leading Change | Comments Off on 6 Reasons Why Change Initiatives Fail

Why Gratitude Is So Important In The Workplace

Posted by on November 30, 2016

Most of the behavioral issues I deal with in the workplace are because the person I am coaching has lost their perspective. They focus in on a series of small hurts and dwell on them to the point they become bitter and negative. In every situation without exception, the key core issue is they are no longer grateful for all the good in their lives. This Fast Company post deals with why this is so important:

“Gratitude is absolutely vital in the workplace, says UC Davis psychology professor Robert Emmons, author of The Little Book of Gratitude: Creating a Life of Happiness and Wellbing by Giving Thanks, and a leading researcher on the subject. “Most of our waking hours are spent on the job, and gratitude, in all its forms, is a basic human requirement,” he says. “So when you put these factors together, it is essential to both give and receive thanks at work.”

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Leaders Who Get Change Right Know How To Listen

Posted by on November 11, 2016

We have all heard it said that for change to work the pain of the present has to be greater than the fear of the future. With that said, the ability to accurately asses the cause of the problem and apply the right solution are critical path issues to any success. This HBR post values the ability to listen and learn:

“Organizational change comes at a cost. It requires people to sacrifice something they value, whether it’s time, money, responsibilities, control, status, comfort, or relationships. The more your change effort disrupts those things, the more people will resist or even rage against it.

That helps explain why failure is so common, but there’s more to it. In a PWC survey of more than 2,000 global executives, managers, and employees, only 54% of respondents said their change initiatives succeeded — and the most frequently cited problem (by 65% of those surveyed) was change fatigue.”

Categories: Leading Change | Comments Off on Leaders Who Get Change Right Know How To Listen

Leadership Is About Promising To Listen Well

Posted by on November 7, 2016

We all struggle with the commitments we make either to ourselves about eating a healthier diet or to someone else about something we said we would do and simply forgot. When we want to take our commitment to the next level we start making promises.

A promise is defined as a declaration that something will or will not be done and there is assurance given and an expectation created. Promises should be reserved for the top priorities and the people we care about the most.

One promise we should all be willing to make to the people that matter is that I will carefully listen to what you have to say. As Stephen Covey said in Seven Habits of Highly Effective People we should first seek to understand the other person before we ask to be understood.

Our motives are no longer to show how smart we are, win the argument or avoid pain. We sincerely want to understand what the other person is thinking and feeling to the point we acknowledge their value as a person.

Listening involves time and a willingness to be patient until we have embraced all that the other person wanted to share. Think of at least one person in your life today that you really care about and make a promise that I will lay down my agenda for the benefit of someone else.

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Ten Unmistakable Signs Of A Toxic Culture

Posted by on November 4, 2016

This issue is a really big deal and it’s not only negatively impacting productivity, it’s causing a lot of people to hate coming to work. They hate it not because of the excessive work load but because of the constant negative drama that consumes everyone daily. This Forbes post nails the problem:

“Maybe it’s a pay practice that doesn’t make sense, or a burning issue that everybody knows and worries about but that has never been spoken about other than furtively, in hallway conversations. The first time you raise a sticky issue at work, it will feel scary — but it will feel more comfortable to speak your truth every time you do it.”

Categories: Leadership Development Organizational Culture Pastoral Leadership | Comments Off on Ten Unmistakable Signs Of A Toxic Culture