Globally there is a slow erosion of those binding forces for people to “go that extra mile”. The employee-employer psychological contract is degrading. The degree to which people identify with their job and consider job performance as important to their self-worth is slipping .In our recently published survey Focusing Change to Win identified the main culprits:
Poor Planning
Lack of Leadership
Inconsistent leadership
Poor Implementation
Lack of Adaptability
Lack of Communication
Lack of Control
More than ever, we need to repair, build and protect the trust people have in their employers.
In North America, our evidence from 8 expectation alignment projects ranging from Royal Bank of Canada through Nature Conservancy to Turner Construction shows a clear trend. Leaders consistently under-estimate the gap between what they expect of their managers and what people think is expected of them. Inall studies, leaders had 65%+ more expectations than their people were aware.
In the UK, managers need to do more if they want to earn employee trust , according to the latest survey into employee attitudes from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). Trust in senior management is declining, particularly in the private sector, with
Only 25% employees willing to place a lot of trust in senior management to look after their interests and
Only 41% placing little or no trust in them to do so.
Essentially, new research suggests that many employees are losing faith in their management yet it seems leaders have don’t connect this condition with losing ground competitively. Continue reading →
At school and district levels, managing scarce resources to sustain or improve results has never been more challenging. Striving for consistency and efficiency builds tensions between those who care most about equipping children for an uncertain future.
Increasingly critical eyes on the education system advocate blunt instruments like “stronger management”, more top-down management, tighter controls, and simple incentives. This is surprising since such methods are failing the private sector by dispiriting and limiting people’s contribution. So, why should we expect anything different in education?
This is aggravated by the economy. We simply don’t know what jobs will be there in twenty years. Today, apart from a few core skills we cannot know what knowledge or skills will be needed in the future.
The consequences are that teachers complain that their jobs, while rewarding, are getting harder because of too few resources, too much paperwork, crowded classrooms, students with emotional problems, low pay and high-stakes standardized tests.
Isn’t time to realign administrators, unions, teachers, parents and students? The realignment is from teaching a curriculum more efficiently, to one of inspiring lifelong learning to thrive in a rapidly shifting economy.
The continued high failure rates in implementing change owe much of their origins to the fallacies of change management and how people view research (based on Korzybski). See how many are true from your experience
1. Over-Simplification: The belief that complex organizations mirror what their leadership views .
“I think we have a pretty good handle on what people think, we don’t need a survey to tell us what we already know”
2. Re-definition:A propensity to cast strong sub-cultures as sources of weakness when they may in fact contribute to the organization’s identity.
“It’s the field technicians that’s the problem. They are still resistant to the newer products ans systems”
3. Missionary zeal:The belief that a complex community can be converted to a single purpose that overrides its fractional – often factional – interests and perspectives.”
“I am sure when the see the case for this change they will come along”
4. Displacement: the attribution to cultural causes of structural weakness. It is not the values but the organisation or control system that is faulty.
“You know if we had a fully integrated reporting system I think we could overcome many of communication problems”
5. Scapegoating: The attribution of group’s values to responsibility for failure.
“It’s sales responsibility to ensure good customer follow up but they just don’t seem to care and want to go on to the next deal”
6. False Attribution to one cause what is due to many causes. E.g.
“they didn’t adopt the new technology because they weren’t computer savvy”
7. Discounting: Concluding that because one factor plays a role, another does not; the fallacy of drawing negative conclusions from positive observations. E.g.
“Our exit interviews show that people are leaving for higher pay and so it’s not anything that management can do differently”
8. Myopia:The idea that change management can divorce the individual from their working environment. E.g.
“People are change resistant because they don’t like the new curriculum”
9. Gut over Data: Drawing conclusions on implied assumptions that when explicitly stated are rejected. E.g
“Yes, I know that’s what your findings say but I think it’s really a recruitment issue”
“You can prove anything with statistics”
10. Politics: Many assumptions influencing reasoning are of the hidden, unconscious type. E.g.
“When we presented our findings only Joe and Lisa said what they felt, the rest just looked uneasy”
11. Hereditary: Demonstrating that a characteristic is hereditary and not alterable by the environment E.g.
“We found that traditionally main land Chinese expect a “thirteenth month’s pay before Chinese New Year, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“We wouldn’t have any of these problems if we could get more mid-westerners with their good work ethics”
12. Environment: Demonstrating that a characteristic is altered by the environment and claiming that it is not hereditary. E.g.
“We are getting more quality problems since we installed the new line. It’s the new displays they don’t understand”
Since all important human characteristics are environmental, therefore environment is all-important, hereditary unimportant, in human affairs E.g.
“It’s not so much their experience that matters it’s how they are led. We need our leaders to lead not shilly-shally around having more team meetings”
Great, but how can this help me?
This is probably the first thing on your mind after reading this Blog. How about asking us? The first call is free! Just email me to set it up. Don’t wait, get The Crispian Advantage working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching improve bottom line results. If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.
_________________________________________________________________________ For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage
If you think change is expensive, how about failed change?
Instead, how about Focusing Change to Win?
The Cost of Failed Change
Failed change means lost opportunity, competitive vulnerability, poor revenues, lost employees, increased cynicism and fear. Its residue is a hostile and toxic culture, where change resistance becomes the norm.
So, why is this survey important?
Change management’s track record isn’t getting any better and, isn’t likely to, if we don’t do different things. Who says?
Change failure rates continue above 60%
Surveyed executives still say people are the main reason for failed change
World economics are negatively impacting working and commercial relationships
Technology continues to deliver faster, opportunity-rich and competitively challenging solutions that often impact jobs and working relationships.
Change management was never easy, and now is even more challenging. Unfortunately, any consensus on the causes and solutions of failed change remain elusive. Yet, some organizations do manage successful change. This puzzle is what motivated this study and led to this question and our survey:
A Fine Line
What are the meaningful differences between those that thrive on change and those that just survive?
After analyzing over 6000 contributor comments, there are clearly those that understand this condition and those who do not. They realize that working relationships are increasingly stressed in the drive for ever faster responses to competitive threats and opportunities. Unfortunately, this survey confirms other studies. Too many organizations are still trying to do things differently not do different things. In a recent study:
“96% of leaders say their current business models are misaligned with emergent realities, unforeseen challenges and changing priorities. Two-thirds say “extensive changes” are required. Yet they also confess they don’t know how to go about fixing what’s no longer delivering sustainable competitive advantage”[1]
Getting people focused and committed on implementing a strategy has never been more difficult as von Moltke said:
strategic plans do not survive first contact with the enemy, and hence must be always open to revision.
In today’s competitive environment every action has many reactions that aren’t easily anticipated. This is probably a major factor why 60% of change initiatives fail in North America and why something is going wrong with strategic planning.
One area that many executives either ignore or only pay lip service to are the cynicisms that previous initiatives strategic planning have accumulated in the organizations psyche. Here are some that you ignore at your peril
Crucial to understanding your people, as Peter Senge describes, is identifying where people are on the apathy-commitment continuum. He identifies two areas of personal need that they want satisfied in their working lives:
personal benefit which comes from compensation, benefits, position, recognition, or other non-tangible benefits
personal sense of fulfillment of their life’s purpose, vision, or calling.
