Breaking the Addiction to Go Mode

THEME: New Year, More Challenges

FOCUS: Breaking the Addiction to Go Mode

Monday morning: March 29, 2010

Dear friends,

Here is a poem to start off the morning:

Searching for the Hermit in Vain

I asked the boy beneath the pines.

He said, “The master’s gone alone

Herb-picking somewhere on the mount,

Cloud-hidden, whereabouts unknown.”

- Chia Tao (777 A.D. - 841 A.D.)

Many times during our lives as leaders we search for the right answers to the difficult and complex questions that people ask us on a daily basis. And just as many times, we search in vain. The answers are “cloud-hidden, whereabouts unknown.”

Ever since my brother-in-law Warren died of cancer at the end of March seven years ago, this week is a time period where I pause and step out of the daily routine of go, fix, rush, keep moving. Instead, I pause and attempt to regain my perspective. With hints of spring in the air, I do not rush for more answers or more new knowledge. Instead, I step back rather than forward. I listen rather than talk. I receive rather than give.

Leaders are addicted to problems. We live to solve them. We love to diagnose and fix them. We adore opportunities to share brilliant insights in the midst of complexity. But with age, experience and maturity comes the revelation that as a leader there are days when words can not fix or solve every problem. At times, we need to move past questions and answers.

I remember early on in my career working with a wise woman executive in Kansas whose organization served people with many different forms of disabilities. We were working on a complex strategic problem when she shared with me that she was exhausted by the pace of change. I asked her what she did to regain perspective. She responded, “I go to Walmart. We have a client who is a greeter at Walmart. I have known her since the first day we started offering services to her. When I am tired, frustrated or just plain overwhelmed, I get in my car and go out to Walmart. This client always greets me warmly when I enter. We visit for a brief moment and then she goes back to greeting the others who are coming into the store. Somedays, I help her. Other days I just sit and watch. Somedays we get so busy we forget the purpose of our work. When I get worn, I go and visit Walmart. I am always greeted warmly and this makes a world of difference.”

In a world filled with e-mail, voice mail, text messaging, instant messaging, and tweets, we can drown in the minutia of the moment and never witness the daily miracles of life. Therefore in late March, I like to pause and be like the boy who sits for a while beneath the pine tree, waiting for the master who has gone on alone, herb-picking somewhere on the mount. Neither I nor the master are truly cloud-hidden, whereabouts unknown. We are just focused on living in the moment, and it makes a world of difference.

Enjoy the day and the week. I hope it is filled with many blessings.

Geery

Geery Howe, M.A.
Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in
Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change

Morning Star Associates
319 - 643 - 2257

Organizational ADD

THEME: New Year, More Challenges

FOCUS: Organizational ADD

Monday morning: March 22, 2010

Dear friends,

It is time to prescribe Ritalin to certain organizations as there has been a rise of ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder) among many companies and many senior teams. With a complete loss of impulse control, these companies are charging off in a thousand directions and hoping one of them is the right one. Furthermore, with this lack of strategic awareness and focus, they react to every crisis of the moment, missing key information and analysis that could solve these recurring patterns. Finally, they show regular patterns of corporate anxiety or depression. Using an old term, they are “freaked out” by all that is happening. While there are days when even the best of us can feel overwhelmed by the challenges of this current economy, this is not a time for senior executives to be easily distracted or impatient. Instead, we need to have laser focus about a few very important things.

First, now is the time to redefine priorities.

Doing a thousand things poorly does not allow an organization to be productive. Clarity creates the capacity to organize and pay attention to the right stuff. The key is to sit down and figure out what is the right stuff for your organization. When we do not make the time for this level of activity, we enter into a continual cycle of hyperactivity.

Second, we must remember that organizational ADHD is, in part, a reflection of the work place environment.

If leaders create a panic focused work environment where busy is more important than successful, then everyone will just keep moving to avoid being marked as the source of all problems. Instead, we need leaders who clarify expectations and make sure their people have the capacity, i.e. skills and equipment, in order to be successful.

Third, we need to change the diet of all employees.

Rather than feeding them fear, anxiety and so much work they are inundated with more to do than any reasonable or healthy person can ever get done, leaders need to notice that even in the midst of this madding pace of work and change things are getting done. Customers are being served and many are actually being served quite well. Remember: “what you feed, grows.” Now is the time to praise employees for progress. Furthermore, regular encouragement, compassion and kindness are also helpful.

