Excellence 2.0 Blog

Accelerating Learning

Are you working for an organization that truly wants to accelerate your learning and development? My partner Judy works for a major University, and they have learning labs that simulate the nursing/patient experience, including different personality types for the ‘patients’. It’s a VERY sophisticated, and effective way to accelerate learning…and it works.

So my question to you is this: If you are not working for an organization that sees the light on learning, how far behind have you fallen compared to those who work for enlightened organizations that employ this technology? And what does that mean for your future career?

Food for thought!

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The Focused Leader

Have you ever wondered how Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Fred Smith (FedEx) and other successful leaders achieved as much as they did? The power of focus explains a lot about their successes.

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Is Simplicity Overated?

Don Norman wears many hats, including co-founder of the Nielsen Norman group, Professor at Northwestern University, and author, his latest book being Emotional Design.

As an author on usability, Don seems to think that simplicity is highly overrated. 

But what has that got to do with leadership? Well, it seems that we as consumers favor stuff with MORE features, not less. And therefore, it becomes a strategic issue for leaders who want to ’simplify’ things, especially their organizations products and services.

Check out Don’s post here.

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Radio Shack: Lousy Leadership in Action

Okay, so business isn’t always what we would like it to be. Sometimes a leader has to make tough decisions, like laying people off. Believe it or not, there is a way, a well proven way, to do that compassionately. In the past, as an HR Manager, I’ve had to do it. But I’m happy to say that I was part of some great organizations who took care of their responsibilities, and their people, even in the worst of situations.

It fries my brain then to hear about how Radio Shack laid off hundreds of workers BY EMAIL!!! How stupid and insensitive can you get?

Here’s the link to the USA Today article that spilled the beans on these so called ‘leaders’. Will I shop in Radio Shack again? Nope, and Christmas is coming up.

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Teamwork

The Eternally Successful Team

Remember the last successful team you worked on? What made it successful? Here is a list of team attributes that every successful team that I have been associated with, possesses:

1. The team members are clear on their common goal
2. Each team member knows how to support other team members
3. Team members speak a common language
4. The team as a whole are highly respected by other teams whom they need to collaborate with
5. The team values and leverages diversity
6. The team as a whole is quick to respond to emergencies
7. The team has fun, but not at each others expense

What other attributes can you add to this list?

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Index of Articles

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Strategy

The “Dirty Little Secret” of The Strategy Industry

Author Gary Hamel has said “the dirty little secret of the strategy industry is that it doesn’t have any theory of strategy creation.”

Strategy therefore has to develop from an iterative process involving those people who have the knowledge, insights and courage to make it happen. Especially courage. Strategy, as Michael Porter described it in the book ‘Strategy Bites Back’, is about ‘being different’…and that takes a lot of courage.

But my guess is that you already knew that.

I liken strategy development and implementation to a ‘catchball’ process, where senior management formulate a high level vision and toss it over to the next level for review and comments, who toss it back. Back and forward it goes until all involved have their fingerprints on it, feel a strong sense of authorship, and of course feel much more confident and courageous.

Here are some tips to help you make that happen…

1. Understand your organizations strategy. REALLY understand it…the WHY, the WHAT and the high level HOW. There can be no room for misunderstanding here. Any misunderstanding at this level will be amplified many times as you translate the strategy into tactics. So go over it with your manager, and get answers to all the questions you have. Relay the answers to your team. Where there is no answer, relay that to your team also.
2. Make sure you list out and understand the assumptions used in the high level strategy, such as the economic forecasts, and the direction that the industry/sector is expected to head in over the next 3 - 5 years. What if these assumptions prove false? What contingencies have been built into the plan?
3. Strip away the verbage and work with your manager to explain the strategy in plain, simple language. If you MUST relay the exact words given to you, do so but accompany them wherever necessary with simply worded translations and examples…the “in other words…” piece - provide illustrative examples wherever possible.
4. Play ‘catchball’ with the plan. In other words, pass it back and forwards quickly between you, your team members and your manager. Each pass should add meaning, clear up any misunderstandings that may arise, and add another layer of detail. Make it an iterative process.
5. Develop a team scorecard to accompany your team tactics. Make the scorekeeping fun and try to make sure that the measures you use are such that you can track progress at the very least on a weekly basis. Any longer timeframe than that and it will go stale on you very quickly.
6. Use visual tools that you can post on the walls, bulletin boards, etc. to show your teams plan, its linkage to the strategy and progress to plan. The larger and more colorful the better. Use simple tools such as deployment matrices to show these linkages.
7. Build project management skills within your team. These skills allow people to break the tactics down into action steps and schedules to get the job done. This is absolutely critical to team success…and to help them avoid burnout from ’special projects’ that they must execute in addition to their regular job.

And don’t forget to have fun! Recognize effort AND results…this gives people a real reason to believe in the strategy, in you and in each other.

Good luck in your efforts!

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The Law of Attraction: How Some Leaders Attract the Best Followers

Who Are You Attracting?

“Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.” - Studs Terkel

What attracts us to some leaders, and makes us avoid others?
I once knew a leader who, through his speeches, could hold a room full of crusty, hard-nosed manufacturing managers spellbound for hours. People flocked to hear him speak. Even in the depths of winter, at -30c, they would leave hearth and home, and brave the elements to hear the latest news from this CEO. 
  
People commented on his eloquence as a speaker, his genuineness, his authenticity. Most people who met him wished that they were more like him…passionate, enthusiastic, driven, persuasive (you could never say no to him when he requested something, not because of fear, but because of respect).

(more…)

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Leaders: Are You Playing Small?

How Are You Serving The World ?
 
Are you holding back at what you do, or yearn to become? Do you know that you have, right now, within you all of the resources that are necessary to ‘play big’ and become a high performing leader, at whatever it is you have a true passion for? Do you know that?

In his acceptance speech as President of South Africa, that great leader Nelson Mandela, put it squarely to his people when, in quoting author Marianne Williamson, he said: 

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.” 

It’s your choice…

(more…)

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The Neuroscience of Leadership

What do breakthroughs in brain research and effective leadership have to do with each other? According to two experts, David Rock (an executive coach) and Jeffrey Schwartz (a researcher), in a recent article in Strategy + Business, how the brain works explains a whole lot about organizational change, and why many leaders get it wrong.

Their conclusions, based on their most recent findings in brain research, are most revealing. Amongst these conclusions is one that resonates with me…FOCUS is Power. This I believe is the main reason that those who adopt the FACET Leadership Model find it so compelling…it starts with FOCUS.
You can read their full article here

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