Leaders need to grasp how well each person’s attitude and their contribution is met directly by company goals or objectives. Then they can assess where people sit on the apathy/commitment continuum. Any misalignment between personal needs and your strategy will generate unproductive or counterproductive behavior, if not actively managed
On both sides of the Atlantic, the employment compact is fracturing along the lines of manufacturing outsourcing, poor change communication and inconsistent leadership. The bottom-line is that “doing more with less”sounds macho in closeted executive strategy sessions. The reality is that those who get the work done feel the stress of over-work and unabated insecurity is eroding trust in their leaders.
How close are we getting to the “old lie”?
Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori.( Translation: “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”
Wilfred Owen – Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori – it is sweet and right to die for your country. In other words, it is great to work your butt off and then a get a pink slip
North Americans grow more cynical of being asked “go the extra mile” with even fewer resources. As a result, change resistance is increasingly more complex and individualistic.
This fracturing eats away at competitiveness. The leadership challenge then is to repair, build and protect the trust people have in their leaders and other functions.
In North America, over the last ten years I have conducted expectation alignment projects in very different organizations like Royal Bank of Canada, Qwest Telecommunications and Turner Construction. In every project, leaders consistently under-estimated the gaps between:
What they expect of their people and what the people actually think is expected of them.
What they think people expect of them and their people actually expect of their leaders
In all projects, leaders had 65%+ more expectations than their people were aware. As you read on you will see that my findings are disturbingly endorsed on both sides of the Atlantic.
Back in 1995 I worked with my client Peter Barlow then VP Global Account Management and Major Projects for APV (Food Process Engineering Company) on developing a Major Account Management System. Now over 15 years on I ask:
What’s changed in Key Account Management 15 years on?
Building and maintaining profitable relationships with your most important customers is more challenging than ever. The stakes are even higher of investing reduced resources on a few customers (accounts) with that nagging doubt of “backing the wrong horse”
“… (Managers) often don’t realize or understand how markets change and believe sales to be just how it was fifteen years ago.” (TACK Sales Leadership Survey 2011)
“Doing business with and actually making money from your largest strategic ‘partners’ has never been more difficult….Only a few corporations are getting it right.” (Richard Ilsley, SMCG 2010)
This blog takes a hard look at strategic, key or major accounts (KAM) and why many senior executives remain concerned 15+ years on. To do this retrospective I have drawn on several current experts in the field including a paper by Richard Ilsley of SMCG, TACK International and Mercuri.
Developing successful partnerships can only be accomplished if there is a strong and shared sense of vision. It is the cornerstone, and launching point for successful partnering efforts.
Visioning in a partnership if different form other uses of the word. It is much more than a defined set of shared goals and aspirations. It exists to offer a tangible guidance system which provides direction to both parties and helps them carry out their larger goals. Such a system enables partnerships to overcome obstacles and achieve results. When they lack vision they tend to drift around, or fall apart.
A frequent and often crucial situation in management today is one in which one person is seeking to persuade another to accept proposals for change. This situation commonly occurs when a subordinate presents a case to his or her boss.
Unfortunately, people usually spend a great deal more time and effort in collecting supporting facts and figures than in planning for the face-to-face interaction on which the success of the whole exercise usually depends. Careful consideration of interactive strategy at the planning stage can both assist in the selection of effective arguments and result in more persuasive interactions.
Feature Dumping
This discussion of the issues involved concentrates on persuasion in the boss-subordinate context; but the principles considered apply equally well to any situation in which one person is seeking to gain the co-operation or the consent of another.
This is the forth in a leadership series – Complexity the New Norm. This series is looks how we implement successful change that fulfills people and avoids human casualties.
Our question is, how do we create working relationships that are rewarding? (Rewarding not just productive). Why?
It’s only by energizing people and harnessing technologies better than anyone else that companies can thrive.
Genuinely aligned, empowered and collaborative people will outperform the competition every time.
This month I consider probably one of the most difficult areas is sales, especially complex sales.
What makes sales complex?
Classically, “Many to Many” Think of it like a bow tie. On the left side you have the selling organization and on the right Complex Sales. Typical characteristics:
So, more people across the company need to communicate with customers and prospects before, during and after the sale. This increases complexity and the difficulty of “Keeping Everyone On The Same Page”
This is the third in a leadership series – Complexity the New Norm.This series is looks how we implement
Seeing the Wood for the Treessuccessful change that fulfills people and avoids human casualties.Last time, I asked how we create working relationships that are rewarding. (Rewarding not just productive). Our position is that it’s only by energizing people and harnessing technologies better than anyone else that organizations can survive and thrive.Genuinely aligned, empowered and collaborative people will outperform the competition every time.Many surveys show executives say that their people aren’t ready to handle this “new norm” So, what’s getting in the way?When the urgent drives out the important, many leaders ignore what their “guts” are telling them, even when they sense people aren’t on the same page. They’ve sensed it before and seen the results. Yet, complexity and urgency mask how things accumulate, misalign and make each change more difficult.You know that feeling yourself. We’ve all worked in dysfunctional work places. You pick up on people’s differences (often unstated in team meetings) and how they use their experience to justify their positions. They are oblivious of others views. Worse still they believe that their views are shared by everyone.If leaders are aware of these things, why don’t they do something?I think it’s like how people put up with physical pain and stress – take the pain killers and go on. And I am not implying they’re weak but their strength to persevere can be a two-edged sword. Here’s some examples of what leaders ignore and don’t realize their effect:It’s expecting things to be done and repeatedly being disappointed.It is the lump in your stomach when they are handed yet another impossible deadline.It’s feeling that they have to be a mind reader to figure out what is expected.It’s that welling anger they get when important decisions fall apart (because there really wasn’t any buy-in).These are all misalignments. People not being on the same page. It’s costly, pervasive and accumulates.Now, add increasing complexity and we need to say – we can’t go on like this anymore. The busyness of complexity masks misalignments especially when wicked problems get into the mix.You’ve mentioned wicked problem solving before….But why is it so important in leading in complexity?Wicked Problem Solving
Horst Rittel coined the term Wicked Problems as he found traditional approaches to design and planning were not effective. It’s how we solve benign or simple problems.
Gather data
Analyze data
Formulate Solution
Implement Solution
This apparently very reasonable approach starts faltering when you:
1. Don’t understand the problem until you have developed a solution.
You can’t search for information without having some sense of what a solution looks. Rittel said:
“One cannot first understand, then solve.”
And what ‘the Problem’ is depends on who you ask – different stakeholders have different views about what the problem is and what constitutes an acceptable solution.
2. Don’t have a nice neat ending.
If there is no defined ‘Problem’, there can’t be a definitive ‘Solution.’ So you can’t solve the problem with the ‘correct’ solution. Herb Simon, called this ‘satisficing’ — stopping when you have a solution that is ‘good enough’
Solutions are simply ‘better,’ ‘worse,’ ‘good enough,’ or ‘not good enough.’ How “good” they are will vary widely and depend on different stakeholder values and goals.
4. Can’t draw on past experience
There are so many factors and conditions that no two wicked problems are alike.
Here are a few examples of wicked problems:
Whether to route the highway through our city or around it?
What should our mission statement be?
What features should be in our new product?
How should we respond to a competitors new…fill in the blank?
The point is managing complex and wicked problems shifts the center of gravity toward peoples’ relationships and interactions. It shifts from relying on expertise and pride in accumulating knowledge to learning with and from fellow learners, honestly disclosing doubts and admitting ignorance.
I am thinking leaders who are listening will be saying: OK, I get, it but where do I start?