The old adage that “everyone in the company is drinking the Kool-aid” would be helpful if it had a touch of Ritilan. However, given that many companies are merely a reflection of the clarity and behavior at the senior team level, then now is the time to rinse our glasses and start anew. Successful companies always have, and always will need to deal with disturbing data or significant problems. Stuff happens when any group of people come together to make something happen. Rather than freaking out if it is not perfect and then running all over the place, successful people and companies instead routinely pause and regain their sense of balance and perspective. As I regularly tell clients during executive coaching sessions, the faster you go the more you need to regularly slow down and check your direction.

This week, move from being an ADHD oriented organization to a healthier place to work. Redefine priorities, praise progress, and clarify direction. It is much better to do this than pour Ritilan in the morning coffee.

Have an outstanding week,

Geery

Geery Howe, M.A.
Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in
Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change

Morning Star Associates
319 - 643 - 2257

The importance of Mid-level Management

THEME: New Year, More Challenges

FOCUS: The importance of Mid-level Management

Monday morning: March 15, 2010

Dear friends,

Last week, I said that the phrase, “it is time to do more with less,” was one the biggest pieces of management gibberish this side of the Mississippi. It may be correct on one level, but it is not helpful and it certainly does not generate confidence or clarity. As I noted, a better set of phrases would be “it is time to work smarter” or “it is time to prioritize our work better.”

Still, many leaders are stating the importance of doing more with less and some brilliant genius has determined that another key to moving through this economic downturn is to completely eliminate mid-level management. When ever I hear this line of reasoning, it makes me feel old. This tune has been sung in the past with minimal success. Now, people are starting to sing it again.

When I first started doing this work, back when the earth was still cooling and the major tectonic plates were moving continents to their current shape, mid-level management ruled the day. The classic pyramidal organizational chart was huge. Bureaucracy was king.

Then in the 90’s, people began flattening their organizational charts to increase speed, profit and responsiveness to customer service. Mid-level management was significantly reduced and those who remained had 10 to 15 and even higher supervisor to employee reporting ratios. The old-timers in the room noted that reducing mid-level management was going to be a mistake. They were pleased to see the end of bureaucracy but also knew that getting rid of mid-level management was not going to solve all problems.

Then a funny thing happened at the turn of the century. People realized that mid-level management was actually important. Mid-level managers did something that mattered and made a difference in productivity and profit. Thus, senior leaders started hiring them back. The old timers in the room smiled and welcomed back mid-level management.

Now, we are back to the beginning and people want to eliminate mid-level management again. In these “newly restructured” organizations being proposed, we will have senior managers, front line supervisors and front line staff. No middle management because they cost too much. And, from my perspective, we will have a massive problem on our hands because there is a major difference between leaders and managers.

First, we need to remember the wisdom that Marcus Buckingham wrote in his book, The One Thing You Need to Know ... About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success, Free Press, 2005: “To excel as a manager you must never forget that each of your direct reports is unique and that your chief responsibility is not to eradicate this uniqueness, but rather to arrange roles, responsibilities, and expectations so that you can capitalize upon it. The more you perfect this skill, the more effectively you will turn talents into performance.

To excel as a leader requires the opposite skill. You must become adept at calling upon those needs we all share. Our common needs include the need for security, for community, for authority, and for respect, but for you, the leader, the most powerful universal need is our need for clarity. To transform our fear of the unknown into confidence in the future, you must discipline yourself to describe our joint future vividly and precisely. As your skill at this grows, so will our confidence in you.”

Clearly, there is a difference between managers and leaders. Both skill sets are needed and very important. Typically, unless they are very well trained and very well coached, most senior leaders are just that, namely senior leaders. They are focused on transforming fear into direction and hopefully focused on describing “our joint future vividly and precisely.” In essence, they are focused on strategies to position the organization for the future.

Mid-level managers, on the other hand, are focused on arranging roles, responsibilities and expectations so their direct reports can capitalize on the opportunities and challenges before them. They are operationally focused and service focused.

Yet somewhere out there in the grander universe, people forgot a simple fact. Tactics will always trump strategy for mid-level managers and strategy often trumps operations for senior managers. The disconnect between what is happening at the ground floor of the organization and in the ivory towers of senior management will be accentuated when we eliminate mid-level management. Mid-level managers are the translators of strategy and a vital link to understanding ground level operations.

