Posts filed under ‘Economy’
How to Engage your Talent During these Tough Times
When times are toughest, fear and worry strike most people, but when companies fail to nurture and take care of their best talent and prized workers, the whole company falters. Many companies today are doing a poor job at truly nurturing their people, as when the economy is down, managers address the most urgent problems first and often ignore their team. What can you do to best engage your talent? We found this article by author Sylvia Ann Hewlett and wanted to pass some of her tips along to you.
By Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Susan Berfield, Newsweek:
“It won’t surprise too many people to hear that loyalty, trust, and engagement at work have been diminished during the Great Recession: We all know talented people who have become disaffected. Maybe we’re even one of them. Put all those people together, and it becomes a daunting managerial challenge. Sylvia Ann Hewlett, founder of the Center for Work-Life Policy, took stock of the situation at some of the world’s most powerful corporations, including Ernst & Young, General Electric (GE), Goldman Sachs (GS), Intel (INTC), and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), all of which are members of the center’s Hidden Brain Drain Task Force. Here are excerpts from Hewlett’s new book, Top Talent: Keeping Performance Up When Business Is Down.
In these bleak times, companies are depending on their star performers as never before. Organizations need their top talent to be in peak form—firing on all cylinders—so they can succeed in a market that is the toughest in living memory. How are employers handling this challenge? In a word, badly.
To start with, leaders are seriously distracted. Caught between clamoring clients and vaporizing value, a CEO understandably might find it hard to focus on talent. People issues tend to translate into layoff strategies: How many should you let go? How should the cuts be distributed? Should you act surgically and strike deep or should you dribble out the reductions over time? When it comes to talent management, CEOs are also hamstrung by outmoded thinking. In times like these—marked by massive losses and rising unemployment—it’s tempting to imagine that there’s no need to worry about motivating talent. People are so grateful to have a job, the conventional thinking goes, that they can be relied on to contribute 110%. Right? Wrong.
Cutting-edge research from the Center for Work-Life Policy’s Hidden Brain Drain Task Force reveals the danger in conventional assumptions about sustaining high performance in tough times. Consider these critical and disturbing data points: In the wake of a mass layoffs, voluntary attrition can be deeper than the cuts themselves. A Center for Work-Life Policy survey shows that between June 2008 and January 2009, 14% of college graduates lost their jobs—of these, 32% were fired but an additional 68% voluntarily left their jobs. Participants in the Hidden Brain Drain strategy sessions were brutally honest when commenting on the impact of the current round of layoffs: 64% were considering leaving, and 24% were spending most of their time actively looking for another job. Those who stay report feeling disengaged, of being caught in long-term limbo: 74% of participants talked about being paralyzed, 73% felt demoralized, and 64% felt demotivated.
What’s an Executive to Do?
Overcommunicate. Everyone’s anxiety level is already off the charts. Silence from those supposedly in the know only makes it worse. When leaders don’t provide information, even the prized people whose positions seem safe start second-guessing what’s going on. The resulting rumor mill inevitably undermines trust. “You have to have the courage to talk, even if it’s just to say: ‘We don’t know,'” says Kathryn Quigley, head of talent management for the Americas at Credit Suisse (CS). “But whatever you do, you must say something, because people interpret saying nothing as meaning something bad.”
Take Charge of Your Talent
High performers thrive on acing challenges and surpassing goals. In tough times, many of the performance measures set up in rosier days no longer apply. Asking your top performers to pursue them anyway only sets up your best people for failure and creates bitterness and distrust. Smart managers channel team energy toward goals that are achievable in the current environment. Don’t assume everyone on your team knows the most productive use of her time. Under stress, even talented people often make bad decisions about which projects to focus on and how. You may have to become more of a micromanager to ensure that people are not only working hard but also smart.
