Tag Archives: change strategies

Focusing to Win: Executive Seminar Series

Posted on by agincourtarcher

This seminar series features Nick’s new book Focusing Change to Win which he co-authored with Kelly Nwosu.

These sessions provides business leaders with insights into critical areas to help focus their businesses and align their people for competitive advantage.  Each seminar helps you answer a fundamental question:

Seminar 1: How Clear Are You On The Why & What Of Change?

Seminar 2: Why Do Your People Resist Change?

Seminar 3: Why Do You Bother to Measuring Change?

Seminar 4: How Can You Implement Change & Gain Competitive Advantage?

Seminar 5: Is Your Organization Thriving or Just Surviving?

Seminar 6: How Effectively Do You Really Communicate Change? 

We take a deep-dive into a change issue that you face. You will come away with an understanding of where your expectations with key employees are aligned and not aligned, and how critical that alignment is for successful change. You will learn how to clarify and specify your own expectations as to well how you can check if they are understood. Each session helps executives assess their performance in terms of:

  • How well have you communicated your expectations to your people?
  • How well do you understand what your people expect of you?
  • What are the likely gaps between expectations and assumptions?
  • What are our options for planning and implementing success change competitively?

What do you get?

  • A copy of our new book Focusing Change to Win
  • A tool, the Four Blocker Alignment Analysis, to identify misalignment
  • A method to help set the right expectations and get people on the same page
  • An understanding of how to align agreed expectations effectively
  • An example of an aligned expectation relevant to your situation
  • An improved chance for successful change in your organization

What preparation is needed?

For each participant organization we have preparation guides that ask people to consider issues related to the question being posed for each seminar.

Who should you bring?

Please select up to five key people to join you who are important to successful change in your organization, such as:

  • Which colleagues will help you answer the seminar question posed?
  • Whose opinion do you value to help look at the question posed from different perspectives?
  • Whose commitment will you need to make improvements in tackling change competitively?

What will be covered?

Each session focuses on real-life scenarios within the framework of the research findings and assessment tools developed. As we say:

“There is no role-play only real-play”

Seminar Format

Seminars are customized for clients and depending on their needs. They normally run from half-day to full-day. They can be run fact-to-face or web-based, although experience suggest face-to-face gets the best results

Maximum attendance is  20 participants!  Costs start at $150 per person per half day excluding agreed preparation time, travel and accommodation.

Why are these seminars important?

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. The cost of a failed change can be staggering, from lowering morale to losing key customers due to poor quality.

Focusing to Win and the survey on which is based confirms other studies

Too many organizations are still trying to do things differently not do different things

Survey Contributors realize that working relationships are increasingly stressed in the drive for ever-faster responses to competitive threats and opportunities.

So, what are the meaningful differences between those that thrive on change and those that just survive?

Many contributors seem resigned to resistance being unavoidable yet recognize that trust in management is the only variable that significantly reduces change resistance. They seem to have little focus on improving organizational alignment to achieve change success.

For others, whatever the blend of top down and bottom up led change, it is clear – be intentional. This is invaluable to avoid being misinterpreted and mistrusted. These contributors are clear and details how to lay the groundwork for successful change.

Each seminar takes an aspect of the problem based on over 6,000 comments to give participants an assessment framework for their organizations. These   cover analyzing change impacts, setting-up the change Program with Metrics and on-going communication.

Executive Summary

Continue reading →

Rebuilding Trust – Productivity’s Cornerstone

Posted on by agincourtarcher

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. In all 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 →

Realigning Schools for the New Normal – The Administrator’s Challenge

Posted on by agincourtarcher

Introduction

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.

Here’s the case for realignment Continue reading →

The Fallacies of Change Management – Poll

Posted on by agincourtarcher

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

E-mail I Web I Linkedin

© Copyright All Rights Reserved, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds, [2010-2012]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Focusing Change to Win – Global Survey of 1072 leaders – Executive Summary

Posted on by agincourtarcher

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]  

Continue reading →

Meeting Today’s Leadership Challenges in a Complex World

Posted on by agincourtarcher

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN COMMERCE, IT & MANAGEMENT VOLUME – III, ISSUE – IV (APRIL, 2012 (ISSN 2231 – 5756)

Abstract

Today leading in a complex world is one of the hot topics being discussed across organization and conferences. Every one faces complexity both in a small or large-scale industry. This complexity is driven by uncertainty and accelerating change. For organizations to thrive in this rapid challenging business environment, leaders must learn to adapt and embrace the complexity, to see it as opportunity to achieve uncommon result. This chapter present valuable insights about KPMG study confronting complexity. It identifies factors that cause complexity. It also suggests ways through which a leader can address complexity and turn it into competitive advantage.