To survive this strategic choice, everyone is going to need to be very well trained and coached. However, training is always cut in a downturn. Learning new and better ways to work is seen as an expense in so many companies rather than an investment to improved performance. Somewhere people forgot that no problem can be solved by the same thinking pattern that created it. Furthermore, most senior leaders have not received quality coaching. Therefore, when they coach people, it is not very good.

So, what do we do if we want to save money?

First, build a highly functioning senior team - one that can solve conflicts, commit to plans, hold each other accountable, and focus on collective success.

Second, revitalize your organization’s strategic nexus. Review, and if needed, update your organization’s mission, vision and core values. Next, create a strategic plan so everyone works smarter and more focused.

Third, sit down with mid-level management and engage in healthy and in-depth strategic level dialogues. Rather than eliminate their positions, discuss how to move forward together. When we hired these mid-level managers, we choose the best people possible. We considered them qualified and intelligent. Now is the time to use this expertise rather than discard it.

Fourth, if you do have people in your organization who are not meeting performance expectations, then deal with them. Engage qualified HR professionals and focus on realistic performance improvements efforts.

Finally, realize that in the end having clarity, focus, and clear priorities is always better than just eliminating mid-level management for the sake of eliminating people. As Bill Gore wrote many years ago, “Commitment, not authority, produces results.” This week, commit to the right stuff.

Have a magnificent week,

Geery

Geery Howe, M.A.
Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in
Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change

Morning Star Associates
319 - 643 - 2257

Doing More With Less

THEME: New Year, More Challenges

FOCUS: Doing More With Less

Monday morning: March 8, 2010

Dear friends,

Since the beginning of the year, I have been in many executive and management team meetings. Nine times out of ten, the CEO or Executive Director will take me aside after the meeting and ask me the same question: “So, what do you think of my team?”

First, when presented with such a question, I remember the research of Jim Collins in his book, Good to Great, which stated the importance of “who before what.” As he wrote, “The key point ... is not just the idea of getting the right people on the team. The key point is that "who" questions come before "what" decisions - before vision, before strategy, before organizational structure, before tactics. First who, then what - as a rigorous discipline, consistently applied.”

At the exact same time, I remember a small bit of wisdom shared with me by a Wisconsin executive, namely “you can not fix stupid.” And right now, there are a lot of companies waking up and realizing that they can no longer tolerant “stupid.” Performance management, accountability and the notion that all employees must meet expectations is becoming more and more mission critical as winter slowly moves toward spring.

Nevertheless, when a brief shining light of clarity pierces the darkness of poor performance, some one will trot out one of the most stupidest sayings and expect brilliance to follow. The new mantra of this economic downturn is “it is time to do more with less.” On one hand, this statement is completely correct. On the hand, it is the biggest piece of management gibberish this side of the Mississippi.

While we all know there are less resources at this time period, we must recognize that doing more is only a temporary solution. More effort and more time at work will not yield better results. When money and resources are tight, working smarter is the preferred route to success rather than working harder and working longer. However, working smarter is not the chosen path in many companies because it will require an organization to review and possibly challenge status quo. On the other hand, working harder with less preserves status quo and reduces conflict. What many forget is that doing this over an extended period of time causes increased burnout and disengagement.

Nowadays, people are getting burned out at work at an amazing rate. The result of prolonged economic stress, lack of strategic clarity and more hours at the office is resulting in increased disengagement at work by vast numbers of people. It also is causing your best people to start looking for employment with other companies. Where they once had careers, they now have jobs.

Many organizations do not believe me when I share with them that their best people can leave at the drop of a hat. And for those of us who work with top talent, I regret to inform you this morning that they are now on the move. The good people are looking, applying and seeking better jobs. The best companies are actively courting, recruiting and hiring these people. In short, doing more with less is not a sustainable course of action.

This week, recognize that all organizations need to evaluate and redefine both it’s strategic direction and the key messages that are being sent to it’s employees. Now is the time to work smarter and better not just harder.

Have a successful week,

Geery

P.S. Spring is a time period when many organizations hold critical retreats as they plan the later half of this year and begin planning for 2011 - 2013. For those involved in planning these key meetings, I suggest you read the following article: Sull, Donald. “Are You Ready to Rebound? Seven Questions to Ask.” March 2010 issue of the Harvard Business Review.

Sull is a professor and faculty director of executive education at the London Business School. Over ten years, he has studied firms that have excelled in some of the world’s fastest-changing markets, such as China and Brazil, and most unforgiving industries like financial services and fast fashion. As he writes, “Through my research, I’ve identified common obstacles that undermine a firm’s ability to execute on their established strategies and take advantage of unexpected opportunities. By asking themselves the seven questions below, managers can quickly assess their companies’ readiness to rebound.”

