Posted by admin on October 20, 2009 under Leadership | 
by : Rich Nicholls
Leadership is the single biggest factor influencing personal decisions. A good leader is the most powerful asset any business can dream of. A true leader is able to inspire people to do their work. The workers will look up to the leader and admire the leader making the most of their guidance.
Leadership is not an attribute anyone is born with. It is developed throughout life. If you want to become a leader, but think that no-one will ever be interested in following you, you need to change your mindset! You CAN develop yourself into a leader. Do NOT say “One day when I am a leader”! Whether or not you lead one person, or ten thousand people you need to say “Today, I am a leader”, and act on it. Leadership is a constant active effort in order to improve skills and ability to help others.
One of the greatest quotes I love about leadership is simply ‘Serve to Lead’. Leaders are not there for self glorification. They are visionaries always looking ahead at how they can help others and move them ahead. In regards to business they are constantly moving their business forward creating new opportunities for employees.
Leaders are decision makers. They do not procrastinate. They know what needs to be done and they make sure that it gets done. Leaders know how to delegate effectively.
Do not be fearful of messing up. When leaders mess up they take responsibility, learn from the mistake, and next time take their game up a notch. Followers tend to blame others. Take a step in confidence, hold yourself up high. Pin your shoulders back, walk with a confident posture! Posture is important. Talk with confidence and learn how to speak in others. If that is not for you, then take a public speaking course, just get out there and do it. Step outside your comfort zone and take your leadership to the next level.
Do not get management and leadership mixed up. Leaders decide direction and management heads towards that direction. Lead people, manage things.
A practical way to develop leadership in your world today is getting involved/more involved in home business opportunities. Positioning yourself to inspire people will really catapult you ahead. It will also take you out of your comfort zones, which is a fantastic place to be in order to develop your weaknesses into strengths.
“Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.” – Stephen R. Covey
Posted by admin on September 9, 2009 under Leadership |
Crisis in management education
There is no consistency today in the way we educate managers. Larger organizations tend to have more comprehensive programs. If we look at the business results of the past year it will show that these programs have not been very successful. In the US over 99.9% of all organizations have less than 500 workers. Many of these organizations have little to non-existent management education. There is a great opportunity now to improve. Most of the big companies use the traditional approach. Their managers are given a combination of classroom education, role plays, and outside experts with their theories. In many cases there is little follow up and measurement around the results of the education.
What does the BEST management education look like?
The BEST management education consists of a combination of classroom discussions and real life practice. While some background theory is important, it is better to have discussions around management practices and different approaches. The problem with traditional management education is that it is standardized and designed to fit all employees at once. For example, a new manager is having attendance issues with an employee. The traditional advice is to warn the employee that his behavior will lead to punishment if not corrected. Then managers are given exercises in class to try their skills at giving tough messages to make believe employees. Managers learn the right way and the wrong way and the training is complete. Unfortunately correcting human behavior is more complex.
Management is both an art and a science
Socrates had it right when he said asking questions was the best strategy to lead people to where you wanted them to go.
Management education should be focused around discussing many possible solutions and strategies that might be different for each situation. Most HR policies tend to use the same rules for all people but people are different and have many different issues and managers must learn how to approach each person in a unique way. I had an employee once who was always late. My peer manager suggested this person was lazy and I should punish him. I took a different approach. I sat down with this person and showed empathy. After asking many questions, I discovered this person was caring for ailing parents at home and his life was just overwhelming. We worked out a new schedule which allowed this person to come to work a little later in the morning. This gave him time to take care of his parents until a nurse arrived. As a result, his productivity soared and he was never absent again. Under a strict set of policies this person would never have been given a second chance.
Invest the time to educate mission, values AND behaviors
Did you ever notice families with well behaved children who just seemed to know what to do at all time? They were very independent and almost seemed too mature for their age? This was a result of good parenting which I suspect was a combination of paying a lot of attention to the goals of the family, values, and what was expected. At work adults are just like children but with bigger bodies. All adults require care, opportunities to thrive, and strong and open communications.