Authors Kelly  Nwosu and Nick Anderson

1.0 Introduction

The challenge with managing complexity and leading in a complexity world has become an excuse for some business people to keep the status quo, to abandon thinking ahead and to push strategy to one side, because they don’t believe it can be flexible and responsive enough to help them in a rapidly changing world (ED, 2011). But, most organizations that succeed in the midst of complexity are those that think differently and turn the potential challenges into a competitive advantage. They also see it as an opportunity to make their company more efficient. According to the recent study confronting complexity conducted by KPMG International, the study reveals that more than 90 percent senior executives across 22 countries say their organization’s success depends on managing today’s complex business issues. Yet, less than half executives believe the actions they are taking to manage complexity have been very effective (KPMG, 2011). On the other hand, the IBM survey on global CEO’s also show that the language for reducing complexity has change, CEO’s are now talking about how to transform complexity into an opportunity to gain competitive advantage (Balkan, 2011). In our research, we were able to identify what complexity is all about, factors that cause complexity and actions to discuss the issues of complexity. In particular, this chapter covers three parts. Part 1 focuses on managing complexity while the second part focuses on leading to the essence then part 3 focuses on leading learning.

For the full article please go to  www.ijrcm.org.in

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN COMMERCE, IT & MANAGEMENT  (ISSN 2231 – 5756)

Why do people resist change? Leadership Survey Findings (1072 managers, 510 CEOs, 80 countries)

Posted on by agincourtarcher

Here’s the first findings from research conducted jointly with New Catalyst.(http://changeisessential.com)

Click Video link to view Nick Anderson position the upcoming publication of the full research report – Stategies for Managing Change and Winning in Todays Competitive Environment

Since change management came into fashion, a litany of failure has left its mark and our respondent’s echo what many have gone through in the last 8 years. It seems through their eyes, resistance has to be viewed as a “brown field” site. Gone is the naiveté of “a job for life” and an enduring contract between leaders and other stakeholders. Now, change is synonymous with downsizing, doing more for less, etc. For these respondents, they paint a picture of failed change, broken trust, fractured communication and poor leadership. We summarize their comments into the following:

  • Cultural Toxicity of Failed Change
  • “If people don’t trust you, what change do you stand?”
  • “People can’t be bothered”
  • “What’s in it for me?”
  •  “Not knowing the purpose of it all” – a litany of communication failure
  • Poor Leadership embeds and accelerates resistance

Continue reading →

If people don’t trust you, Change will Fail?

Posted on by agincourtarcher

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.

Continue reading →

Getting the Best out of the Matrix

Posted on by agincourtarcher

Introduction

For 40 Years few have challenged Matrix Management’s viability. Most writers remain convinced that a matrix approach is superior to a hierarchy, but why hasn’t it been more successful? This blog looks at pointing the reader to answer:

How do ensure we get the promised rewards of the Matrix?

First,  a definition for SHRM

In a matrix structure, an employee reports to two managers who are jointly responsible for the employee’s performance. Typically, one works in an administrative function, such as finance, HR, information technology, sales or marketing, and the other works in a business unit related to a product, service, customer or geography.

The matrix model is a network of interfaces between teams and the functional elements of an organization. As its simplest it is:

 think horizontal – think vertical – think interface.

Here are some of the challenges facing those thinking of improving or moving to a matrix based organization.

Continue reading →

Developing Sales Coaching Expertise: Learning from the Masters

Posted on by agincourtarcher

(Journal article by George M. De Marco, Byan A. Mccullick; JOPERD–The Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, Vol. 68, 1997)

I like this article as it challenges some of the more superficial approaches to training sales managers to coach. It is a challenge that so many duck and as I wrote in Quality Sales Managers Matters:

#1 High-performing sales manager’s impact reps engagement and financial performance. Reps reporting to great managers report high job satisfaction with four times more 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 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.

The characteristics of coaching expertise, research into  coaching effectiveness, coaching expertise, and expert performance in other  domains, a profile of expert coaching has emerged. – Five distinct  Characteristics

Characteristics of Expert Coaches

1. Extensive, Specialized Knowledge

All around understanding of the internal and external sales  environments

2. Organize Knowledge Hierarchically

The ability to store and organize information as learning  patterns which allows them to compare idealized performance standards with the  present performance of their people.

