How Do Leaders Empower Their Culture? - Part #1

Not too long ago, I was meeting with a mid-level manager about the implementation of a new way to do customer service, i.e. a whole new service delivery model, including a new position plus a new TO to match the new service delivery model. He was deeply frustrated, not with the model, the position or the TO changes. He was frustration with not being heard as to his concerns about the speed of the implementation process and not being included in the process of defining the new KPIs to determine implementation success.

“I hear your frustration,” I responded, “and let’s pause for a moment. I can not change the pathway of how we got here. There are many leadership lessons that you and I can learn from what has taken place.

Now, given we can’t change the past, let’s look at what to do moving forward. First, can you tell me what is the goal or strategy that is driving all of these changes?”

What followed was a journey of understanding the WHY factors, not just focusing on the WHAT, i.e. what had happened. Some days we do not get to choose how things unfold and yet we have to continue to move forward effectively. One key to this process is to make sure we as a leader, no matter what level we are within the company, can create clarity. And in this situation, we also need to connect that clarity, e.g. about the new model and TO changes, back to the overall strategy and goals within the current strategic plan.

When I am dealing with situations of this nature, I think of Herminia Ibarra and her book, Act Like A Leader, Think Like A Leader (Harvard Business Review Press, 2015). In it, she writes: “… the quality of a leader’s idea is not the only thing people consider when making up their minds about whether to engage with a leader. Naive leaders act as if the idea itself is the ultimate selling point. Experienced leaders, on the other hand, understand that the process is just as important, if not more so. How they develop and implement their ideas, and how leaders interact with others in this process, determines whether people become engaged in the leaders’ efforts.”

Ibarra’s formula for success comes down to the following: the idea + the process + you = success in leading change. What we have to remember as leaders is that, as she continues, “… the you part always trumps the idea and is the filter through which people evaluate the process.” In short, it all boils down to the quality of people’s relationships with others before they engage in making change. This depth of clarity about the importance of alignment with overall strategy plus building healthy work relationships is what leaders do every day to empower their organization’s culture.

From my vantage point, when I find an organization and an empowered culture, I really pay attention to the leaders. Those leaders who empower their culture do something that at first seemed inconsequential but upon hours of reflection, I have come to the conclusion that it is critical to their success. They are constantly networking, i.e. friend-raising, but more important they are building networks of people. They are not connecting people with just themselves as much as with other leaders within and outside the company. By constantly connecting people to people, these leaders understand that this network of connections has the potential to become a network of support for empowered action and perspective. Furthermore, sometimes this network will help people operationally focus on their internal responsibilities or their own personal or professional development, but what I notice most of all is how much this network helps people with strategic focus and understanding the bigger picture.

This week I challenge you to continue building your own network and also to helping others to build their networks. The combination of the two would be a force multiplier for all involved.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

How Do Leaders Build Cultural Clarity And Alignment? - Part #2

Some days we get so busy solving problems as leaders and managers that we forget that most people will shift their thinking only after new behaviors have led to results that matter to them and have been validated by others. The best leaders understand this and recognize that building cultural clarity and alignment is playing the long game. As Jon Katzenbach, Ilona Steffen and Caroline Kronley in their article,“Cultural Change That Sticks,” Harvard Business Review, July-August 2012, note “deeply embedded cultures change slowly over time.” We have to be patient then with this level of work.

Still, I have seen alignment take place over the course of my career. In these organizations, leaders make some unique choices. First, results matter within these organizations, i.e. qualitatively and quantitatively at all levels of the organization, not just at the senior team level. You can visit with front line staff or the senior most people and all of them are talking about outcomes and results. 

Second, there is “line of sight” within these organizations. My daily actions and my quarterly goals all connect with the current strategic plan and with the overall mission. Here, alignment is defined as shared beliefs and shared behaviors which achieve a collective goal, outcome, or result. It is not a vague  idea but instead is an executable reality and choice.

Next, the leaders of these companies agree with John Doerr in his book, Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs (Portfolio, 2018) when he writes: “Healthy culture and structured goal setting are interdependent. They’re natural partners in the quest for operating excellence.”

From my perspective, there also is one more small but important difference in these organizations, namely there is a clear difference by all involved about what are committed goals, i.e. ones tied to metrics and well defined action plans, and aspirational goals, which reflect big picture, higher-risk, more future-tilting ideas and efforts.

