Tag: Management

By Scott

Rule #1: Sleep

A friend who has never read a business book recommended Rework by the founders of 37signals.  It has made my top shelf and there is one message that helped preserve my sanity during the start-up of my business.  When you are tired, sleep.

Seems simple, but in our drive to complete everything and show any customer in the world that comes in contact with us what an amazing performer we are, the bar gets raised to a point that most of them cannot even see or appreciate.  For me, I was so focused on getting it all done that I forgot I was skilled at my craft and that many of these tasks took a third of the time if I was rested.  So since then I have just gone to bed, and here are a few outcomes for those who need data:

  • 0 missed deliverables
  • 0 feedback from clients indicating I was unprepared
  • 0 feedback from anyone that I appear more rested

The benefit was that it also allowed me to hone in on my new rule that when the house shuts down and my spouse goes to bed, I put everything down and go to bed.  A simple rule, but it has made all the difference.  Nobody else will care that you slept, except the people that have to live with you.  Doesn’t that matter?  It should . . .

Holidays is about being present and putting things down that can be handled later.  It should not take a book or a blog to tell us go to sleep, but sometimes these messages need to be spelled out and we need to be in a place to hear them.

My message for you:  Thanks for listening and sharing your stories with me.  I will not bother you until Jan 7, so stay present with the people that matter in your life.

Have a great holiday.

By Scott

You don’t need more data

An email came from the Gallup organization yesterday inviting me to buy a full ranking of my Strengthsfinder results for the bargain price of $89.  It promised my 34 talent themes ranked from strongest to weakest.  For those of you that have never taken it, when you buy Strengthsfinder 2.0 or Now, Discover Your Strengths from Gallup you get a code that will allow you to take an assessment that gives you your top 5 talents.  It is a great assessment.

Great move by Gallup, because the popularity of this assessment has resulted in tens of millions of people taking it.  If 1% get excited about this offer it will be very profitable.

I have personally helped over 500 people understand their Strengthsfinder results, and in every group there is always one person who wants more data – all 34 talent themes ranked.

My standard response has been – “What would you do with more data?”  The answers I hear includes statements like Then I will really know or words like certain, exact, and total clarity.

My response – Talent themes start the conversation.  The rest of the conversation is about understanding them, self-observing to see them at work, building on them, refining your understanding of them, and then repeating this process endlessly.  It is not a neat and clean project that ends with a deliverable.  In the end, someone tells you something like You are wise or You do a great job adapting to different situations.  In that is the inherent belief that You get yourself.

Self-awareness is a journey.  It is more about the work than the data.  Would you respond to an ad that claimed Receive total consciousness on your death bed for $74.99? (this is for Caddy Shack fans)

Feel free to buy more data, but you don’t need more data.  Do the work.

By Scott

1 on 1’s – Do you ask this question?

Shortly after publishing my last trU Tips on doing effective One-on-Ones (read it here), I received a note from a leader I respect.  I have never worked with him, but every time we talk he asks me questions that make me think.  He is also very willing to try new things.  He is a very valuable part of my network.

Let me call this trU Tips 22.1. In addition to the two questions I recommend once you mastered the basic One-on-one conversation, a third question to ask is – What should I keep doing the same?

Remember the goal of a One-on-One is to build trust and focus by creating space for your people to talk about what they are getting done, where they need help, and get a sense for how they are performing vs the standards you have set for them.  The advanced questions are about getting feedback for you that will help you continuously refine your own effectiveness as a leader.  Think of these three questions:

  • What do I need to do more of?
  • What should I keep doing the same? (the new question)
  • What do I need to do less of?

If you ask these questions and log in the answers over a 3-6 month period, I guarantee it will give you the same results as a professionally administered 360 feedback tool.  In financial terms, the choice is listen for free or spend five figures having someone else listen for you.

I love my network – they make me better.  I am listening.

By Scott

Make Good Decisions Dad

As I was preparing for a board meeting my 9 year old daughter asked me what I was doing.  She had just told me about her first student council meeting, so I told her about my meeting and that we were going to be approving a budget for the year.  She thought for a second and said in a very matter of fact tone, “Make good decisions Dad.”

Sometimes we forget the basics, and if we are listening there are reminders all around us about what those are.  We just need to stop, listen, understand, and reset our perspective.

Here was my reset based on the wisdom that she shared with me:

  • Goal of a leader:  Make sure the best decisions get made more than not.
  • Development goal #1 of a leader:  Continue to learn and grow so the definition of best for yourself and your team is always being redefined in a positive direction.
  • Development goal #2 for a leader:  Challenge your team to embrace the same goal.