At its core the experts are superior planners and  evaluators. E.g. expert gymnastic coaches used a model to determine and plan  for their athletes potential developing short- and long-term goals being set  and periodically reset according to the athlete’s progress.

Another study compared 10 expert and 10 novice basketball  coaches. The results indicated:

“..experts had more in-depth and detailed planning  protocols, with more augmentation, sub goals and anticipated problem statements  than novices. They planned practice sessions in bigger chunks, taking into  consideration more components of the problem at one time” (p.215).

3. Highly Perceptive & Superior Problem Solvers

Experts are uniquely capable of accurately perceiving  stimuli in game situations. They can sort important clues from other “white  noise” and then generate superior responses. They can see how all the pieces  fit together to help their athletes to plan, diagnose and strategize more  effectively. The experts solve problems more methodically

4 Accurately assess and prescribe performance

This positively impacts the quality and quality of coaching  during practice. Basketball experts spent 42% of their time in instruction In another study, expert coaches gave significantly more  feedback.

Expert coaches are able to detect what people need to know  and then find ways of supplying that information.

5. Exhibit Automaticity During Analysis & Instruction

Several studies on coaching effectiveness showed that  coaches of less satisfied high school teams often interrupted the flow of  practices to instruct, whereas coaches of satisfied teams typically provided  instruction as they played.

Commentary of Summitt’s coaching:

“provides succinct and rapid-fire instructive  and prescriptive feedback during play”

6 Self-Monitoring Skills

Experts are more self-aware, analytical, evaluative and  corrective of their performances. They are driven by the desire to improve  their own coaching performance

Developing Expertise in Coaching

  1. Gain  More Knowledge
  2. Study  successful coaches
  3. Identify  the important. Organizational skills are critical to effective coaching.  Keep yearly, monthly, personal records
  4. Stay perceptive, recognize problems early and solve them quickly.
  5. Concentration is a must – focus on the task at hand and don’t let yourself  be interrupted or distracted. When analyzing a skill performance, focus  only on one aspect of the performance, not the whole skill.
    ”The sooner the coach can analyze skill problems, the sooner the will  move to the expert level”
  6. Identify  & solve problems in a rapid, complete and correct manner demands skill  that continually needs to be developed
  7. Increase  short- and long- term Memory – A great distinction between the experts and  others
    “the ability to acquire, retain and apply knowledge”
  8. Make  it Automatic – develop practice routines, warm-up drills, pre-game activities
  9. Regularly  monitor and evaluate your own coaching

Presenting a Persuasive Case – How do you sell an idea?

Posted on by agincourtarcher

INTRODUCTION

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.

Continue reading →

Complexity, the New Normal 4: Improving Sales Performance – Are you ready for the Challenge?

Posted on by agincourtarcher

 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:

  • Many decision makers
  • Team selling
  • Proposal or tender based selling (RFP)
  • Post sales support requirements like after sales service
  • Needs tailored solutions
  • High value, e.g often needing board approval
  • Long sales cycles
  • Technical/knowledge based elements
  • Consultative selling requirements
  • Customer relationship focus

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”

Continue reading →

Complexity, the New Normal! 3: Listen to your guts – Are they really on the same page?

Posted on by agincourtarcher

 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’

3. Don’t have right or wrong solutions.

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.
  •  Positive shared experiences strengthen organizational culture.
  •  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

Listen to the Radio Show of this Blog

© Copyright All Rights Reserved, PDS Group LTD and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds, [2010-2011]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nick Anderson, PDS Group LTD and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Complexity, the New Normal 2: Leading to the Essence

Posted on by agincourtarcher

Listen to the Radio Program – 15mins

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.

Continue reading →

Getting the Best from your Sales Training: Methodological Agnosticism?

Posted on by agincourtarcher

Designing Sales Training: Methodological Agnosticism


Sound weird, doesn’t it? Truth is . . .  being tied to one training methodology simply isn’t productive.

There’s no “perfect training methodology” – whether it be focused on selling, managing or coaching. Any training should  Advance Competence while Advancing Sales. Complex sales organizations need methodological purpose rather than one methodology piled on top of existing methodologies.

Additionally, people have been trained a lot in their lives. It seems obvious that we should also give them credit for the concepts, processes, and skills they have already learned. Adding methodologies (no matter how good they are) risks creating indifference. We know indifference does not change behaviors! Conversely, building commitment relies on giving your people and managers credit for what they already know, while at the same time changing behaviors that do not work.