This week, I encourage you to sit down with your team and discuss the following two questions: Do we know the difference between committed goals and aspirational goals as a group? Are we clear about who is working on which ones? This level of dialogue and the resulting clarity will make a big difference this coming summer.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

What is the connection between organizational history, culture and meaningful work within successful organizations? - part #1

As we sat down for dinner, I realized that I had not seen her in quite a while.

“So how have you been?”, I asked her.

“Overwhelmed” was her response. “I’ve had to work on all four pillars of the organization, namely people, structure, systems and culture.”

“It’s been painful,” she continued. “These are good people. We are good people, but we have no control over all the changes that are taking place. It is waves upon waves of unforeseen variables and choices being made by people who do not realize the impact of their actions. It breaks my heart to lead through such difficulties.”

“I am so sorry you are having to go through this,” I responded.

And she wept quietly at the table. They were tears of grief, tears of anger about stuff over which she had no control, tears of letting go of control, tears to finally be with someone who gets the pain of leadership and tears of realization that it is going to get harder before it gets better.

Right now, life is dynamic, not linear. We can not control so much that is going on and yet we have to move forward together through the pain.

Since the Fall 2018 From Vision to Action Executive Roundtable, I have learned three important lessons. First, we need to pry ourselves away from screen time interactions and analysis, and reconnect with people, mission and meaningful work in person. Dashboards tell us some of the story but never the whole story. As Gregory Boyle in his exceptional book, Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship (Simon & Schuster, 2017), reminds us: “Everything that counts can’t be counted.” There is a time and a place for fast leadership, but I believe we need to invest in slow leadership, namely the work of building and maintaining key relationship. Metrics help, but relationships are the foundation of successful action.

Second, we need to remember that deciding something and doing something are two different things. We have lost track of this in the work of fast leadership, particularly in our work with younger leaders. “I sent the e-mail” is not executing a decision.

Third, organizational culture, once established, can not be solved by reductionism. Trying to change group behaviors through individual goal setting, measurement and accountability will only work so far. We forget that our organizational culture reflects our collective behaviors. For example, you can not remove the ingredients within a baked cookie, i.e. the culture. You can not undo things to change things; you can not move backwards to make it better. Instead, you have to start over. This must be a re-founding by returning to our identity/purpose, reclaiming what we still believe in, a reclaiming of what gives meaning to what we are doing and what we aspire to be. It all depends on the values we embed at the start of this process.

Therefore, it is time for leaders in large and small organizations to engage in restorative processes. We must restore and/or build new processes where people feel confident and smart again. We need processes where we make sense of what formerly made us feel overwhelmed. We need experiences where “We are all in this together” takes on new meaning.

The first way to do this is to engage in more strategic dialogues. The goal of a strategic dialogue is to create strategic awareness, strategic understanding, and strategic perspective, which will result in better strategic choices and operational choices.

Strategic dialogues are a capacity building exercise. An effective strategic dialogue is the combination of three elements, namely education, awareness, and the building of commitment. Successful strategic dialogues are often facilitated so the leader or leaders can just focus on listening.

Within a strategic dialogue, focus on three areas. First, explore strategic context or if you do not like that word then use the words “strategic landscape.” Here, I encourage you to answer the question: Why are we moving forward? The big picture outside the organization needs to be explored and in particular, explain how the customer has and has not changed over time.

Second, explain strategic direction by answering the question, Where are we going? As leaders, we do this by connecting the why from above dialogue with the where of this question. In particular, explain how the company’s strategy has changed over time in order to meet the changing needs of our customers.

Third, explain the strategic nexus or philosophy by answering this question, How will we do this? Being mission-driven, and values-led means there needs to be  alignment and interconnection between mission, vision and core values with the current strategic plan. In particular, explain why the company’s mission and core values have not changed over time. 

For leaders to do the above successfully, they are going to need to get very good at the following two behaviors: sharing over telling and listening over responding. Now, some of you may be thinking what is the difference between sharing vs. telling and listening vs. responding? Mutual respect is one major difference. When leaders choose to share and listen during a strategic dialogue, there are no leaders or followers. There is no us vs. them. There is instead a collective we.

From my experience, this level of work requires leaders to utilize deep listening. This is a way of hearing in which we are fully present to what is happening in the moment without trying to control or judge it. We are hearing others with an open mind and a compassionate heart.

When we engage in restorative processes, we must engage in routine coaching in order to build capacity. From the person who is being coached, this means they are feeling heard. From the person who is doing the coaching, they must show up and be present. It is more transformational coaching rather than technical coaching. 