As I said last time, complexity and misalignment is best handled by those directly involved. So, leadership should be devolved to the lowest level. This means expectations you have of your leaders need to be clear, agreed and tracked. There are several alignment areas that senior people need to address with lower level leaders, which I will cover in later programs. But, I will start with a key competence that leaders need improve in their teams and activities. It’s a bastion against the confusion that comes from poorly managed complexity
Leading Learning
Leaders have to shed their prejudices and bad experiences of learning at school, – like cramming or memorizing, and that learning by doing is good enough. Many leaders will have to unlearn, and then learn about Leading Learning. There are five criteria you should expect your leaders to evidence in their learning expectations: Are they …..
Planned?
Action-Focused?
Constructive?
Social?
Time-Bounded?
Using these criteria, leader expectations need to specify what they expect of their people and draw out what their people expect in return.
What do you see as the main areas for leaders to think about when it comes to leading learning?
Here are four things to reflect on about your organization. Ask yourself:
How do we really match-up when it comes to leading learning?
Learning team-based sense-making process.
1. Learning is team-based sense-making process.
What expectations do you have of your people to develop shared knowledge from similar situations?
Why?
Shared situations builds shared sensing, which builds common frames of reference.
Shared situations builds shared learning and reduces the exclusivity of individual experience
Can you find expectations that say it’s OK for people to express feelings of being puzzled or being misunderstood:
Why?
Such expressed feelings are often the tender shoots of learning and if subject to making people feel stupid will stunt learning before it has even got going.
Sharing puzzlement develops learner ownership because there’s “gas in their tank” to do something about it.
You don’t know how many others have the same feelings until they are expressed.
Getting people on the same page only happens when people’s feelings are transparent to others. It takes the guesswork of where people are coming from. It reduces assumptions about people’s intention, motivation and agenda
2. Learning is a socially negotiated
Leader expectations need to specify that making sense of problems and their solutions needs to be negotiated with the intention of reaching understanding, resolving differences and producing an agreed course of action.
Why?
What’s agreed is far more likely to stick
Stakeholder and team member interests of are more likely to be respected and served
Better alignment leads to growing trust and openness which leads to people being less guarded
3. Learning is multi-level sense-making
Leaders, especially senior leaders, need to ensure that their expectations of learning are expressed to all levels both vertically and horizontally across the organization. The belief that knowledge is only in one person’s head went out with the craftsman and his apprentice. Knowledge and reasoning need to be used for collective sense-making.
Why?
It’s the social process that bonds people together. As we engage with others we influence and are influenced by our working community their beliefs and values.
This type of participation is how we absorb and grow a healthy culture.
This is how we grow as individuals and develop rewarding relationships
It’s crucial that leaders understand that activity constrains and defines the learning that can occur, so the last point
4. Learning is a product of activities, systems and processes
Learning through Activities
The blend of people, their experiences, values and beliefs are not reducible to individual actions in complex situations. So, leader’s expectations need to shift from the individual to the team.
Why?
It’s not about you; it’s about us – “Leave your ego at the door!”
Information isn’t any good if it is not shared, in ways that others can understand
If you don’t interact with others your chances of building trust, respect and other relational glue is remote
If I am a leader or business owner listening to this today I might be saying that’s all very well but I have a business to run. What advice would you give them?
Do what you’ve always done, get what you’ve always got! – Not!
1. Hire people who evidence lifelong learning – if people aren’t curious they are not for you.
2. Make sure you pay people for doing different things not just doing what we have always done – cos if you don’t you will get what you’ve always gotten.
3. Ensure you make sure all people know learning is a priority and it’s not something left to chance or the competition
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page Nick Anderson, Senior Partner, PDS Group LTD
In my last blog I introduced my new leadership series – Complexity the New Normal.
It’s time we had a debate about how we develop rewarding working relationships today. (Rewarding not just productive). It is the competitive core – energizing people and harnessing technologies better than anyone else.
The ultimate standard for such rewarding relationships is a leader’s ability to sustain superior results over an extended period. The debate should focus three
The Gordian Knot
questions:
What does it mean to lead?
What does it mean to follow?
When do you choose one from another?
Why is this debate needed for us to climb out of this recession?
People have lost trust. Many business leaders, too many unfortunately, are seen as self-serving and subservient to shareholders.
What happened? “Org Chart Thinking” increasingly doesn’t work. Knowledge workers respond to learning not “command & control”. Plus, young people don’t want to wait in line to lead. Most important, people are searching for genuine satisfaction and meaning. For example, “restoring people to full life and health.” Medtronic.
In this blog I want to focus on Preparing People For Changeby over viewing improving people productivity and it’s connection to gaining people’s commitment.
Why is this so important as we climb out of this recession?
It’s a good question…over the last 15 years the odds of making a successful change in North America haven’t changed appreciably. Two thirds of change initiatives fail, including family businesses trying to pass on their company to the next generation. Number 1 reason executives surveyed said “People”
What is your take on the reasons for such a high failure rate?
The performance challenge is greater than ever. How you rebuild and lead an organization to perform near its potential is even more difficult today.
As Tim Kite of Focus3 Consulting says:
It’s challenging because an organization is the sum of its parts piecemeal improvement doesn’t address the organization’s system. To meet this challenge you need to be really clear on the difference between performance drivers vs. performance indicators. Too many people focus on the numbers and too little on Drivers:
20 Communication Channels to Get Aligned
• Key Drivers produce performance
• Key Indicators only measure performance (even well designed ones)
• You can’t manage indicators only drivers can be managed
There are Five Drivers that cover your business system
• People – Selection, Development & Retention
• Culture – Clarity, Consistency & Connection
• Strategy – Value Proposition, Marketing, Sales Customer Care, Financial Goals
When you align these Five Drivers you need to ensure that:
Culture aligns and motivates people,
Strategy delivers in line with Customers needs,
Systems delivers high quality consistently,
Structure empowers people and smoothes workflow
People Driver recruits, develops and retains the right people.
How do you assess if these drivers are broken or needs repair broken?
Let’s take costs. To manage costs effectively across the Five Drivers you need clarity as to what are Core and Non-Core expenses or to put it another way what directly contributes to Top Line revenue vs. the cost of doing business which only indirectly contributes to revenue
Core Expenses are what drives Top Line Sales Revenue
So, Core and Non-Core Expenses first. You are likely to find functions which are internally misaligned present opportunities for improved productivity. Coupled with this is looking at inefficiencies when functions work collaborate with each other
Consider a company with nine functions, such as Production, Marketing, Finance. How many communications channels? You have 9 functions with 9 communication channels less 9 channels within each Function = 72 Communication Channels
Additionally, within one function say you had 50 people 2450 channels potentially.
As you look at these channels you find inefficiencies. Friction between Finance and Marketing is not unusual. So, what happens to communication flows? Communication reduces and fall back on being formal and response times get slower. We call these Expectation Gaps
Expectations Gaps Are like Pot Holes. Fill them quickly before damage occurs
Expectations are like Potholes
It sounds like they don’t know “who’s on first” and even if they did no one is holding people accountable good starting point?
Exactly. It’s like many poor performing teams at least one of the following will apply:
• Four Team members called Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody.
• There was an important job to be done.
• Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it.
• Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.
• Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody’s job.
• Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it.
• It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.
How expensive is that?
What signs should look for to see if think is going on?
“That’s not what I meant…”
“This is not what I asked for!”