Continue reading →

Complexity, the New Normal! 1: Aligning Leaders for a Complex World

Posted on by agincourtarcher

Every one faces complexity driven by uncertainty and accelerating change. It is the “New Normal” making leadership more demanding and in demand.

Listen to the Radio Show

Leadership on its Head

Accelerating Complexity places extreme demands on leaders. The leader’s ability to relate, energize, and develop their followers is critical to empower them to act without direction. It’s a competitive imperative and requires a new balance of more effective and affective leadership. It’s the ability to produce results by being affective. That ability to influence people, in the way they think, feel and act is now paramount

As Peter Senge said Leaders “…cannot afford to choose between reason and intuition, or head and heart, any more than they would choose to walk on one leg…”

So, this month I deal with what leaders need to do – the easier bit. Next month, I cover the tougher piece on how leaders need to lead transformationally.

Continue reading →

Getting People on the Same Page – Preparing for Change

Posted on by agincourtarcher

Listen to the Radio Show based on this Blog

In this blog I want to focus on Preparing People For Change by 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

•         Processes – Work Flow

•         Structure – Organizational Design, Role, Relationships

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.

As says in his testimonial, “I realize now more than ever that many decisions and observations were assumptions”

This resulted in problems like:

•      Job Shop Scheduling software didn’t work

•      People were cynical about it ever being useful.

•      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

Genzink is now on the acquisition trail.

“104 jobs: Genzink Steel Supply and Welding Co., maker of metal wind turbines, and other fabrications”(GR Press Aug 2008)

Tip of the Month

If you are getting people ready for change

My Expectations of Others

•      What I expect you to keep doing

•      What I want you to start doing

•      What I want you to stop doing

Others’ Expectations of Me

•      What things I think others want me to keep to keep doing . . . .

•      What new things I think others want me to start doing . . . .

•      What things I think others want me to stop doing . . . .

Then meet with those who you need  to implement your change and compare your answers – be prepared for surprises.

Listen to the Radio Show



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 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

© Copyright All Rights Reserved, PDS Group LTD and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds, [2010-2011]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nick Anderson, PDS Group LTD and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Leading Competitive Differentiation

Posted on by agincourtarcher

Listen to the Radio Show of this Blog

Last month we looked at competitive differentiation and emphasized the importance of Competitive Value Discovery as fundamental. It helps you discover value potential over your competitors. Finding value that the Customer had never thought of before is competitively differentiating. Also, whether it’s your existing customer or you are trying to secure a new client, they always weigh your value against your competitors’. Focused Value Discovery helps you gain greater control over what they weigh, how they weigh it and, as importantly, what the competition is doing in the same regard so that we can counter such tactics. So, if we have far better intel and a better sense of the client’s changing priorities we can work both offensively and defensively to influence their Decision Guidelines.

In sum, you need to gain the high ground

What have you chosen for us this month?

This month I want to explore why planned and focused value discovery is vital to creating and implementing a successful sales strategy. Aligning where you are going with your resources gives you the best chance for creating new or additional revenue sources. This means being competitively clear about how you are going to choose the products (or services) you want to build.  For instance:

  • Build the product you want to build,
  • Market the product you want to build,
  • Sell the product you want to build,
  • Service the product you want to build
  • Build the next generation

Determining where to differentiate based on market conditions is a strategic value conversation. You have to know your products as well as you know your competitor’s. Then determine strategically where competitors are most vulnerable and how to deliver those messages. You must regularly test your premise with the customer…

How easy is it to find out how your competitor is differentiating themselves?

Not easy! Sure, hard product functionality is on their website – that’s the easy bit. It’s difficult because most think each competitor is static and consistent – but they are not! Many competitors don’t even behave the same between their different regions or divisions. For example, a competitor can be your partner in one geography, yet be your competitor in another. Typically, this occurs in IT. So, what they do in Idaho is often very different than what they are doing in Chicagoland. With one client, we helped them find out that a technology partner was in fact competing against them using two strategies. The first was in schools districts and the second in State Government. They were losing 8/10 sales to them. After we determined this we helped them reverse that condition.

Why do so many companies fail to recognize such competitive strategies?

Because they don’t have the focus, processes and ability to read their competitive environments. Such signals are not easy to read: they are weak ambiguous, and need deciphering. Only a systematic and aligned process can decipher competitive signals early enough to make a difference.