For coaching at this level to be successful, there needs to be the right environment for coaching. Many leaders think we are in sync with our environment, but actually it’s at war with us. As Marshall Goldsmith points out in his top-notch book, Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts - Becoming the Person You Want to Be, (Crown Business, 2015), we think we control our environment but in fact it controls us. Our environment changes us, and a changing environment will aways change us. Therefore, if we do not create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us. And the result turns us into someone we do not recognize.

From my experience, the right coaching environment is one where certain elements are not changing, namely ample time, an uninterrupted space,  mutual respect, deep listening, two way dialogue, and active note taking.

Furthermore, when we engage in restorative processes, we must also engage in regular feedback. Feedback is vital to coaching. However, feedback is rarely given because it can make the coach and the person being coached uncomfortable. Returning to the aforementioned Goldsmith’s work, we forget that a coach is a follow-up mechanism. He or she instills accountability. At the highest level, a coach is a source of mediation, bridging the gap between the visionary Planner and short-sighted Doer in us. The Coach meshes our inner Planner with our inner Doer.

This week think deeply about strategic dialogues, restorative processes and how to take your coaching work to the next level. Given the dynamic world we are living in, this level of leadership is sorely needed.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

How do leaders help their organization become more resilient?part #2

Leaders who help their organization become more resilient focus on creating three different kinds of clarity, i.e. three different forms of knowledge. The three different kinds of knowledge are the following:

- Declarative knowledge is factual knowledge which helps them understand and explain how and why things work the way they do.

- Procedural knowledge is knowing how to perform certain activities plus details the steps and activities required to perform a task or job.

- Structural knowledge is information about how to organize one’s thoughts in order to solve a problem. This form of knowledge helps in problem solving plus the creation of plans and strategies.

At the same time, leaders, who help their organization become more resilient, respect the power of culture. Ken Blanchard in his book, Leading At a Higher Level: Blanchard on Leadership and Creating High Performing Organizations (Prentice Hall, 2006) writes that when people leading the change fail to respect the power of the current culture, the current culture will kill the change initiative.

From my perspective, most organizational systems and initiatives are focused on improving what already exists. They are not aligned with the “new” change, i.e. new transformational strategic change. Furthermore, the ways we measure progress are all operationally oriented rather than strategically focused. Therefore, it is hard to measure if the culture is changing.

However, highly resilient organizations, writes Karl Weick and Kathleen M. Sutcliffe in their book, Managing The Unexpected: Resilient Performance in an Age of Uncertainty (John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2007) are highly reliable organizations. Wick and Sutcliffe note that “No system is perfect.” I would agree and say that no person is perfect, too. But as they point out “The essence of resilience is therefore the intrinsic ability of an organization (system) to maintain or regain a dynamically stable state, which allows it to continue operations after a major mishap and/or in the presence of a continuous stress.” The hallmark of an HRO, a highly reliable organization, is not that it is error-free but that errors don’t disable it. As they continue, “Resilience is a combination of keeping errors small and of improving workarounds that allow the system to keep functioning.”

From experience, lots of reading, plus visiting with many leaders, I have learned that creating a resilient culture involves three actions:

First, they image worst-case conditions and practice their own equivalent of fire drills. This can involve thinking through a black swan event and planning accordingly. Or those involved can participate in a pre-mortem. As Jack B. Soll, Katherine L. Milkman, and John W. Payne in their article called “Outsmart Your Own Biases” from the May 2015 issue of the Harvard Business Review wrote, “In a premortem, you imagine a future failure and then explain the cause…. This technique, also called prospective hindsight, helps you identify potential problems that ordinary foresight won’t bring to mind.”

Second, they institute routine After Action Reports. See my Monday Thoughts Blog for October 6, 2017 for more details about After Action Reports.

Finally, they implement a “Churchill’s Audit” from the book, Managing The Unexpected: Resilient Performance in an Age of Uncertainty which is based on personal reflection. Here is his audit:

- Why didn’t I know?

- Why didn’t my advisors[/direct reports] know?

- Why wasn’t I told?

- Why didn’t I ask?

This week, consider holding a black swan event with your team and/or a premortem.  I also encourage you to do a Churchill Audit on a recent event. All of the above will help you and your team become a more resilient.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

How Successful Companies Institutionalize Culture

When you visit successful companies or work within one, they all have a special feel to them. It is unique and very noticeable. One element that makes this take place, from my perspective, is that successful companies institutionalize their culture without bureaucratizing it.