Develop a Fair Restructuring Process
The “terms of disengagement” matter. Poorly handled layoffs leave a bad taste in the mouths of those employees shown the door and those picked to stay. Wayne Cascio, a business school professor at the University of Colorado Denver, looked at 18 years’ worth of downsizing data and found that even though expenses drop in the wake of large layoffs, revenues tend to drop, too—often disproportionately. This is because the remaining workers are coping with survivor syndrome—the anger, fear, anxiety, and decreased risk taking that follow a mass firing. One way to reduce the number of redundancies is by a creative use of flexible work arrangements. Accounting giant KPMG has developed an imaginative contingency plan called Flexible Futures, which was designed to decrease payroll costs while at the same time maintaining the firm’s deep commitment to its people. In January 2009 the firm gave its 11,000 U.K.-based employees four choices. They could volunteer for a four-day workweek and a 20% reduction in base pay; they could opt for a four-to-twelve week sabbatical at 30% base bay; they could opt for both; or they could stick to their current situation. “We were trying to deal with reality but also give employees some control over their own destiny,” says Rachel Campbell, head of people for KPMG Europe. To date, 85% of KPMG’s U.K.-based employees have signed up: The most popular choice is option three.”
Highest Rates of Unemployed Young People … The Lost Generation?
We came across this article and wanted to share with you. The results of some of these statistics are quite stunning– that our nation’s young people are currently at the highest rate of unemployment (54% of people aged 16-24 in the US for the month of September were unemployed!) and the devastating consequences this has and will have upon a generation of Americans, as well as the upon our nation. We hope this article will bring to light this emerging crisis and we can together think about solutions to counter-act what is occurring. Our youngest workers are our future and future leaders, and we need to nurture, and employ them, for the health of our nation!
From Newsweek, by Peter Coy:
“Bright, eager—and unwanted. While unemployment is ravaging just about every part of the global workforce, the most enduring harm is being done to young people who can’t grab onto the first rung of the career ladder.
Affected are a range of young people, from high school dropouts, to college grads, to newly minted lawyers and MBAs across the developed world from Britain to Japan. One indication: In the U.S., the unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds has climbed to more than 18%, from 13% a year ago.
For people just starting their careers, the damage may be deep and long-lasting, potentially creating a kind of “lost generation.” Studies suggest that an extended period of youthful joblessness can significantly depress lifetime income as people get stuck in jobs that are beneath their capabilities, or come to be seen by employers as damaged goods.
Equally important, employers are likely to suffer from the scarring of a generation. The freshness and vitality young people bring to the workplace is missing. Tomorrow’s would-be star employees are on the sidelines, deprived of experience and losing motivation. In Japan, which has been down this road since the early 1990s, workers who started their careers a decade or more ago and are now in their 30s account for 6 in 10 reported cases of depression, stress, and work-related mental disabilities, according to the Japan Productivity Center for Socio-Economic Development.
When today’s unemployed finally do get jobs in the recovery, many may be dissatisfied to be slotted below people who worked all along—especially if the newcomers spent their downtime getting more education, says Richard Thompson, vice-president for talent development at Adecco Group North America, which employs more than 300,000 people in temporary positions. Says Thompson: “You’re going to have multiple generations fighting for the jobs that are going to come back in the recovery.”
What’s more, the baby boom generation is counting on a productive young workforce to help fund retirement and health care. Instead, young people risk getting tracked into jobs that don’t pay as well, says Lisa B. Kahn of the Yale School of Management. That would mean lower tax payments for Social Security and Medicare.
Only 46% of people aged 16-24 had jobs in September, the lowest since the government began counting in 1948. The crisis is even hitting recent college graduates. “I’ve applied for a whole lot of restaurant jobs, but even those, nobody calls me back,” says Dan Schmitz, 25, a University of Wisconsin graduate with a bachelor’s degree in English who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. “Every morning I wake up thinking today’s going to be the day I get a job. I’ve not had a job for months, and it’s getting really frustrating.”
ANXIETY AND FEAR
The case for action is strong. Governments should act now before the damage gets even worse, argues David G. Blanchflower, an economist at Dartmouth College who recently served on the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England. He’s not sure what will work, but he favors trying everything from subsidizing education and training to cutting minimum wages for young people and trainees. “It has to be now,” says Blanchflower. “It can’t be in two years’ time.”
Most analyses of youth employment focus on people aged 16 to 24, which includes everyone from high school dropouts to wet-behind-the-ears college grads. But in this era of rising educational requirements, some people don’t start their careers until their mid or late 20s—and these young college grads are taking it on the chin as well.
According to a BusinessWeek analysis, college graduates aged 22 to 27 have fared worse than their older educated peers during the downturn. Two years ago, 84.4% of young grads had jobs, only somewhat lower than the 86.8% figure for college graduates aged 28 to 50. Since then, the employment gap between the two groups has almost doubled.