Empty organizational mission
Many organizations invest the time to place charts around the building describing what the organization stands for. Missing are the charts reflecting organizational values and expected behaviors. Best manager education invests time getting people to do more than just memorize the organizational mission. Best manager educational programs discuss why the organizational mission is important and what the organizations’ values are. For example, if the organization says serving the customer is the most important value, there are countless definitions and examples of what this means. Finally, people are clearly given examples of what behaviors are expected to support the mission and values. In the above example, people are told that they are expected to make decisions at the lowest possible level using creativity when solving customer problems. This BEST manager education makes work come alive for people.
Measure for development not for rewards and silly contests
The best way to destroy management education is to surround the activities with rewards and silly games. For example, I can remember one program which gave tests and the managers who scored the highest were given dinner coupons. I can remember another program which gave out candy and movie tickets in class for participation. The BEST management education activities are open to all employees and have follow up opportunities after class to manage!
Everyone can benefit from management education
Many organizations only offer their management education activities to their star performers, emerging leaders, and other equally silly and useless categories.
First, the BEST system gives opportunities to all people to go through management education. The BEST management education figures out a way and then process to enable all people to manage right after the education. In some cases, people will directly lead others. In other cases, people will lead projects. For the majority of people they will be allowed to manage their own work free from micro-management, limited decision making ability, and free from the threat of punishment AND the promise of reward.
The BEST management education is a creative and inspiring process not an event. Just one look at the collapse of the US economy in 2009 is alarming enough to know that the past management practices at a global level have led us down a path of destruction and reduced quality of life. Now is the time for new management models and practices.
It starts with new ways of education and what it means to be a BEST manager!
Craig Nathanson
Posted by admin on July 11, 2009 under Leadership |
by : Ryan Scholz
One of the biggest barriers that senior leaders face in delegating and taking work off their plates is having the confidence that people below them will make the right decision. In the absence of confidence, leaders tend to get involved in many more decisions than they need to. They get accused of “micromanaging” by their staffs.
I believe that if people share similar values and have essentially the same information, they will usually come to the same conclusion. So if a leader doesn’t think that his or her people will make good decisions, then it usually comes down either to a values issue or an information issue.
Obviously, the getting people the information that they need to make good decisions is easier than assuring similar values. As a leader, it is important to give people as much information as possible so that they can make informed decisions.
The more complicated task is making sure that people apply the same values when making decisions. This is why organizational values are so important. If the absence of clear organizational values, people will generally apply their own personal values when making a decision or apply what they perceive the company’s values to be.
Values provide the basis to determining behavior in certain situations. When people in a company have a shared set of values, the company becomes less bureaucratic, more flexible, and more efficient. People at lower levels will make the right decision.
In determining the values which guide decision making, there are a couple of things that are important. First, the list must be short. I recommend no more than for or five key values. If there are more than this, it creates confusion and more opportunity for misapplication in decision making situations. Think about any situation where you had to chose between several alternatives. If you only had one or two criteria to make the choice, then it becomes a fairly easy decision. If there are ten criteria, it becomes much more difficult.
The second point about values is that there should be a hierarchy. Some decisions involve choosing one value over another. Johnson & Johnson faced this situation in the Tylenol tampering case in 1982. They chose to put consumer safety above short term financial considerations even though evidence pointed to a localized event. The total retail value of the nationwide recall was over $100 million.
The hierarchy cannot be interpreted as situational. For example, people is hospitals struggle with courtesy versus efficiency. In manufacturing plants, there is often conflict between quality and productivity. There needs to be demonstrated consistency in the hierarchy of values in every situation.
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to hear a presentation by a senior executive from Disney on the Disney culture. The core of the Disney culture is four simple values as it relates to customer relations:
1. Safety
2. Courtesy
3. Show
4. Efficiency
These values guide the daily actions and behaviors of thousands of cast members (the Disney name for employees) at their theme parks. Every Disney employee can recite these when asked.