Struggling companies always have a system of administration marked by bureaucracy and red tape. They lack flexibility and initiative due to excessive adherence to regulations. This is particularly visible in the behavior of those in management and leadership positions, and how they interact with key systems.

Patrick Lencioni in his delightful book, The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business, Jossey-Bass, 2012, writes “Human systems are tools for reinforcement of clarity. They give an organization a structure for tying its operations, culture, and management together, even when leaders aren’t around to remind people.” Lencioni notes that this level of clarity takes place when leaders engage in the following activities:

- creating collective focus and clarity through out the organization

- cascading clarity 

- reinforcing clarity through human systems, i.e. performance management

- developing cultural consistency

As to performance management, he explains it this way: “Essentially performance management is the series of activities that ensures that managers provide employees with clarity about what is expected of them, as well as regular feedback about whether or not they are adequately meeting those expectations.”

From my vantage point as a consultant and executive coach, I observe that successful companies practice what they preach. They also constantly reinforce it on a day-to-day basis. For them, the brand promise is a set of core behaviors rather than just words. While we all recognize that the culture is the strategy in successful companies, the key is to not let the dark side of bureaucracy to slip in and take over, thus neutralizing the strategic advantage of a clear and focused culture.

In short, successful companies stay focused on their strategic nexus, the union of their mission, vision and values plus their strategic plan. This depth of clarity and attention allows them to handle the normal internal and external challenges that surface in any business day without having to resort to developing a bureaucracy that tramples creativity, commitment and effectiveness. 

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Unleashing the Power of Culture and Coaching

When the history books are written about our time, many authors will focus on the flawless execution of brilliantly conceived strategies and the amazing level of teamwork that took place. Others will focus on the different personalities of our times showing how they were in command of smart people and delegated to them so they could solve amazingly complicated problems. Finally, these same authors will note that even in the face of adverse conditions these leaders and their companies did not give in or give up to the difficulties before them. Resilience and perseverance will become the buzz words of this decade.

While much of this is true on one level, the best leaders, especially the ones who are humble enough to not get caught up in the hype, will not let the focus be on effort and strategy alone. They will talk about the quiet revolution that took place when no one was looking. These leaders will talk about the interface between culture and coaching.  

From my experience of helping organizations and leaders improve or transform their organization over the course of 30+ years, I have watched the best leaders recognize that their organization’s culture is key to their strategic success. These thoughtful leaders focus on the systems that create this culture and sustain this culture. They understand that any cultural misalignment has the potential to impact the organization over the short and long term. Therefore, they are constantly monitoring for misalignments, and recognizing that these misalignments will have a profound impact on profitability and sustainable growth. 

At the exact same time, these profoundly successful leaders also focus on one to one coaching. While they can build and maintain amazing teams, the prerequisite to successful teams is to have a work place filled with successful people. Therefore, the best leaders are constantly focused on developing their people. This one to one level of coaching is mission critical to the culture and to the company. When people within a company are dedicated to constantly getting better, then a cultural flywheel is built. The power of all committed to continual improvement results in a company committed to continual improvement.  In short, organizational change and improvement is the sum of individual change and improvement.

For those leaders who are seeking to create and maintain this kind of flywheel during the next 3-5 years, then now is the time to sign up your key leaders for the 2017 From Vision to Action Leadership Training. Through a challenging, interactive curriculum which blends lectures, selected readings, small and large group discussions, and how to skill-building exercises, participants in this four part leadership training gain critical knowledge and skills which improve their ability to lead people to generate short and long term success.

For more information on this in-depth training and how to register for the 2017 From Vision to Action Leadership Training, please click on the following link: http://www.chartyourpath.com/VTA-Leadership-Training.html 

The history books about our time may or may not become bestsellers, but the impact of exceptional leadership will transcend this time because those companies will still be in business and still creating successful outcomes and solutions. I look forward to your participation in the 2017 From Vision to Action Leadership Training where we will explore these topics and many others that can make a difference.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Break Down Silos And Build More Bridges

In preparation for the roll-out of a new strategic plan, the CEO asked me to meet with them and each of their direct reports to make sure they were all on the same page. To get each conversation started, I asked the following three questions: 

- What is changing now that we have a new strategic plan? 

- What will actually be different because of the new strategic plan? 

- Who’s going to lose what when we implement the new strategic plan?