Robert I. Sutton, author of The No Asshole Rule, a management book, says he’s seeing “more anxiety and fear” among his students at Stanford University.
For more go here… http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_42/b4151032038302.htm
Women advancing in Economics
We love to highligh accomplishments of women in leadership, and today’s news is exciting! The first women ever to win the Nobel prize for economics was awarded today.
From the BBC:
“Elinor Ostrom has become the first woman to win the Nobel prize for economics since it began in 1968.
Ms Ostrom won the prize with fellow American Oliver Williamson for their separate work in economic governance.
The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences is the last of the six Nobel prizes announced this year. Since 1980, it has gone to Americans 24 times.
Last Friday, US President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize – though this aroused some controversy.
BBC economics editor Stephanie Flanders said the judges had rewarded work in areas of economics whose practitioners’ “hands were clean” of involvement in the global financial crisis.
The economics prize was not among the original Nobel awards, but was created in 1968 by the Swedish central bank in Alfred Nobel’s memory.
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The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences cited Professor Ostrom, who teaches at Indiana University, “for her analysis of economic governance,” saying her work had demonstrated how common property could be successfully managed by groups using it.
She told Swedish television that she was “in shock” at being the first woman to clinch the award, adding winning had been a “great surprise”.
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Meanwhile, Professor Williamson, the academy said, developed a theory where business firms served as structures for conflict resolution.
The University of Berkeley California academic has argued that hierarchical organisations such as companies represent alternative governance structures, which differ in their approaches to resolving conflicts of interest.
“Over the last three decades, these seminal contributions have advanced economic governance research from the fringe to the forefront of scientific attention,” the academy said.
The pair will share the 10-million Swedish kronor (£910,000; $1.44m) prize.
Last year, American academic Paul Krugman won the prize, in recognition of his analysis of trade patterns and where economic activity takes place.”
To read more…http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8302662.stm
Women Drive the World Economy. But Companies are Doing a Poor Job Serving Them
In the Harvard Business Review’s September issue, a fascinating, if not slightly shocking study result was published: As a market, women represent a bigger opportunity than China and India combined, but companies doing a poor job of serving them.
“Women now drive the world economy. Globally, they control about $20 trillion in annual consumer spending, and that figure could climb as high as $28 trillion in the next five years. Their $13 trillion in total yearly earnings could reach $18 trillion in the same period. In aggregate, women represent a growth market bigger than China and India combined—more than twice as big, in fact. Given those numbers, it would be foolish to ignore or underestimate the female consumer.
And yet many companies do just that, even ones that are confident they have a winning strategy when it comes to women. Consider Dell’s short-lived effort to market laptops specifically to women. The company fell into the classic “make it pink” mind-set with the May 2009 launch of its Della website. The site emphasized colors, computer accessories, and tips for counting calories and finding recipes. It created an uproar among women, who described it as “slick but disconcerting” and “condescending.” The blogosphere reacted quickly to the company’s “very special site for women.” Austin Modine of the online tech publication The Register responded acidly, “If you thought computer shopping was a gender-neutral affair, then you’ve obviously been struck down by an acute case of female hysteria. (Nine out of ten Victorian-age doctors agree.)” The New York Times said that Dell had to go to the “school of marketing hard knocks.” Within weeks of the launch, the company altered the site’s name and focus. “You spoke, we listened,” Dell told users. Kudos to Dell for correcting course promptly, but why didn’t its marketers catch the potentially awkward positioning before the launch?
Most companies have much to learn about selling to women. In 2008 the Boston Consulting Group fielded a comprehensive study of how women felt about their work and their lives, and how they were being served by businesses. It turned out there was lots of room for improvement. More than 12,000 women, from more than 40 geographies and a variety of income levels and walks of life, responded to our survey. They answered—often with disarming candor—120 questions about their education and finances, homes and possessions, jobs and careers, activities and interests, relationships, and hopes and fears, along with their shopping behavior and spending patterns in some three dozen categories of goods and services. (You can learn more about the survey and take an abridged version of it at www.womenspeakworldwide.com.)
We also conducted hundreds of interviews and studied women working in 50 organizations in 13 fields of endeavor. Here’s what we found, in brief: Women feel vastly underserved.