“My colleagues don’t seem to do what I expect…”
“They never tell us the whole story!”
“I can never do anything right!”
“They never send us information; we’re always sending information to them!”
Sound Familiar?
Yes, I know several organizations where those examples would get a lot of nodding. Do you have any idea what misalignment costs?
60%+ of change initiatives fail in North America
70%+ of leaders expectations are
not understood by their people about a major change
In the last 12 years, 2 in 3 failure rate has not changed Harvard (1996) to McKinsey (2009)
Executives surveyed continue to say the number one reason for such failures is PEOPLE. It really goes into the millions and can close businesses. In one survey 134 public companies average cost of failed IT projects was $12.5m. This does not account for the cost to their cultures and people.
What are the human costs of misalignment?
With misalignment the first to go is Trust coupled to a Fear Of Conflict. When these two exist, a Lack of Commitment grows and its partner Avoiding Accountability rears its ugly head. Finally, silos are reinforced, people do what they have always what they have always done and improved performance doesn’t happen. As these dysfunctions grow over time you will find that the 8OOlb Gorilla feeding on what’s left of your enabling culture.
800lb Gorilla of Mislignmenton a rich culture of unstated expectations and assumptions.
How many of these are due to people not being on the same page?
In our projects 70%+ of leaders’ expectations of each other and those implementing a change have not expressed. Apart from unstated expectations, how do you identify poor expectations
The biggest culprits are the expectations are ambiguous, lack specificity which leads to disappointment, failure and bad feelings etc. here’s some typical language that predicts performance improvement failure:
• “Soon…….”
• ASAP
• “Right Away….”
• “I’ll Try To Get To It………”
• “Later….”
• “By The End Of Next Week
So, Practically what can people do about this when they hear language like this?
First get key players get them to articulates and record expectations then apply:
“The three most important rules in creating accountability cultures are:
Specificity, Specificity, Specificity
Dealing with Expectations Gaps
1. Which expectations gaps are barriers to improving performance and reducing expenses?
2. Who do you need to gain agreement from?
3. Once agreed, ask them to tell you what evidence you will see that your expectation has been met?
4. Then, hold them accountable – “Inspect what you expect”
5. Then, what do you think others expect of you that is connected to these gaps?
6. Now, repeat steps 2,3 & 4
Have you done any projects locally where you have helped fill such expectation gaps?
An Alignment Success
Ken Genzink, Genzink Steel tried twice over the last five years to reduce his operational management of the Family Steel Fabrication business. On both occasions he had to reengage to save the business.
• Structural Steel side of the business was losing money due to poor estimating
• Difficulty in retaining skilled people
The Implementation consisted of the following activities:
• Developing a vision for change to reduce dependency on the
• Owner’s day-to-day management.
• Isolate key Alignment Components and their definitions which Ken Genzink saw as crucial to achieving greater market responsiveness and help him devote time to his other businesses
• AlEx™ was then configured specifically for Genzink Steel. AlEx™is an Automated Accountability Tracking tool that identifies expectations gaps and monitors people’s progress in filling them.
Ken now works at another location devoting the time he needs to the other Family businesses. Gross Revenues have steadily increased from $20 to $30m, and
This is probably the first thing on your mind after reading this Blog. How about asking us? The first call is free! Just email me to set it up. Don’t wait, get PDS working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching improve bottom line results.
If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.
_________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________ For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page Nick Anderson, Senior Partner, PDS Group LTD E-mail I Web I Linkedin
By Contributing Blogger – Terry Merriman, PDS Group Ltd
Implementing successful and sustainable change is tough, strategic change initiatives fail two-thirds of the time in North American business (Kotter, 1996, and McKinsey, 2009). How can your organization succeed? You can succeed by making change personal! Remember, performance is personal before it is organizational.
Isn’t this a truism, a matter of common business sense?
Since when was common sense common practice! It is common for many leaders to plan their change initiative, communicate it to their leadership team, tell the organization to watch for it, set some goals and measures, and incorporate the goals in their team and department objectives. Then, the change dies and the leadership team wonders why. The answer; the change was never translated into personal action!
If your people don’t embraced change and those in your value chain (including your customers and vendors) it will fail. Why? If your people do not understand the change initiative, buy into it, and integrate it into their daily activities, it will not work. Consequently, planned change and personal action don’t mesh as people are skeptical, don’t understand why, don’t see the need, and don’t know what’s in it for them.
So how do you make change personal?
Define, Communicate, Delegate and Track change related expectations. We usually get the organization’s side of change, define and communicate, pretty well. Where we fail is in putting the personal side of change, communicate, delegate, and track, into play.
Define the change in terms of broad categories of activity to which everyone in the organization can relate, and specific results that benefit the organization and its people.
Communicate the change initiative, and include the message that leadership will be expecting everyone to participate by defining specific expectations of each other necessary to carry out the change.
Communicate More, by focusing on individual working relationships by:
Get each leadership team member identify specific expectations of each other as to what they must do to successfully implement the change. Ensure the expectations are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time and budget bounded, Ethical and Recorded.
Have each leader discuss their expectations of the receiver expected to execute, and ensure each accepts accountability for each other’s expectation. This helps to create a productive relationship and integrate the change into the business at the leadership level.
Delegate by cascading the above process to each leader’s direct reports, peers, and business partners to those teams that are considered key players in the change initiative.
Ensure people delegate not only the responsibility and accountability but also the authority to execute each expectation. In this way people can develop ownership of those expectations other have of them. This step integrates the change throughout the organization as it becomes a part of each person’s work responsibilities and commitments.
Ensure each expectation’s originator is held responsible for assessing the receiver’s ability to meet their expectations and coach them to develop their competence.
Track each expectation’s results. This means each person holding accountable the person who agreed to meeting and reporting progress to an expectation’s completion. So, the Accountability Culture is born. The expectations approach challenges leaders and their direct reports to get personal first perspective and serves to foster improved communications between them.
The Expectations Approachmakes change personal by casacading accountability for implementing change throughout the organization in a way that helps people understand the reasons for and expected results from the change, and buy into it. We’ve found it one of the most effective ways of implementing successful and sustainable change in organizations. The side benefits of this approach are that it improves accountability throughout the organization, and encourages creation and development of productive relationships between people, leading to improved organizational performance.
Where has this approach been used succesfully?
This approach has been successfully employed in Fortune 500 companies and family owned businesses, from new selling strategies to management transitions (See Project Summaries) It has been shown to work in for-profit and non-profit organizations from large to small, and it also works in government organizations (it’s been used in the British Navy by its developer, John Machin).
“Change is Hard and Real Change is Real Hard!” If you want to be successful at change, you have to be prepared to tackle the hard part of change – making it personal.
This is probably the first thing on your mind after reading this Blog. How about asking us? The first call is free! Just email me to set it up. Don’t wait, get The Crispian Advantage working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching improve bottom line results. If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.
_________________________________________________________________________ For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage
This blog’s topic looks at a cherished belief of many executives that pay for performance compensation schemes motivates people to higher performance. Yet, pay is just one thread in a tapestry that covers the state of motivation in organizations today.
In this piece, I want to challenge manager’s over-reliance on paying for sales performance to stop relying on this apparently sensible idea and. Let’s rethink what effective management has to offer in creating a Motivating Environment.
Just to give you how addicted US Companies are to pay-for-performance; here’s a couple of statistics:
Average incentive income for US Salespeople is 40% of their total compensation.