It is difficult. First, top management is never close enough to the market. Second, some top executives can’t see competitive reality. Somehow they become insulated from competitive reality by relying on intelligence that is invariably biased, subjective, filtered or late.

By the time most executives get evidence of changes in their markets, they have already lost touch with customers, technology, competitors, suppliers, government and the other forces operating to squeeze their profits.

The question is, if you do nothing, what are the competitive consequences? Without taking specific preventive measures, such as ensuring that top managers consider competitive information in making decisions, companies will be hit on the head by change – time and again.

You may be thinking, who has the time to continually and systematically identify such signals early? Who has the expertise to attempt to decode all of them? The answer is: Your people – those who are in daily touch with the competitive arena.

Survival depends on competitive agility when facing changes in the environment by:

  • Continuously moving on three fronts - content, context and process
  • Being unpredictable and so easily identifiable to your competition
  • Being experimental

To compete in unstable markets you need to be competent in two things:

  • Identifying and understanding the competitive forces at play and how they change over time, linked to
  • Mobilizing resources to respond competitively

How do you get this flow of competitive intelligence to decision makers?


The Five Aspects of Competitive Strategic Change

Our uncertain environment means strategic change involves parallel streams of activity.  There is no easy logic; It’s more like brewing a culture– like beer. It’s a difficult complex process where a manager’s ability to cope with ambiguity is paramount.

It’s not surprising then that higher performing firms  handle five interrelated aspects of strategic change better:

1. Assessing the Competitive Environment
2. Leading Competitiveness
3. Linking Strategic & Operational change
4. Learning Competitively
5. Orchestrating Competitive Change

Let’s look at the first of these five.

1. Assessing the Competitive Environment

The firm has to be an open learning system and not reliant on one specialist function.

As Romme (1989) puts it:

“There is the problem of not only environmental “sensing”, but also “sense-making”"And sensing tends to be by individuals whereas sense making nearly always involves collective processing…

Successful competitive sensing and sense making is  requires:

  • Key people to champion assessment techniques which increase openness
  • Both structure and culture to encourage environment-facing behaviors

Even with these factors are present there is no guarantee anything will change without actions which stabilizes and drives this assessment capacity forward.  .

Presumably, this means leadership style has to change?

2. Leading Change

I agree, it’s not is not just ensuring that the environment is understood; the vital need is to ensure that the organization learns and acts on new information that requires courageous leadership. The leadership challenge is that unpredictability makes the prospect of greater control remote.  So, big initiatives in themselves are of limited value and may well be dangerous.  Paradoxically, effective leadership relies on the gradual and modest.  This includes assessing, for instance, through “problem-sensing” and “climate-setting” management can assess the political implications of a competitive strategy. Effective leadership relies on shaping a long term process rather one direct initiative. These processes have to encourage analysis and actions which are sensitive to changing circumstances.

Competitive research suggests that leading an organization through change does not imply reliance on one leader.  Great emphasis in those organizations studied was placed on:

  • Creating a broader notion of collective leadership at higher levels
  • Embedding a complimentary sense of leadership and responsibility at lower levels

Leaders need to be “Radical Gradualists,” knowing where they need to go using incremental and unspectacular steps.
It involves integrating competitive actions at all levels.

Building a climate for leading change also needs to raise energy levels and set new directions. The conditions needed are:

  • Showing why the changes are needed
  • Building the organizational capabilities to mount the change
  • Establishing an agenda which sets direction, visions and values

What’s the next challenge for becoming more competitive?

3. Linking Strategic & Operational Change

The cumulative effect of separate acts can be powerful.  As Pettigrew & Whipp puts it:

“Translating strategy into operational action does not occur by a neat sequence of steps to a logical outcome; it may include…iterative actions  in order to break through ignorance or resistance; it often requires…aborted efforts and the buildup of slow incremental phases of adjustment which….allow short bursts of concentrated action…”

You need to focus on:

  • Opening up people to reach closure on what worked in the past and reinforce the changes that need to be made
  • Sustaining speed, intensity and momentum of the process
  • Recognizing that re-formulation of the strategy will occur – Set the expectation that you can’t to get it right first time
  • Translating strategic intent into operational reality – WIIFM

Then, new knowledge and insights gained during implementation of a strategy can be captured, retained and disseminated. So, replicate success and avoid failures better than you competition

I am curious to learn about the next step

So, the next step is about the organization’s ability to keep learning about its competitive surroundings

4. Competitive Learning

Peter Senge defined learning organizations as:

“Organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to learn together.”