Half way through these meetings, one person responded, “Nothing much will change. This is just like one of the new systems that we rolled out last month. It’s just more, not different.” There was a profound silence in the room and one could almost hear the CEO’s mouth hit the floor, it dropped open so quickly. I just smiled because we had run into a classic case of what I like to call “strategic blindness,” i.e we don’t see our strategy as a whole organization, and we just see the parts we like. In short, we had encountered a potential silo. 

We forget some days that “... status quo functions elegantly to solve a stream of problems and opportunities for which it has already evolved.” As Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky write in their book, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World, Harvard Business Press, 2009, “Yesterday’s adaptive pressures, problems, and opportunities generated creative and successful responses in the organization that evolved through trial and error into refined structures, cultural norms, and default process and mind-sets.... In other words, yesterday’s adaptations are today’s routines.”

As Heifetz, Grashow, and Linsky in the aforementioned book continue: “Overtime, the structures, culture, and defaults that make up an organizational system becomes deeply ingrained, self-reinforcing and very difficult to reshape.” When things are going well, having a self-reinforcing culture, structure and systems is beneficial. When something important changes, e.g. the financial crisis that happened in 2008, an organization or a system’s tenacity can prevent it from adapting, and from learning to thrive in a new context.

The reason this happens is that the organization is trapped by it’s current ways of doing things, simply because these ways worked in the past. The thinking and acting in that particular manner produced success for the organization. It also produced success for individuals who embraced the “new” way of doing things. It even produced leaders who reinforced the “new” way of doing things. These “new” leaders reinforced what was working and do not challenge new structures, culture or systems. The end result is that the organization becomes blind to the ever shifting competitive landscape.

When encountering a silo, first, as recommended in the book, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World, diagnosis whether or not you have a silo or an individual who is acting like a silo. If it is an individual, then coach in or coach out. If it is a silo, diagnosis the subsystems within it like structure including who reports to who, culture including behavioral norms, meeting protocols, ways of problem solving, decision-making, and what reinforces the culture, e.g. a certain incentive program, and systems including default systems and processes. The goal is to understand how the silo got to where it is a silo and what keeps it from evolving into something else.

Second, with the above in mind, analyze the competitive environment. What are the new adaptive pressures, challenges and opportunities that are surfacing? Distill them into specific trends, demographics, and economic indicators. Recognize you are going to have to “sell the problems” before you find the solution.

Third, reflect on this quote by Stephen Covey from his book, The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness, Free Press, 2004: “If you want to make minor changes and improvements, work on practices, behavior and attitude, but if you want to make significant, quantum improvement, work on paradigms.” From my perspective, the power of an effective strategic nexus helps guide all involved when working with a silo. When breaking down silos, we need to have something to replace it with otherwise people, systems and culture will default to the old way of doing things. 

Remember: the culture of any organization is tenacious.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Making Sure They Come Back In The Morning

With the national unemployment rate continuing to drop and many company leaders sharing with me about their challenges around recruitment and retention of staff, I am continually reminded of this quote that I read many years ago: "Our intellectual capital walks out the door every night, so the key is make sure they come back." - Aart de Geus, CEO of Synopsys Inc. 

Right now we need everyone to come back in the morning, ready, willing and able to embrace today’s problems and tomorrow’s challenges. We want them to bring their depth of commitment, clarity and connections so that they can generate effective new solutions.

However, David Dell, research director of The Conference Board's Capabilities Management and Human Resources Strategies area, offers a unique perspective to this situation: "The challenge to employers is to not only make potential employees aware of the company as a good place to work and bring the best applicants successfully through the recruitment and hiring process, but also to retain them and ensure their understanding of the company's goals and commitment to them." 

The moment of commitment that I discussed last week in this blog begins by creating clarity about the company’s strategic nexus, i.e. the sum of the mission, vision and core values plus the company’s goals. Yet, from my experience, there is a subtle but important difference in the best companies I have seen handle this current situation. These companies understand that their strategic nexus has to become cultural, namely it needs to translate into a specific way of working. When the nexus is no longer just ideas but also a distinct set of behaviors of how we work together, solve problems together and deliver services together, then the company becomes a magnet for recruitment and retention.

This week transform your strategic nexus into a culture that permeates the whole company. Then, when people go home at the end of the day, we know they will be back in the morning.

FYI: Due to the complications of my schedule, I am not going to post anything on this blog for the next two Mondays. I will be back on Monday, 9/14/15.  Feel free to read past blog posts in the meantime.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

The Strategic Nexus

Strategic leadership begins and ends with comprehending, utilizing and committing to a fully functional and completely aligned strategic nexus.