Overall, 85% of this group work under some type of pay for performance compensation plan.
W. Edwards Deming (1982) “Pay is not a motivator” He called the system by which merit is appraised and rewarded:
“The most powerful inhibitor to quality and productivity in the Western World”…..”it nourishes short-term performance, annihilates long-term planning, builds fear, demolishes team work, nourishes rivalry and…leaves people bitter”
“Money can nevertheless be a demotivator” Frederick Hertzberg
Pay for performance advocates obsess about “How should people be paid?” But it is not as important as managers think and is in fact a distraction from the things that really matter.
The real issue is how do people become motivated to produce competitively superior results:
Managers ask: ‘How do you motivate people? – Answer is ‘You Don’t’ (Douglas McGregor)
So, if you see books like “How to Motivate your work force” “Making People Productive” can be safely passed over because the enterprise it describes in wholly misconceived.
Of course, you can get people to perform using rewards, punishments and operational controls. But, the desire to do it well, simple cannot be imposed. It’s a mistake to talk about motivating other people. All Managers can do is set up conditions that can develop an interest in what they are doing and remove constraints to their improvement.
What are the ways of creating The Motivating Environment?
Probably one of the best authors in this field , Alfred Kohn, stated three Basic Principles.
Pay people generously and equitably – Do your best to make sure they don’t feel exploited. Then, do everything in your power to help them put money out of their minds! Problem with incentives is not that people are offered too much. It’s that money is pushed in people’s faces and offered transactionally, e.g. “You do this and you will get that” Getting rid of conditionality is the first step in fixing what’s wrong
The trouble with money is not itself per se but with the way people are made to think about money and the way it is use to control them.
We need to decouple the task from compensation
“For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil… (People) craving money have wandered from the truth and pierced themselves with many sorrows… (1 Timothy 6:10)
OK. So, how should you pay people, other than well and fairly?
A good starting point is asking yourself:
What makes some people more valuable to the organization that most will see as fair and achievable? (e.g. not based on being a family member- LOL) Examples:
Deming, most Japanese and other countries follow this philosophy and now a minority of US Companies – the gradual realization that pay-for-performance is an inherently flawed concept.
But, what do you do about paying people if they perform better than their peers?
Well, it leads to another common practice of linking pay to the outcome of the dreaded annual performance appraisal. This is typically a stressful annual ritual and should have been retired long ago. OK. So what do we replace it with?
Let’s look at a second principle to creating the Motivating Environment, let’s Refocus Evaluation. An obvious question:
Why are people being evaluated? Possible answers:
“Performance Evaluation persists as a effective tool for controlling employees…(that) should not be confused…with motivation of employees”
It allows supervisors to shift the responsibility for solving problems to their subordinates
“Using Performance appraisal of any kind as a basis for reward is a flat out catastrophic mistake” (Peter Scholtes)
It is “foolish to have a manager in the self-conflicting role as a counselor (helping improve performance) when at the same time, he or she is presiding as a judge over the employee’s salary…”(Herbert Meyer)
The Insight is that the entire process of providing feedback, assessing progress, and developing development plans ought to be completely divorced from salary determinations. Such sessions must have no rewards or punishment hanging in the balance.
So, how do you get genuine motivation?
It’s a good question How do you create conditions for authentic motivation?
Significantly Alan Binder pulled all available research on this subject,Paying for Productivity: A Look at the Evidence and concluded:
“Changing the way workers are treated may boost productivity more than changing the way they are paid”
Or to put it another way:
The Pay Cart is in front of the Motivation horse. Motivation produces results not pay.
In surveys there is a broad consensus on what managers should do to create the Motivation Environment:
WATCH: Don’t put employees under surveillance; look for problems that need to be solved and help people solve them.
LISTEN: Attend seriously and respectfully to workers’ concerns
TALK: Provide plenty of informational feedback as opposed to judgmental feedback. People need to reflect on what they doing right, to learn what needs improving, and discuss how to change
THINK: why do you use power they way you do?
What do managers need to be careful of when dealing with performance improvement?
The main failing we see in our work is the extent to which rewards are not made contingent on some specific desired behaviour change that impacts business performance. Many clients are concerned about the very subjective nature of rating performance and therefore allocating performance related pay equitably. Often we start by comparing the client’s existing competencies with how they rate performance with those selected from the PDS Competency Library. Candidly, the Client’s Competencies are a mixture of Competencies and Attributes. “So what,” you say. Bottom line, you hire attributes and develop competence! Typical definitions:
Competent: “The ability to do something successfully or efficiently.”
Competency: ”Having the necessary ability, knowledge, or skill to do something successfully:”
Attribute: “A characteristic or quality of a person.”
Frequently, Competencies often contain a mixture of attributes which should be part of the recruitment and selection process, around which you choose a path of development for each individual. Relying on attributes as a basis for incentives naturally leads to the problem of subjectivity in performance ratings. Too many times people are swimming around in a sea of ink and rhetoric when it comes to recognizing and developing leadership and other competencies? Is more being written and discussed than applied to create the Motivating Environment?
Many authors of Competencies are not clear as to what a competency really is. (Is it a skill? Is it a behavior? Is it knowledge? Or, is it a value?). For example: A competency that deals with diversity has been described this way; “sensitivity to different races, cultures, nationalities, sexes and disabilities”. Many would agree this competency is more of a value (attribute). However, if that is the case, developing this competency presents a formidable challenge, since values tend to evolve over a lifetime.
The difficulty we have in agreeing on what competencies are required is practically dwarfed by the complexity of the motivational and therefore, the competency development challenge. Of course, the beliefs and customs of a culture play an incredibly significant role in influencing beliefs, attitudes and values. We have to recognize that behavior can be adapted, but attitudes and values are relatively rigid.
What we now know about competencies shows that matching behavior patterns and attitudes of people to the demands of a position is crucial to creating the Motivational Environment
This knowledge can also assist organizations to understand the challenges in trying to get people to adapt their natural behavior patterns and attitudes to accommodate organizational needs. Recognizing that competencies are configurations of behavior, attitudes, beliefs, knowledge, intelligence and skills are essential in the people evaluation and development process.
It is a truism that if individual talents are matched with the most important job requirements it can create optimal motivation and therefore superior performance. People whose natural behavior matches the requirements of their jobs and are rewarded for their true aspirations and passions naturally:
Perform better
Enjoy the intrinsic rewards of their work
Are loyal and enthusiastic
Often need to be told to go home
The main responsibilities in managing these people are to:
1. Keep them informed to align their efforts with changes
2. Make sure the building is open
3. Make sure they have the resources to do their job
4. Encourage them to maintain balance with activities outside of work.
As a rule, a “hands-off” leadership style tends to work best with people who are well matched to their positions. Micro-management or command and control techniques may drive these people to the competition. Although this kind of a “hand-in-glove” fit between people and positions may be difficult to maintain in the face of continuous change, the effort promises to return rich dividends in terms of self-directed performance, positive morale and commitment.
The matching process starts by identifying position requirements in terms of the competencies required for superior performance (built on and around attributes, whatever they may be). Every effort must be made to ensure this process is objective. Position requirements must be analyzed in terms of:
Behavior
Competencies (including soft as well as hard skills)
Attitudes (attributes)
Knowledge or experience.
An objective process for analyzing position requirements is needed whether the focus is leadership or management, technical, professional or driving a truck. What does this mean in terms of assessing the context, skills, competencies, attitudes and experience?