Here are the seven questions:

1. Do you miss opportunities that others spot?

2. Are your hydraulics broken? “Organizational hydraulics are the mechanisms senior executives use to translate corporate objectives into aligned action by individuals across the organization - that is, processes to set strategic priorities, cascade objectives, and measure employees’ progress in achieving their goals.”

3. Do you reward mediocrity and call it teamwork?

4. Are your core values a joke?

5. Are you talking about the wrong things?

6. Have your Vikings become farmers? “Executives who excel at execution resemble Nordic Vikings, who attacked when they saw an unprotected spot and retreated when they realized they couldn’t win, maneuvering their longboats toward the next opportunity. Once Vikings seized a bit of land, however, they often remained to farm it. Over time, they came to value the security of protecting what they had more than the adventure of pursuing new opportunities. Organizations are susceptible to a similar dynamic.”

7. Do you rely on heroic leadership?

If you are seeking to improve execution within your company during 2010 and beyond, then I suggest you read this article and discuss it with your senior team. Working your way through the seven questions will generate considerable insight and perspective for all involved.

Geery Howe, M.A.
Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in
Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change

Morning Star Associates
319 - 643 - 2257

Positioning For The Future

THEME: New Year, More Challenges

FOCUS: Positioning For The Future

Monday morning: March 1, 2010

Dear friends,

One of the hardest things we have to do as leaders is to cultivate the ability to “look over the horizon.” While day to day operations can trump all strategic initiatives, completing strategic goals can at times blind us to what is happening just over the horizon.

When I teach people about strategic planning in our year long course called the From Vision to Action Leadership Training, I spend considerable time explaining the concept of strategy. I point out that strategy is an extensively premeditated, carefully built, long term plan designed to achieve a particular goal. I also explain that strategy is adaptable by nature due to unforeseen variables presented by an ever evolving market place. Rather than presenting a rigid set of instructions or tactics which has the potential to create organizational vulnerability, strategy needs to promote ongoing evolutionary success.

One important lesson from the last two years is that we live in a more complex and inter-related world than we have often thought about in the past. As The Law of Whole of states, “Change in one part influences and changes all other parts.” We now know this to be true because change in another part of the world or another part of the country can influence and change our world immediately and profoundly. We live at a time where the whole is in motion.

The result of this level of complexity often is contextual blindness. There are days when we get too wrapped up in focusing, monitoring and fixing the parts that we miss seeing the whole. At other times, we can see the whole organization and understand how it is moving strategically. But for me, the critical element in strategic planning and strategic level leadership this winter is to not only to see the whole organization but to comprehend how it is moving within the context of its market environment. It is both the organization and the environment that need to be monitored, because both are evolving, adapting, influencing and being influenced by internal and external factors. Being blind to context can cause the organization to enter into a period called the “hubris born of success”, a concept introduced by Jim Collins in his book, How The Mighty Fall. As he writes, “Great enterprises can become insulated by success; accumulated momentum can carry an enterprise forward, for a while, even if leaders make poor decisions or lose discipline. Stage 1[Hubris Born of Success] kicks in when people become arrogant, regarding success virtually as an entitlement, and they loose sight of the true underlying factors that created success in the first place.”

One of the underlying factors that we need to cultivate this winter is the ability to look over the horizon. We need to know what is happening today and we need to understand what will happen next year, but at the exact same time, we need to focus on positioning the organization for the future beyond 1-2 years out. We need to think about our customers and their changes. We need to think about the shareholders and their expectations and their evolution. We need to comprehend our employees, the ones we have today and the ones we will hire in the future. Because when we do this, we realize that the choices we make strategically this winter have a direct impact on who we will serve in the future, how we will serve them in the future, and whether or not we as a company will be viable in the future.

This week, sit down with your team and hold a “look over the horizon” discussion. To start the proverbial ball rolling, discuss how the make-up and actions of the families that have been created since 2000 are different than previous generations. Then, explore how teenagers now are not national as much as global in their actions and perspectives. Finally, consider what will need to change within your company over time if these millennium families were to become your future customers, and how these global teenagers will become your future employees. If you need help facilitating these discussions, give me a call. Until then, think about looking over the horizon and positioning your organization for the future.

Have a delightful week,

Geery

Geery Howe, M.A.
Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in
Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change

Morning Star Associates
319 - 643 - 2257