The strategic nexus is made up of two parts. One part of the nexus is the mission, vision and core values. The other part is the strategic plan. The former does not change and preserves the core of the organization. It is the source of stability and perspective during organizational change, especially when moving through the trough of chaos. The later is designed to prevent stagnation and, in essence, pushes the organization into the future. This part creates a sense of urgency and focus to the choices that are being made.

Strategic leaders understand the purpose of the strategic nexus and recognize how mission, vision and core values are interconnected. They also know that this interconnection and the clarity around it is the foundation of the organization’s day to day culture. 

At the exact same time, they recognize that strategy is a choice and needs to support the on-going evolution of the business given the continual changes in the needs, wants and desires of those it serves. Furthermore, when the culture is clear and rooted in the mission, vision and core values, then it will also become a strategic asset in the design and implementation of the strategic plan.

Full alignment within the strategic nexus is mission critical to strategic leaders. They know that once they have it and once people comprehend it, that they have a powerful force for forward momentum.

This week, take more time to understand your organization’s strategic nexus. You will then be able to leverage it toward a more positive and effective future for you and your organization.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Focusing on Collaboration Rather than Heroics

The senior management team and I were sitting around a table discussing a variety of new strategies for coping with the impact of the Affordable Care Act, when I commented that I did not think the organization was well positioned for long term success. In particular, it had to stop focusing on only trying to fix all of the immediate problems and instead began defining and then solving the more pressing adaptive problems. The COO’s head popped up from his folder full of charts and graphs, and said, “Our major problem is that our leaders are mostly focused on counting things. They have a ‘just tell me what to do and then I will do it’ mentality.  We need to change this first before we can move forward.”

So many organizations today are suffering from the hubris born of success, to refer to a phrase from Jim Collin’s writing.  As Arie de Geus, the former head of Shell Oil Company’s strategic planning group, wrote: “The signals of threat are always abundant and recognized by many. Yet somehow they fail to penetrate the corporate immune system response to reject the unfamiliar.” 

Jim Collins in his book, How The Mighty Fall and Why Some Companies Never Give In, HarperCollins, 2009, wrote, “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 [of organizational decline] 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.” He points out that when an organization neglects it’s primary flywheel, i.e. when the “what” replaces the “why”, then the rhetoric of success replaces understanding why. This results in a decline of the learning orientation within the organization. As Collins explains, “leaders lose the inquisitiveness and learning orientation that mark those truly great individuals who, no matter how successful they become, maintain a learning curve as steep as when they first began their careers.”

Therefore, we as leaders must have the capacity to work with complexity and uncertainty. It will all come down to improving the decision-making process throughout the organization. Noel M. Tichy and Warren Bennis in their excellent article called “Making Judgment Calls: The Ultimate Act of Leadership” in the October 2007 issue of the Harvard Business Review, note that there are three stages to effective decision making. In Stage #1, the Preparation Phase, effective leaders  sense what is happening in the internal and external environment and identify the problems. Next, they frame up the issue that will demand a judgment call, and then align their team members so that everyone understands why the call is important. From my vantage point, this is the stage in which most leaders are doing a very poor job. Rarely do they frame up the issue and then mobilize and align people well before the call.

In Stage #2, the Call Phase, the moment of decision has arrived. While many think of this as a single moment of rational analysis based on knowable and quantifiable variables, in reality it is a “dynamic process influenced by multiple variables which are often outside of a leader’s direct circle of control or influence.” However, “the best leaders make decisions that influence now but also set up a framework for others to make successful decisions.” I wish more people grasped the depth of the authors’ insights and realized that setting up a framework for making a decision is as important, if not more important than making the actual decision.

In Stage #3, the Execution Phase, once a decision has been made, a leader needs to mobilize resources, people, information, and technology to support the decision. Furthermore, they need to make it happen while learning and adjusting along the way.

I believe there is a critical Stage #4, the Evaluation Phase. Here we routinely evaluating our strategic choices and decisions as a large group and during 1/1 coaching sessions. This strengthens the level of understanding and improves the overall framework for strategic and operational decision-making. 