The safety of the guests takes precedence over anything else. If a ride has to be stopped because of an unsafe situation, it is stopped – no questions asked. An example used in Disney training is when a person in a wheel chair approaches a continuously moving ride, the ride is stopped sacrificing the show and efficiency. It is clearly the safe thing to do.
Courtesy means that cast members are expected to smile and be friendly and patient with guests no matter what the situation. Rather than tell someone how to find a place ,the cast member is taught to take the person there.
By “show”, Disney means all of the sensory impressions that a guest experiences. Cast members pay attention to all of the things that a guest sees, touches, or hears in their experience at Disney.
Instilling these values in every Disney employee is not just a matter of posting them on the wall. In every Disney orientation and training program, these values are discussed. Cast members are put through extensive role playing exercises using real-world situations learn how to apply the values.
Training at Disney is not limited to new hires. All employees, no matter how long they have been with the company have to relearn their role.
A cast member’s decision is never questioned if they apply the values in the proper order in a situation.
The power of Disney’s approach to leadership by values, is in its simplicity and consistency. The four values are easily understood by every cast member at Disney. Too many values statements contain words that many employees don’t understand or relate to in their jobs. The hierarchy of the four values never changes. These four values and their order of importance was established by Walt Disney himself and has never been questioned or changed.
Leaders who struggle with having people make the right decisions should look hard at the values of the organization. Are they understood? Is there a clear hierarchy when a decision involves a conflict between two values?
Posted by admin on March 15, 2009 under Leadership |
by : Sparxoo
According to Greg Welch of Spencer Stuart, the average Chief Marketing Officer tenure in 2008 was 28 months, up four months since 2004. In comparison, the average CIO lasts 38 months, and no other c-level executive checks in under 46. Earlier this year, Forbes.com discussed why Chief Marketing Officers have a short life.
CMOs have to balance their responsibility to drive business performance and brand development over the long-run, with the need for short-term results. In the quick-turn world of CMOs, sometimes tactics drive strategies. Seth Godin does a nice job of illustrating a world dependent on tactics in “when tactics drown out strategy.” Everyone needs results NOW, so CMOs are often stuck in the loop of trying to drive immediate results instead of creating a plan that could work but may take months to come to fruition.
For aspiring CMOs, newly appointed CMOs, or those who have managed to survive in this difficult environment, we share our perspective on key areas of focus in providing marketing leadership.
The Customer is #1
Your customer is the buyer and the decision maker. The best CMOs immerse themselves in the customer mindset. Learn as much as you can about your customer through research, collecting customer data, considering competitive options, and understanding the overall market reality from your customer’s perspective. Beyond this, great marketers proactively get out of the office and get out of the conference/focus group rooms to watch consumers in their homes, in their cars and offices, in the retail environments. Watching the consumer interact with the brand (or competing brand offerings) in real-life yields observations (reactions, emotions, work-arounds, combinations with other products/services) that offer insight into the “real” concerns, issues, and joys of the consumer – and the things that that are often unable to articulate.
This may sound obvious and easy, but it can be quite challenging. There are so many channels to listen to your customer. For example, are you doing a good job of monitoring customer feedback online? Are your databases advanced? Are you asking the right questions in focus groups? Are you even talking to the right customer groups (don’t underestimate the importance of segmentation, targeting, and consumer profiles). Bottom line: make it a priority to talk to current and prospective customer to understand why they love/hate your product along with the competitors.
Make an Emotional Connection
Imagine that you are providing commentary to a Japanese tourist at a Russian wedding and your native language is English. Indeed, sometimes it seems like you need to be a world-class interpreter in order to effectively market. The bride and groom speak Russian and embody Russian mores, habits, etc. The tourist speaks Japanese and embodies those mores, habits, etc. Now you must take the essence of this joyous occasion in Russian and convey the full emotional aspect to the Japanese tourist. The fact is that businesses and customers don’t always speak the same language, but…
To read more about effective chief marketing officer strategies, go to Sparxoo, a digital marketing, branding and business development.
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