Summary
Creating the Motivation Environment and produce competitively superior results relies not so much on pay for results but these key factors:
Build a firm foundation for your organization based on values, principles, servant leadership,
Create and reinforce a “needs-driven” purpose or mission that is consistent with potential employees philosophy and values.
Skip incentive pay and pay people fairly or even generously for the position,
Hire good life skills (attributes) and teach job skills (competencies).
It is crucial to properly matching peoples’ gifts, talents, expertise and passions to the job.
Hire the “right” person for the “right” job,
Coach positively for improved competence, and avoid annual performance appraisals which are linked to pay
Develop servant leadership that clears away the barriers to people’s success and avoids command and control leadership
Tip of the Blog
Ask yourself:
Do you have competencies for those positions which are crucial to your organization’s performance?
How well do they separate the Knowledge, Skills that are developable vs. those attributes that you need when hiring or promoting?
Honestly, how well are these attributes used to objectively anchor the recruitment process?
How about asking us? The first call is free! Just email me to set it up. Don’t wait, get The Crispian Advantage working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching on change, alignment, personal and executive performance that improve the bottom line. If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.
It’s a statement of the obvious ….. We live in turbulent times… I got to thinking what are the challenges of leadership in the times we are living in. Some years ago I noted this quote:
“Business is now so complex and difficult, the survival of the firm is so hazardous, in an environment increasingly unpredictable, competitive and fraught with danger, that their continued existence depends on the day-to-day mobilization of everyone’s intelligence” (Konosuke Matushita, founder of Matsushita Electric)
It struck a chord…to mobilize everyone’s intelligence… for regular readers you will recognize a theme in our work at PDS…releasing and focusing people is still a crucial ingredient to survival and sustained sucess
So, my focus this month is the Leadership Challenges in Turbulent Times
What’s the core to these challenges that leaders face….it’s Bravery…
Bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared half to death. (Omar N Bradley)
The first step “walk and talk – - – the same talk” constantly. Alignment between attitude, philosophy and actions is key! Such consistency is hard to find, particularly since producing a payoff in changeis often more about emotion and intuition than it is about analysis and logic. Where’s the bravery you ask? Try making emotional and intuitive decisions which may or may not be born out by analysis and logic!
Yet I like, Peter Senge’s viewpoint:
“high levels of mastery….leaders cannot afford to choose between reason and intuition, any more than they would choose to walk on one leg and see with one eye”
It’s that outward calm of seeing a swan glide across the water, yet below the water line…furious paddling..
It’s about not losing your head while those around you are running around like chickens with their heads cut off…..what are we going to d!….what are we going to do!
The bravery comes to challenge how your company operates, its implicit beliefs and philosophies (e.g., The unspoken creed…once in automotive always in automotive). Your culture can create its own distractions which interfere with what seems right, intuitive and obvious. Many times, discussing this tension is repressed so that “we don’t take our eye off-the-ball,” or so we don’t offend others. Consequently, leaders often focus on the seemingly “urgent” and let the critical issues slide. They take refuge in “safe” financial performance targets that can’t be easily disputed. These targets rarely support desired behaviors or intuitive outcomes.
Yet there are automotive dependent manufacturers in West Michigan that are wondering how to “keep it shiny side up!”
So in this fog of war, where do leaders look to survival?
If you look at successful companies, they have varied strategies, structures and systems. However, their leaders do have something in common. They share surprisingly consistent philosophies.
These successful leaders have moved away from over reliance on very formal ways of running their organizations (like articulating strategies, building structures and developing systems). They have moved toward using more organic ways of managing (like engaging people in defining a purpose, implementing through necessary and defined processes and developing people).
So what does this point out? It goes to the root of why so many change initiatives fail (60% +) even after overdosing on business re-engineering and other scientific management techniques. Many Leaders manage what is easy to manage (like managing numbers and not people). They’ve been trained in the scientific disciplines. They forget they are managing an “organism.” They dismiss the small and gradual steps associated with real change for grandiose strategies
So, let’s put this into perspective. Successful leaders recognize that an organization’s purpose is more important than short-term outcomes. Why? Outcomes change – their purpose does not! Their focus is on how they can create committed members of a purposeful organization. Putting purpose above outcomes, allowing new improved outcomes to take precedence and promoting different things to be done takes bravery.
Why is bravery so important?
It takes bravery for leaders and executives to address seven critical challenges. Without question, addressing them is about not acquiescing to “legacy tendencies” but about incorporating “what now works” into the development of “tomorrow’s legacies”! Bravery is about doing “different things,” not about making excuses as to why you can’t do different things.
Getting above the white noise of excuses is not for the faint hearted….getting up with clamor of resistances and fear
Where do we start with these challenges? Is there a sequence or are they inter-related?
They are interelated but a logical place to start is:
1. Embedding Purpose
Is your purpose Ill-defined or Conceptual Clear, well articulated & translated?
So, you’ve written and articulated the corporate purpose! But, do the troops actually understand what this means to their everyday behavior and actions? So often the organization states its purpose without regard as to whether or not it has created any ownership in that purpose.
Essential Questions:
How will you gain widespread organizational support for your purpose?
How will you ensure new activities, actions and behaviors invigorate your purpose?
How will you ensure your expectations are aligned with what people assume is expected of them?
2: Removing Distractions
Are your distractions unidentified or well identified and managed?
There are always distractions that deflect an organization from its “appointed” tasks. If these distractions go unidentified, they grow stronger. Distractions don’t just miraculously disappear. The longer they last the more they clog corporate arteries. Executives need to lead the “charge” in identifying and eliminating distractions.
Essential Questions:
How will you convince people to dismiss actions, operations and processes which stimulate doing old things?
How can you eliminate duplicate processes and reports that slow the organization down?
Who will oversee the distraction-elimination process; and, what authority will they have?
I can see how that would help but does this really get over the fog of war that we face today?
Not unless you integrate it with the next challenge…
3: Aligning Organizational Expectations
Are you expectations unstated or defused or well focused & aligned?
Over and over again, employees say, “I wish someone had told me exactly what was expected.” Have you ever considered that others’ assumptions of “what is expected” might be counter productive to your purpose or outcomes? Are people doing what you expect or what they think you expect?
Essential Questions:
What are the key components that reveal your organization’s direction and success?
How will you translate these words into actions, competencies and behaviors that can be managed?
How will you measure the degree of alignment with your purpose, and what evidence of alignment are you looking for?
Doesn’t this demand more from a leader than just stating the facts?
Yes. It’s about lt’s making clearer emotional connections. It’s alarming how one individual can undermine a change simply by being out of touch with intuition and empathy. One of the most overlooked yet common ways leaders fail, albeit unintentionally, is not to express appropriately, candidly and consistently what we feel as well as what we think. This is known as unintentionally ambiguous behavior. It gives mixed messages and next to aggressive behavior, ambiguous behavior can cause the most tension between leaders and others. (Adapted from Robert Cooper’s book, Executive EQ).
What is the context for well focused & aligned exepectations?
4 Creating Differentiation
How vulnerable are you to being seen as “same-o,same-o” or clearly differentiated from your competition?
If you feel like you’re the same in the marketplace, odds are that’s how the customer sees you. As a leader, you are responsible for creating a climate of differentiation.
Essential Questions:
How will you ensure that customer contact people and others connect with one another to develop differentiable approaches?