For us here today, I end this morning’s thoughts with a wonderful question written by Jon R. Katzenbach, Ilona Steffen and Caroline Kronley in their great article called “Cultural Change That Sticks” in the July-August 2012 issue of the  Harvard Business Review: “If we had the kind of culture we aspire to, in pursuit of the strategy we have chosen, what kinds of new behaviors would be common? And what ingrained behaviors would be gone?” It is time we answer this question so we will have greater collaboration and less heroics.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Some of the Major Problems in Creating Organizational Clarity

Currently the greatest external challenge to most companies is the high degree of strategic ambiguity. More and more organizations are doing a PESTEL analysis, i.e. the study of political, economic, social, technological, environmental, legal trends, and finding too many variables and uncertainties within the service delivery environment. Furthermore, these same companies are finding a lack of strategic clarity within the organization and a lack of strategic flexibility in systems and people also within the company. In short, many companies have discovered that they lack clear systems for managing or creating strategic adaptability. Overwhelmed by the complexity, they also are not proactively creating a system for building and maintaining an adaptive strategy.

From my vantage point, the underlying causes for organizations not being able to build and maintain an adaptive strategy starts first at the senior team level.  More and more of these teams are becoming dysfunctional. Rather than acting like teams, they often default to being senior leader work groups. Built around status and ego with a dash of artificial harmony, these so called teams avoid accountability and show little commitment for holistic strategic success. Furthermore, most are afraid of conflict and only talk about commitment, but show little behaviors related to it.

Second, most of these same organizations and their leaders are showing the hubris born of success, a problem first identified in Jim Collin’s book, How The Mighty Fall and Why Some Companies Never Give In, HarperCollins, 2009. 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 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.” By neglecting their primary flywheel for success, these leaders allow “what” to replace “why”, not realizing that when the rhetoric of success replaces an understanding of why, there will be a decline in the learning orientation of successful people and the entire company.

Third, these same leaders also lack a clear understanding of the relationship between culture and strategy, resulting in a lack of “institutionalizing” a clear definition of their culture and not leveraging their organizational core values to their competitive advantage. The result is that the company and in particular the senior team tolerate people in management and leadership positions whose behavior is out of alignment with the stated culture, core values and strategy.

While the above is taking place at the senior team and cultural levels, the next challenge for many leaders and their companies is how to successfully capitalize on expansion and growth opportunities. Most think of it as an effort problem when the vast number of problems actually fall into the area of strategic infrastructure to support expansion and growth opportunities. 

As we all know, new innovations compete for company resources, i.e. time, talent, and management attention, with the cash generating projects during any fiscal year. When all of the company’s budget, reporting and management processes are focused on the current fiscal year, they also define the compensation and incentives systems and thus focus everyone on accountability to the current fiscal year’s goals. If people do look ahead during the current fiscal year, they look to R&D and their long range strategic options by reviewing research, data and trends. The result is that any new innovations fall into a Bermuda Triangle where they are considered to a degree strategic but not yet fully implementable because the resources of time, talent and management attention are not fully given to them. In this no man’s land, the “new projects” here fail to be embraced because they can not deliver like the current fiscal year goals and systems. And because they can not show a fast ROI like current fiscal year products and services, they also are then hampered by lack of full operational support. Therefore, the new innovations become “demo bait” for selling more of the current fiscal year projects and services. 

Finally, there is one other problem that is causing many organizations to struggle at this time period. They do not understand the real challenge of talent management and performance management. They consider them to be something different but do not recognize that they are also interconnected. For example, many leaders do not recognize that talent management and development is about preparing an individual for future positions within the company, i.e. building bench strength, while performance management is about managing their current performance as it relates to agreed upon annual goals and 90 day plans. 

Given the aggregate of the aforementioned issues, many organizations need a clear strategic infrastructure which helps them to adapt strategically, manage talent and performance, and prepare for and implement strategic innovation. The sum of the above problems are hampering many organizations who are seeking a better future.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

How Successful Companies Work - part #2

When you visit or work in a successful company, they all have a special feel to them. It is unique and very noticeable. One element that makes this take place, from my perspective, is that successful companies institutionalize their culture without bureaucratizing it.

Struggling companies always have a system of administration marked by officialism, red tape and proliferation. They lack flexibility and initiative due to excessive adherence to regulations. This is particularly visible in the behavior of those in management and leadership positions, and how they interact with key systems.

Patrick Lencioni in his delightful book, The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business, Jossey-Bass, 2012, writes “Human systems are tools for reinforcement of clarity. They give an organization a structure for tying its operations, culture, and management together, even when leaders aren’t around to remind people.” Lencioni notes that this level of clarity takes place when leaders engage in the following activities:

- creating collective focus and clarity through out the organization

- cascading clarity 

- reinforcing clarity through human systems, i.e. performance management

- developing cultural consistency

As to performance management, he explains it this way: “Essentially performance management is the series of activities that ensures that managers provide employees with clarity about what is expected of them, as well as regular feedback about whether or not they are adequately meeting those expectations.”