Competitive learning organizations need to create positive learning spirals that:

  • Develop the value of competitive knowledge as a key differentiating weapon
  • Facilitate learning  that generates, maintains and regenerates that knowledge
  • Find ways of exposing knowledge locked-up  in the procedural repertoires of the firm
  • Ensure that the knowledge base of the firm matches changing competitive conditions

Competitive learning spirals involve observation, reflection, hypothesizing, experimentation, action and “hands-on” application.  What is learned has to be codified and diffused.

Such spirals are team based. People collectively developing their knowledge, values and shared mental models of their competitive environment. It goes beyond training.  The need is for a much broader approach which embraces “play experimentation”, developing appropriate language as well as reshaping attitudes and values.

Often overlooked, is the need for breaking down entrenched knowledge and beliefs – “unlearning”. – Shedding outmoded knowledge, techniques and beliefs, and then learning new ones to carry out strategies is crucial.  The ability to do so faster and more effectively than your competitors becomes almost priceless!

How do Leaders juggle all of this?

5. Orchestrating Competitive Change

It’s about holding a firm’s strategic thinking together, while carrying out the reshaping and adjusting which new or emergent strategies demand. Research shows the need for competitive integrity between the strategic competitive position adopted by the firm, the internal resources and external collaborators

Such orchestration is not easily attained or maintained.  It means solving analytical, educational and political problems.

The problem of orchestration lies in the divergence between official goals and more routine decisions.   As Kanter (1983) says, “there are many rules for stifling innovation”.  These include multiple layers of managerial approval; intensive controls; secretive decision making; and suspicion of new ideas.  In other words, corporate contradictions prevent change – the formidable obstacles to which many give little attention.

Are there any other aspects which leaders should consider when conducting competitive change?

Developing Competitive Networks

A key aspect is developing competitive networks.  It’s investing in networks to build up, for example, a set of complimentary assets which it needs in order to exploit its knowledge base.

Networking focuses on developing relationships between your firm and others which are directly concerned with generating new intellectual capital (IP) For example, sharing life science research with a collaborator. Each has one piece of the puzzle, so they build a database by sharing intellectual property.

It also is about developing relationships which affect the firm’s process of generating and altering its knowledge indirectly.  An example here is with data centers and different IT firms used to support the customer’s service in that data center.

Developing such networks requires learning local cultural and market conditions, techniques of partnering, negotiation skills and collaboration. Such networks are often invisible assets which cannot be readily purchased and controlled.

So, I guess the real question is how well an organization develops its competitiveness by being better at discovering customer values and then aligning their organizations and partners to meet those demands. Right?

Competitive Value Discovery is the tip of the spear targeted and driven by superior focus, processes and leadership that galvanizes the organization. It is sustained by the belief that being competitive is about making sense of changing market conditions, customer needs, priorities and competitive responses.

Competitiveness rests not only aligning such aspects, but also replicating what works over and over again. Can you tell me what those systems are in your organization?

Listen to the Radio Show

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

E-mail I Web I Linkedin

Listen to the Radio Show of this Blog

© Copyright All Rights Reserved, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds, [2010-2012]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

 


Paying For Sales Performance – A Myth?

Posted on by agincourtarcher

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.

(Listen to  Walk the Talk – Radio for Agile Minds - The Pay for Performance Myth )

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:

  1. WATCH: Don’t put employees under surveillance; look for problems that need to be solved and help people solve them.
  2. LISTEN: Attend seriously and respectfully to workers’ concerns
  3. 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
  4. 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:

  1. Perform better
  2. Enjoy the intrinsic rewards of their work
  3. Are loyal and enthusiastic
  4. 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:

  1. Behavior
  2. Competencies (including soft as well as hard skills)
  3. Attitudes (attributes)
  4. 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:

  1. Do you have competencies for those positions which are crucial to your organization’s performance?
  2. How well do they separate the Knowledge, Skills that are developable vs. those attributes that you need when hiring or promoting?
  3. Honestly, how well are these attributes used to objectively anchor the recruitment process?

(Listen to  Walk the Talk – Radio for Agile Minds – The Pay for Performance Myth )

 

Great, but how can this help me?

 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.

 

© Copyright All Rights Reserved, The Crispian Advantages, [2010-2011]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Related articles