Despite the remarkable strides in market power and social position that they have made in the past century, they still appear to be undervalued in the marketplace and underestimated in the workplace. They have too many demands on their time and constantly juggle conflicting priorities—work, home, and family. Few companies have responded to their need for time-saving solutions or for products and services designed specifically for them.”
To read more go here:
http://hbr.harvardbusiness.org/2009/09/the-female-economy/ar/1
If you are a woman, do you agree: do you feel under-served, ignored, or undervalued by companies? If you are a man, what are your thoughts? And what are the opportunities that you now see, (as a consumer? as a leader within a company?)
Putting Values First– Procter & Gamble’s New CEO Charts a New Path
This July, P&G’s new CEO Bob McDonald took office, and since, has launched the company’s new mission… to be guided by Values, Principles & Purpose first. He believes, and teaches his company to believe in putting people –heart, mind, body– first and from this, profits will come. This is of course, a refreshing (and rare) outlook in light of the scandals, cut-throat capitalism, and unethical business dealings we as a nation have seen unfolding over the last few years… quite a sobering commentary on our society that this type of model of actually caring about people, is the exception and not the norm.
Envision a nation or society where the goal or main concern was caring about other human beings–caring about their wellbeing, caring about the poor, caring about helping others vs putting self first to make an easy profit. If this were the case, there would most likely be no Enron, no mortgage crisis, probably no economic downturn at all.
Of course, P&G still cares about making a profit, as the measurement or goal outcome from putting hearts and people first is, the bottom-line– increasing the dollars spent by consumers. Still, to learn about, and hopefully model our own companies after the P&G model is crucial and valuable to truly changing the upside-down values of our society’s companies.
P&G’s identiftied core values are…Integrity, Leadership, Ownership, Passion for Winning, Trust. Do you or does your company have core values that are followed? What about a purpose? To read more about P&G’s values and mission, go here: http://www.pg.com/company/who_we_are/ppv.shtml
And a good article about P&G’s value-led system by Rosabeth Moss Kanter that is worth reading can be found here: http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/kanter/2009/09/fall-like-a-lehman-rise-like-a.html Although,there was an example of P&G’s values-put-first given here where Kanter recounts P&G”s work in Brasil, where, spurred by a slipping market, P&G employees took note of some of the realities of Brazilian families’ lives and noted that they spent too much time washing cloth diapers by hands, so of course, introduced disposable diapers to the consumers. While I see the value in saving time, (and increasing P&G’s Brasil market profit), what about the enormous environmental down-side of changing an entire market from cloth to plastic diapers? I was just wondering about if this really was a positive change for Brasil’s families and country, or, if this just appeared to be a good change but long-term would have negative consequences for the environment, health and well-being of Brasil and its people. When a company has such far-reaching impact on whole groups and nations, there must be thoughtfulness in every choice made. Your thoughts?
America’s management practices: Remember…you can’t change organizational behavior without changing human behavior!
The mainstream seems to be finally catching on… After decades of unchanging business management practices that American businesses have, by habit, been repeating, (layoffs, performance reviews etc.) we see now that these methods are at best unhelpful, and at worst, destructive to employee motivation. What changes organizations? Changing human behavior!
An interesting list of 13 common, habitual practices our nation’s management uses that don’t work:
From Business Week, by Aubrey C Daniels, to read full article go here: http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/aug2009/ca20090811_861931.htm
With executives under fire for driving their companies into the ground—and taking the economy with them—it’s time for a managerial paradigm shift that focuses on the root of all booms and busts: individual behavior. Many time-honored management practices, such as layoffs, yearend bonuses, and automatic pay raises, actually reward employees’ bad habits and punish good behavior, often with devastating results.
These practices stem from theories of performance that have little to do with the science of learning. As such, they result in many mistakes initiated by senior leadership at great cost. They’re endorsed for the best of reasons but fail to lead to the desired result.
So why do so many organizations continue to embrace faulty practices? My 30 years of experience with Corporate America have led me to believe most business leaders are trained in the math of balance sheets, not the science of human behavior. They don’t understand that you can’t change organizational behavior without changing human behavior. Only when managers understand the basic principles of behavioral science and apply them skillfully will they realize the full potential of their employees and their organizations.