How will you measure the degree and profitability of differentiation?
How will you leverage differentiation to lead your market place?
I can see how these first four create a platform for success…but how do leaders get this to stick and not just be another “flash in the pan”
5: Coaching
How would you describe the coaching process in your organization…Isolated or Cascaded
We know, we know …. your people coach! The real question is, do your people coach with the right intensity and frequency to replicate successful behaviors? Or, is coaching infrequent, informal and isolated?
Essential Questions:
What will you do as a leader to establish your coaching cascade?
What is the right intensity and frequency of coaching needed under present competitive conditions?
How will you know that coaching is effective?
6: Replicating Success
How reliant are you on using Lagging Indicators as opposed to Leading Indicators?
The words, “best practice” seems to have permeated the corporate world. Your people undoubtedly have their own practices of choice, honed by years of personal experience. Often corporate rewards go to these people rather than to those who demonstrate the “best practices” that everyone can adopt and benefit from.
Essential Questions:
What will your real best practices look like?
How will you tie best practices to behaviors which can be evidenced and replicated without alienating the productive “lone rangers?”
How will you use your “language of leaders” to make managing easier and more measurable?
7: Rewarding Change
To waht extent does your reward system reflect what worked in the past rather then being liagned with your current direction?
If the recognition and reward systems of your company run on the “legacies of past success” it will only encourage doing things differently, not “doing different things!” To change, you need to consistently reward the new behaviors, not the “reward legacies” of the past.
It’s like traning people to use the longbow,used in the Middle Ages as a weapon of war.A trained army archer could shoot upwards of ten to twelve arrows in one minute, making him the world’s first “machine gun” in some ways. Today how ever, the fastest rate of fire a 36 barrell Prototype mini gun, and can shoot 1,000,000 rounds per minute
Essential Questions:
What proportion of people’s compensation should be tied to adopting the new behaviors?
How will you measure and reward those who support your purpose?
How will you “raise the bar” so that over time people demonstrate excellence in the new behaviors?
Where do you go from here?
Ensure that your “walk and talk” are consistent. This relates to your language, how you reward excellence, how you coach and how you react when things go wrong! Bravery means displaying an attitude of distinction.
Create a cascade of conversation and coaching that gets above the “white noise” of legacy…..that’s doing different things!
Align the expectations of the organization. Bravery is found in exposing misalignments and distractions for immediate correction.
Tip of the Blog
Look at your team/colleagues…whose up for a fight
“He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors, And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian.’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars, And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.’
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words”
(St. Crispen’s Day Speech William Shakespeare, 1599)
Great, but how can this help me?
This is probably the first thing on your mind after reading this Blog. How about asking us? The first call is free! Just email me to set it up. Don’t wait, get The Crispian Advantage working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching improve bottom line results. If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.
_____________________________________________________________________ For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage
Ideally your approach to change would be personal! You make sure your team members buy into it, own it, implement it, and are rewarded for it in their work relationships. Yet, today we still see many leaders using Top Down Change as the default approach without considering the impact on productive relationships.
Why is building productive relationships so important?
As somebody once said, “Performance is Personal before it is Organizational”. None of us work in a vacuum. Improved workplace performance requires productive relationships with peers, bosses, subordinates, customers, clients, vendors, suppliers, and the community.
What is the essence of productive relationships?
In our survey of 1072 business leaders – Focusing Change to Win most contributors indicate that their organizations change anywhere from daily to annually. These changes are often unique to the organization, the triggers for change and how it’s managed. Yet, all change has three things in common.
The Three Common Elements of All Change
The Expectations Change Framework
It starts by defining your change in terms of :
Identifying what you expect people tostop doing
Specifying what you expect people to start doing
Confirming what you want people to continue doing
Then, focus on communicating constantly the Why of Change & What is Expected for your change to be effective and what the change is not about. This is the Change Expectations Framework which engages deeper understanding and helps everyone manage stress more effectively.
Just in case you think everyone does these three steps, you are probably wrong at least 70% of the time according to studies over the last 10 years.
The crucial step in all this is facilitating feedback from stakeholders as to their reactions to your position and what they want you to start, stop and continue doing in return. You have the responsibility to set the Expectations Framework but the what and how of change comes down to aligning expectations. Then people can:
The focus of this blog is the first of two on Improving Sales Effectiveness. The first is the Quality of Sales Managers Matters. It is based on findings from the Conference Executive Board, PDS Groups and Huthwaite Research Group studies on sales management and coaching. All three agree on 5 Main Factors: (Listen to the Radio Show)
#1 High-performing sales manager’s impact reps engagement and financial performance. Reps reporting to great managers report high job satisfaction with four timesmore revenue than those working for poor managers.
#2 Coaching Is King—The manager activity most linked with sales rep success is coaching. However, their coaching ability to coach individual sales reps is the weakest.
#3 Who they coach is selective— Coaching low or star performers does not statistically improve performance. Core performers, the 60% center of the performance Bell Curve make significant improvements with coaching.
#4 Bottom-Line Impacts—Effective coaching hits the bottom line. Core sales reps receiving great coaching reach on average 102% of goal in contrast to sales people reporting poor coaching who achieve only 83% of goal. Good coaching can improve core performance by 19%. This is lower than with PDS’s and Huthwaite’s sales productivity projects (18%-30% sales increases)
#5 Great Coaching Is a Learned Skill—Quantitative analysis shows that five elements account for 77% of coaching effectiveness. Armed with this information, we can develop great coaches by focusing them on specific activities such as emphasizing the importance of targeting the best opportunities and spending at least three, but no more than five, hours coaching each rep per month.
What difficulties do firms face in getting Sales Managers coaching to impact results?