From my vantage point as a consultant and executive coach, I observe that successful companies practice what they preach. They also constantly reinforce it on a day-to-day basis. For them, the brand promise is a set of core behaviors rather than just words. While we all recognize that the culture is the strategy in successful companies, the key this fall is to not let the dark side of bureaucracy to slip in and take over, thus neutralizing the strategic advantage of a clear and focused culture.

For those of you who are seeking more information on how to change your organizational culture and avoid a growth in bureaucracy, then I would encourage you to read a recent blog post called “The Key to Changing Organizational Culture” by John Kotter, Forbes - 9/27/12. Here, Kotter, the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus at the Harvard Business School, explains that “virtually no one clearly defines what they mean by “culture”.” Of course, as per normal for John Kotter, he explains what it means, i.e. “culture consists of group norms of behavior and the underlying shared values that help keep those norms in place.” Next, he explores where culture comes from and how it changes. While it is a short blog post, it also is a thought-provoking one. Here is the link: http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkotter/2012/09/27/the-key-to-changing-organizational-culture/?utm_source=web&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=blog

While you are reading Kotter’s ideas on cultural change, I also encourage you to read his Forbes, 7/12/2011 blog post called “Change Management vs. Change Leadership -- What’s the Difference?”. As Kotter points out, there is a big difference between change management and change leadership. The former focuses on minimizing “the distractions and impacts of change” while the latter focuses on “the driving forces, visions and processes that fuel large-scale transformation.” Again, it a short blog post but one worth reading. Here is the link for your reading enjoyment: http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkotter/2011/07/12/change-management-vs-change-leadership-whats-the-difference/

In summary, successful companies stay focused on their strategic nexus, the union of their mission, vision and values plus their strategic plan.  This depth of clarity and attention allows them to handle the normal internal and external challenges that surface in any business without having to resort to developing a bureaucracy that tramples creativity, commitment and effectiveness. 

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Cultural Change

Every once in a while, I read a book or an article, and think “Wow - now that is some excellent work with some fantastic insights!” Recently, I discovered another such article called “Cultural Change That Sticks” by Jon R. Katzenbach, Ilona Steffen and Caroline Kronley in the July-August 2012 issue of the Harvard Business Review. Some of you will remember the work of Jon R. Katzenbach in the book he coauthored with Douglas K. Smith called The Wisdom of Teams (Harvard Business School Press, 1993).

In this well written article, the authors explain that “many leaders blame their company’s culture for thwarting significant change initiatives, such as mergers or turnarounds.” As they continue, “But when they try to solve the problem by changing the culture, their efforts tend to fizzle, fail, or backfire.... What those leaders don’t see is that culture is highly ingrained in the ways people work - and that any company culture has assets. The secret is to make the most of its positive elements - to work with and within the culture, rather than fighting against it.” 

Based on their research and client experience, the authors present five principles that can help an organization achieve higher performance, better customer focus, and a more coherent and ethical stance. They are as follows:

1. Match strategy and culture. “Culture trumps strategy every time no matter how brilliant the plan, so the two need to be in alignment.”

2. Focus on a few critical shifts in behavior. “Wholesale change is hard; choose your battles wisely.”

3. Honor the strengths of your existing culture. “Every culture is the product of good intentions and has strengths; put them to use.”

4. Integrate formal and informal interventions. “Don’t just implement new rules and processes; identify ‘influencers’ who can bring other employees along.”

5. Measure and monitor cultural evolution. “Otherwise you can’t identify backsliding or correct course.”

While reading this excellent article, I came across one of the best set of questions I have seen in the last two years.  They recommend you ask the following two questions to your leadership group: “If we had the kind of culture we aspire to, in pursuit of the strategy we have chosen, what kind of new behaviors would be common? And what ingrained behaviors would be gone?” Brilliantly simple and wonderfully illuminating, this level of strategic dialogue would generate many insights and many unique coachable and teaching moments plus provide a fantastic opportunity to talk about culture, strategy and role modeling.  

In short, this is a very good article and well-worth the time and effort to read. I urge you to share it with your leadership team this summer and to discuss the lessons learned as you prepare for the fall and the coming year.

Happy reading!

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257