A Chance for Change
While management in general is proving challenging today, there is a silver lining to this current economic crisis: It provides a rare opportunity for managers to rethink and reform the way they run their organizations, using an approach grounded in science and research rather than in dubious habits. Businesses have been wasting time, funds, and resources on the same tired approaches for years. This crisis can actually provide us with a chance to start fresh and set in motion a sea change in the way we manage behavior and performance.
Please see a slide show featuring 13 universally used, but ultimately ineffective, management practices—and prescriptions for how to change them.
Company Case Study: New P&G CEO Bob McDonald on How to Improve Lives for People Who Cannot Afford Products
Here is a great case study example of how P&G found a way to improve lives and save water for consumers in the Philippines with the innovation of a product called Downy Single Rinse:
From Forbes: On the Call: P&G CEO Bob McDonald
Associated Press, 08.05.09,
“The Procter & Gamble Co. uses a slogan that its consumer products touch and improve lives. Traditionally, that’s meant with “new and improved” innovations of Tide detergent and Crest toothpaste and other products.
But the company is pushing to increase sales in developing countries where per capita incomes are far below U.S. consumers, in a global recession. Bob McDonald, who took over July 1 as CEO, discussed the challenge in P&G’s fourth-quarter earnings conference call with analysts.
QUESTION:
I know you want to change lives, but what if people can’t afford to change their lives?
RESPONSE:
One of the things we’ve learned is that, in order to improve the lives of people that tend to be toward the bottom of the economic pyramid, you have to innovate for the best consumer experience for those people. It’s not a matter of trickling down higher-tier technology.
A great example of that is Downy Single Rinse, which we began developing in the Philippines some years ago. This was an opportunity for Filipino consumers who rinse their clothes five times with clear water in order to get rid of the soap, to use a product that added fragrance, some degree of softness, but also, importantly, sequestered the suds that were in the water and allowed them to go from five rinses to one.
And basically, the product pays for itself because of the water that they save.”
Power Leaders – Flash in the Pan
Want something done fast with no concern for sustainable outcomes?
Don’t care about losing people because the business will go under if the new direction is not launched?
Assign a Power Leader to make things happen.
I’m not an advocate of Power Leaders but can envision, and have experienced situations where there is need for such a person. They are normally brought in from outside the organization and stay only as long as it takes to make the turnaround happen, or initiate the desired change.
What do they do well?
- They engage others in a vision for change, although they totally control the change plan.
- They build a structure and plan for achieving the envisioned outcome.
- They have a focused, relentless determination to succeed.
- They believe that people are important only as long as they are contributing.
- Not always, but frequently, they are self-serving and compensated via a bonus or improvement sharing compensation package that benefits them tremendously for success.
What do they do poorly?
- They don’t build sustainable solutions or systems.
- They ravage people who don’t move fast enough or perform to plan.
- They destroy cultural components aligned with a people-focus.
- They create fear in the workforce.
- They never have to live with their carnage.
So why do businesses hire them?
- To survive.
- To stop the flow of cash out of the organization.
- To generate fast revenue for the organization.
- To transition the organization so a long-term leader can be found.
Ever run into one of these Power Leaders in your past? If so, what are your thoughts?
Chad
How you respond to the economy is a CHOICE
I believe there are three key measurements for today’s uncertain economic environment.
1. Accelerating pace of change.
2. Our key response is fear, anxiety, insecurity, which according to Bright Side’s research and interviews is increasing.
3. The key sustainable advantage is our expanded capacity to learn/unlearn/relearn in the moment every moment.
Today’s recession reminds me of experiences I had over 25 years ago when I developed Bright Side’s personal change-leader model to expand my own capacity and the capacity of others, their teams, their organizations to be more equipped to lead toward the future dreams and desired business outcomes. My past experiences, both my past positive experiences and my past negative experiences continue to be triggered for me today and could limit or minimize the impact that I personally can and want to have and Bright Side can and wants to have.
And how I respond to those triggers is a choice: Yes, the recession is knocking on my door and I am choosing to not answer it.
The personal leader model is as relevant today as when I lost my job in the machine tool industry during the early 1980’s. Not only did I lose my job, I watched an entire industry collapse. I, along with many other Americans, was stuck in a view of arrogance, ‘Ohio is the machine tools capitol of the world, other countries make junk.’ After traveling to Japan in 1981, working with the Father of Quality, Dr. W. Edwards Deming, I began to wonder, have an insight, that perhaps I was experiencing the early side of a trend and I could ignore it or learn about it and take action to embrace and lead from that trend.