The really effective sales organization has a number of characteristics, for example:
Skills and strategies suited to their market outstanding products or services
In-depth understanding of how these products can solve customer problems
Appropriate rewards and performance measures
Sales support system which actually helps to sell, not just administer
An ability and willingness to learn
Full effectiveness, however, can be achieved only if everyone:
Has a clear and shared vision of where the company is heading
Understands the strategy for getting there and their part in the process
Is rewarded for playing their part
Focuses obsessively on the customer
Some barriers to effectiveness are obvious – if the products are poor then no amount of sales skill can compensate sufficiently to build success. Many barriers are more subtle, and can sap the strength of the company over a long period without being tackled. Such problems usually fall under one the following three headings:
Misalignment
Inflexibility
Internal Focus
Misalignment
Feels like a bad back
There are many ways in which Misalignment is introduced into organization structures and processes; at best they generate unhelpful tensions and frustrations, at worst they lead to departmental rifts and sabotage. Common examples are:
Poor alignment of individuals’ expectations, departments and the company as a whole
E.g. the sales force seeks job interest by selling bespoke solutions, while the company is trying to standardize its offerings
Incentives for interdependent departments or people are not congruent
E.g. Sales force targeted on increased volume, administration targeted on decreased costs performance management process runs counter to company strategy
Sales management sets 30 day revenue targets, while company exhorts the salespeople to develop major accounts for the long-term
Salespeople are expected to cross-sell for other Divisions or countries, but are not rewarded for so doing
Sales management is “do as I say, not as I do”
E.g. Managers use a hard ‘push’ style, while advocating a ‘pull’ or consultative style with their people
Doing what we’ve always done what is going to be needed due to changing technology, markets and competition
E.g. When a monopoly supplier meets competition for the first time so the products no longer ‘sell themselves’
When new products address a different market – for example, printer sales force find themselves selling systems not peripherals
Gaps between stated values and actual values
E.g. “Our customers are our greatest asset ” while salespeople refer to them as “Buyers are liars”
“Our employees are our greatest asset”, while managers show little concern and even less investment
Inflexibility
Many markets are now more turbulent and unpredictable than ever before, and success comes only to those who are ‘quick on their feet’. Unfortunately many players suffer from at least one of the following:
Their sales organization structure and roles don’t match those of the customer
E.g. they offer multipoint direct contact with sales, service, technical support, while the customer wants single point contact
Geographical location of functions and authority doesn’t match the customer’s
Their organization is inherently unresponsive to change
E.g. in rapidly evolving markets, companies operating a traditional hierarchical and functional structure find it hard to compete with those successfully using a cross-functional team approach
• Their people are resistant to change
E.g. Salespeople who have been adequately successful for years have become “order takers”, and the entertaining approach to account development
Managers who find it hard to let go of their traditional, power-oriented style and allow staff the space and authority to really contribute
Technical people who are unwilling to take on the sales role and don’t believe in the new technology
Internal focus
True customer focus involves a lot more than ‘customer service training’; it means that no aspect of the organization should be free from an all-pervading concern with delivering what the customer wants, and a bit more. It means taking your cue from the customer in areas which traditionally have been internally focused, for example:
Company and/ or departmental structure
E.g. Split on arbitrary product/technical grounds, so that several sellers approach the same individual
Performance measures
E.g. Call rates, scrap rates, production volumes, instead of response times, satisfaction ratings, service call-outs
Perception of what is being sold
E.g. In terms of a product rather than the results of using it – a security system rather than peace of mind, a training course rather than increased sales effectiveness
Conclusion
There is no one best sales organization structure, incentive scheme, or strategic approach. If there were, we would not see the huge diversity which exists in the real world, and change would anyway render it obsolete.
The effective organization is never complacent, and audits itself rigorously and constantly, seeking out and remedying any instances of inconsistency, inflexibility and internal focus. It also never fools itself into believing that change=progress;. change follows cycles of learning of what works and what doesn’t, not from a fear of stagnation.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page
Contact: Nick Anderson, Senior Partner, PDS Group LTD E-mail I Web I Linkedin
During many consulting engagements we identified that organizational misalignment as a major factor in organizations and individuals were not achieving goals
Today I want to cover the second in a three part series on Managing Alignment Challenges to improve the odds of bringing successful change to the listeners’ organizations.
Last month we covered, Managing Conflict and Relationship Tension. This month I will cover…
2. Managing Complexity and then next month
3. Improving Performance
What are the signs of problems with Performance Improvement?
Here are some familiar problem statements we here from our clients about this third area of Alignment Challenges
We could be better at identifying problems and their solutions before they actually occur. We are too reactive and this slows us down
The way we allocate resources and feedback on their performance compounds problems in managing progress
People get so absorbed in what they are doing that Key Stakeholders are not actively involved. This has led to tension between them and the project team
We are reactive and respond too quickly to changes to understand the implications and impacts on other elements and groups
We don’t reuse what has been done before – “Reinventing the Wheel” is costly and takes time
Measuring the impact of what we do is too subjective and lessens our ability to stay within budget.
Cost overruns and missed milestones are too common and compounded by finger pointing.
What are the criteria for successful performance
Improvement?
Build on existing language.If there’s no common language, you are confused and competitively blind. But, you need to start where you are!
Change is hard, real change is real hard.Companies routinely initiate change but never seem to “really” change. We focus on avoiding those common “change traps”
Change is not about making time, it’s about releasing time.Executives must “create” time for change by reducing the distractions to getting work done.
Coaching cascades reinforce change.Managers must coach and be coached.
Create an accountability environment. Support, compensation, and other directional systems must be integrated.
Do “different” things! Don’t just do “things” differently.Think “out-of-the-box” and do different things rather than trying to get a little better at what you’re currently doing.
“Everyone needs to walk the same talk.”Receiving inconsistent voices from various sources causes people to “do what they’ve always done”.
Measure the “hows” not just the “whats” of success.Move management’s focus away from what was achieved to how you can win – measure leading indicators, not just lagging indicators.
No one sales process is the “right” one.The “right” sales process is the one to which people are committed.
Paint the train – revenue and competency grow together.Too often such training is disconnected from “real jobs.” Revenue and competency growth are dynamic concurrent processes not static sequential ones.
Sales and marketing people learn when they realize their collective ignorance risks losing a specific deal.It’s not what you know, but what you don’t know that creates competitive vulnerability.
Speed, intensity and momentum are critical.Move with “speed” to swim above cultural inertia. Move with “intensity” by focusing on a few new things. Build “momentum” by promoting early successes.
White Noise can’t be ignored.The background “hum” of distracting cultural legacies- “white noise”- drags change and must be overcome FIRST.
The Heart of Performance Improvement – Effective Delegation
At the heart of Performance Improvement lies in Manager’s being required to delegate responsibilities for those people who have been identified for promotion
A Working Definition
Enabling others to do a job for you while ensuring that:
They know what you want
They have the authority to achieve it
They know how to do it.
By communicating clearly:
The nature of the task
The extent of their discretion
The sources of relevant information and knowledge.
Each task delegated should have enough complexity to stretch – but only a little by including:
Agreeing criteria and standards by which the outcome will be judged.
Agreeing first how often and when information is needed to monitor progress
Avoiding making decisions for the delegate when they are capable
Not making a decision unless provided with clear alternatives, their pros and cons, and the individual’s recommendation.
Not judging the outcome by what you would do, but rather by its fitness for purpose.
Delegating the task and its ownership so that it can be changed or upgraded, if needed.
To get to the state where effective delegation can flourish needs people to be aligned.
What is alignment?
Clear Expectations
– Validating & agreeing statements about what two people expect of each other
– Agreeing measureable deliverables that will evidence fulfillment of each expectation.
Mutual Accountability
– Accepting responsibility & authority for agreed upon expectations between two people, for tasks performed & results achieved
– Accepting positive or negative consequences of that performance.
Performance Improvement ranges from the formal to informal yet for any effort to stick, managers and leaders have to constantly reinforce the need for effective delegation which inherently involves coaching. The basis for this condition is that when expectations relating to effective performance are made explicit, it is the responsibility of the originator, usually the Receiver’s Manager, to gain agreement to the expectation and the Receiver giving the evidence they are going to provide to meet the expectation. This is a very effective way of reaching mutual understanding so that the rating of performance and coaching is objective.
Great, but how can this help me?
This is probably the first thing on your mind after reading this Blog. How about asking us? The first call is free! Just email me to set it up. Don’t wait, get The Crispian Advantage working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching improve bottom line results. If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.
_________________________________________________________________________ For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage
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oney out of their minds! Problem with incentives is not that people are offered too much. It’s that money is pushed in people’s faces and offered transactionally, e.g. “You do this and you will get that” Getting rid of conditionality is the first step in fixing what’s wrong
ten contain a mixture of attributes which should be part of the recruitment and selection process, around which you choose a path of development for each individual. Relying on attributes as a basis for incentives naturally leads to the problem of subjectivity in performance ratings. Too many times people are swimming around in a sea of ink and rhetoric when it comes to recognizing and developing leadership and other competencies? Is more being written and discussed than applied to create the Motivating Environment?