That failure became the impetus for the Bright Side model…
Adjusting My View of Current Reality
I just read an article that caused me to adjust my view and filters regarding current reality.
The article had research information about our current economy as well as information about our economy over the past fifty years.
Without getting into detail, it said we have been experiencing an anomaly during the past fifty years in that the economy was in a continual expansion mode (a few justifications and reasons for this were provided), and that our current economy is the reality of what it will be like in the future.
Well!!! This article caused me to contemplate what that could mean for leaders moving forward.
- Few to no leaders have experience from fifty years ago that aligns with the business needs of today’s reality – we are currently learning to lead in new and different ways as we experience day to day revelations in this new economic reality.
- A recalibration of what success looks like, sounds like, feels like and is measured like will be necessary. This will vary by the industry, function, situation in which leaders find themselves.
- The way in which people are led will be different in that aspirational career growth, positional movement, personal development, travel globally, compensation adjustments, etc. could be reduced or not available due to tighter management of budgets.
- Limited inventories and options will create the need for true leadership in selling versus order taking. Increased competition for discretionary monies will also require selling to step up and lead.
- Marketing will take on a different look as more targeted messages are designed for smaller, unique populations. Again, reduced budgets could drive an increased need for greater ROI per customer, so targeting to higher potential buyers will be necessary.
- Adroitness with new and existing technologies will be required to do more with less resources and increase the need for “high tech touch” to lead disseminated audiences of employees, customers, consumers, suppliers, collaborators, partners, etc.
- Leaders will be required to become very good at providing clarity of direction, priority, focus and metrics in order that these dispersed audiences can operate independently and still stay aligned with the organizational imperatives. Partnering beyond the traditional company boundaries will also require sharing these aspects of leadership with non-traditional entities in order to compete effectively.
- Leaders will also have to be better coaches, supporters, barrier-breakers and reinforcers of empowered followers in order to reduce errors and potential failure modes of operations as followers get up to speed and become leaders in their own business arenas.
- These more micro-focused organizations will require a strong core of strategic structure and infrastructure from which independence can be enabled in order to make better decisions at the point of performance, move with speed and agility, and maximize the cost/service/quality requirements of the target audience.
- Not to mention the leadership challenges for supply chain partnerships, purchasing reciprocity, legal licensing, financial refocusing, benefits contracting, recruiting & hiring, etc., etc.
I believe every strategic and functional aspect of how we have done business in the past is changing and that strong, agile, open to learning leadership will be required to challenge and adapt to the new economy as we move forward.
Okay, I shared some of my thoughts and filter changes.
What additional adds do you have based on our economy being more of the same as we have had this past year (2008-09), versus being the double-digit growth, fat and happy economy we have experienced since the 1950’s?
Chad
A Reason To Believe
A REASON TO BELIEVECandid Self-Reflection
Leaders are objective observers by applying the habit of self-reflection. They acquire self-knowledge by observing their impact on others, linked to business results. A candid self-reflection question could be, “What am I thinking, saying or doing in this moment and what is the impact?”
In today’s ever-changing business environment, leaders must be increasingly intense, intentional, agile, rapidly integrating and possibility-seeking learners. Leaders must actively and easily seek, see and seize unexpected opportunities, early indicators, trends and possibilities in the moment – faster than ever before.
These agile leaders have strengthened capability in four surprising areas:
In the Moment Innovation
These leaders are in touch with many different and contrasting views. They make the statement, “These are our first ten ideas, we have many more. Let’s explore our next ten ideas.” This habit is powerful in five minute bursts.
Feeding the Future
Wealth creation is inspired by future forward communication in simple, clean, clear verbal visuals. One of the highest performing real estate companies in the U.S. uses the color green to inspire belief in real estate wealth. What visual branding or picture can you create that enables people to become a part of that forward focus?
The Reason to Believe
Leaders help others have confidence to believe in themselves, the company and the business opportunities. Past history of overcoming challenges, producing results and collaborating is essential for creating a foundation for the future. When one of our global clients chose to make a challenging acquisition – the president inspired the workforce by highlighting magazine and newspaper articles from past successes. Create a wall of past positives that demonstrates the power of the past for your business strategy.
There is no better time than now to strengthen your leadership agility linked to achieving bottom line business results.
Strategic Planning is relevant to the context
Posted by chad cookMost of us feel very comfortable with a pre-economic downturn model for strategic planning.
Some corporate C-suite executives thinking is still at the level of the business entity.
Some corporate C-suite thinking is not yet broad enough to encompass a singular corporate entity concept in context and scope.
Some people are far too controlling around the “what” is to be focused on, and limit the scope of their direct reports accordingly.
Sometimes the “How” to get work accomplished is neglected in the push to get the “What” done.Leaders are still trusting their company’s future to plans based on past history.
Corporate entity scope and context are significantly different than internal divisions/groups even if these internal entities are larger than most free-standing companies.
Leaders who control the strategic planning process too tightly are doing a disservice to their direct reports career development.
Fear of the unknown causes some leaders to limit others view of the possibilities and options present even in difficult times.
The discipline to balance the “What” and “How” of performance is understood and valued by only the most experienced top leaders.What do you think??
Chad
I was working with an executive last week to prepare for a strategic planning session to update a plan that had been initially assembled in February.What I learned and pondered after a couple of pre-planning sessions was:
Sometimes we have a solid grasp of “what” we want to do, to the exclusion of considering alternatives.
My awareness (some new, some renewed) from this encounter were:
As Chris Argyris would say, “Teaching Smart People How to Learn” is a tough job.
Dr. Deming’s & Driving Out Fear
The number one cause of fear in this day and age is the pace of change. There are more products released in any given month today than there were in an entire year – fifteen years ago. Today’s Americans are always on the run: we can’t stop checking our BlackBerrys or iPhones. To remain competitive and innovative, companies need to sell to a larger audience and publicize their brand more so they don’t fall through the cracks. Trying to appeal to more consumers has led to globalization.
For example, Bright Side worked with Procter & Gamble, more specifically the Global Oral Care, during its acquisition of Gillette in 2005. P&G had just acquired Gillette and had vowed to take the best of both organizations, bundle it all together, and then sell it for a stronger P&G. There was a lot of fear and mistrust swirling from both organizations about the acquisition. Bright Side executives knew that in order to make this merger successful, they needed to drive that fear out so that the P&G investment could be leveraged – from a personal, team and organizational standpoint.
Using the Bright Side model and working with leaders from both teams, Bright Side was able to foster one of the most successful mergers P&G had ever seen – all measured by extraordinary and robust business results and outcomes.
Take a look:
The post-integrated teams and leadership exceeded work objectives and delivered ahead of schedule!
•Delivered >100% of committed cost savings
•Improved service levels
•A 98% retention of associates who relocated from Gillette
•A 50% improvement on the cultural assessment tracking leadership behaviors of risk-taking, transparency, inclusion
•#1 in key business metrics for high growth categories in P&G
•Ranked first in Engineering in three of the four critical drivers for retention
•Launched unprecedented number of initiatives with excellence, on time
•On track to deliver personal productivity improvement of a minimum of 1.0 hour per day
Is this possible for you and your organization? Why or why not?
Bright Side Fear Surveys
Posted by Shannon Valentine
Since January 2009, Bright Side executives have been interviewing and talking to leaders in many sectors of business about the impact of fear on productivity within their organizations. Since the economic crises of September 2009, fear has escalated and Americans have felt the squeeze. Bright Side wanted to informally quantify some of that fear.
So far, Bright Side executives have spoken to experts and leaders in the manufacturing, technology, and banking/ investment industries. This confidential survery is informal and includes questions like “are you aware of fear being present in your organzation?” and “can you imagine your organization without fear?”
Across all sectors of business and industries, all high-level executives interviewed replied “yes” when asked about fear being present in the organization. All interviewees responded that there is more fear present in the organization today than there was one year ago. Many respondants also replied that some employees seem paralyzed with fear and unwilling to initiate anything new or risky.
What does this mean for business that want to operate at a high level while still maintaining an engaged work force? Does fear need to cripple companies and organizations like this? The answer is NO.
The Bright Side model teaches organizations to face fears – on a personal, team and organizational level – release them, replace those fears, distractions, and barriers with engaging, positive and open habits, and then building on all that for a stronger organization.
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