Maybe a good goal today is lead with the eyes and heart of a 9 year old.

 

By Scott

4 Performance Words – What Seth said, and What I think

Seth Godin recently blogged about performance, and outlined four kinds:  Bad, Good, Remarkable, and Personal.  Here is the whole post.

In a world where we too often treat performance with labels like Right person/Right seat or A player / B player / C player – it is good to just use words that we all know.

Leading performance is about not walking by the work without letting people know what you see.  It is about getting their view of the work and what they see in others.  It about celebrating things being done, asking a few questions to plant seeds that might lead to a different view of the work, and challenging people to a different level of involvement and ownership.  Try these:

  • Where did you see passion in someone else’s work this week?  How can we celebrate that?
  • How did you personalize your work this week and who benefited from it?
  • What work do you have in front of you that has a chance to be remark-able in how you do it?  What will make it worthy of that label?

Of course you ask these questions, listen, and always revisit them.

Personally, I would drop Bad and Good in favor of Absent and Solid.

I like reading Seth – his thoughts are generally remark-able.

 

By Scott

Rule 3 – NEVER cancel without rescheduling

Enough said?  You can stop here if you get it.  If you need more convincing here are 451 more words to get some clarity.

In his book The Speed of Trust, Stephen M.R. Covey said We judge ourselves based on our intentions.  We judge others based on their actions. Never is that statement more true than in the relationship between a leader and follower.  Do any of these examples ring true?

1.  A leader cancels a one on one because of a customer issue.  Does not reschedule it because he/she just talked to the person as they walked around the office yesterday.

Leader intention:  Customer is critical and everything stops when they call.  Plus we just talked yesterday and you know I care about you.

Leader action (as interpreted by follower):  Here we go again.  Your issues always trump mine and this issue could have been handled by the field service team with just a little support from us.  This is the 6th time this has happened in the last 8.5678 months (slight exaggeration on the number – but do not be surprised at the human mind to keep a key measure like this).

2.  A leader has the one on one and interrupts the conversation three times because of calls from home.

Leader intention:  Apology issued before each call, and since it was his wife on all three occasions and it was an emergency it was okay because family comes first.  Family is a core value of our organization.  (Emergency = at the mechanic with their new Audi A8 and the repairs were not going well)

Leader action (as interpreted by follower):  Would it be okay if I did this?  His/her spouse is a great person, but can’t this wait 20 minutes?  Isn’t this my time?  I will just cut my time/agenda short and let them deal with their issues.  Afterthought – A8?  I wonder why my evaluation/increase is six months overdue?

3.  Leader leads the time with two things that went wrong last week and they want to know what happened and why.

Leader intention:  Accountability.  If we cannot have the hard conversations then I am not doing my job.

Leader action (as interpreted by follower):  What a jelly fish.  There have been four days to talk about these things since they happened, plus I owned them and fixed them.  What about the bad decision he/she made yesterday that kept me here until 8pm to fix?  Can there be accountability there?

Being a leader is tough.  It is tougher when priorities are not clear and the tyranny of the urgent rules over the one on one time.  Never break this rule – and if you do point back to the last date/time/location/reason that it happened so they know you are keeping score too. 🙂

Talent management is about great conversations.  Follow these three rules for one on ones and you can have some great conversations.

Links related to this post:

By Scott

Rule 2 – Individual (not leader) owns the agenda

(This is the second blog in a series outlining the key rules for making one on ones work.  Here is a link to the first:  Rule 1 – Be in the same room together)

I stood in front of a group of human resource professionals and asked them Whats the #1 reason leaders would resist a regular one on one schedule? Their answer – Time.  It is a reality that another commitment, especially one that takes preparation, is going to be an issue.  This is one of the key reasons that Rule #2 exists.  While this time together requires presence from the leader, it requires only minimal preparation because the agenda is 100% driven by the individual.  Here are two reasons why.

First, the number one need for people at work is knowing what is expected of them. Gallup created a twelve question survey they could use to assess employee engagement at work.  They called it the Q12, and the very first and most important question was I know what is expected of me at work. Each day, new problems or opportunities arise in a business, and with each comes an event that could change the nature of the work that someone has to do. The key to a one on one is doing the five R’s around work duties:  refine, revise, reorder, reinforce, or remove.  Since it is a fundamental need for every person to have some level of focus in their work, they will have the strongest desire to own any activity that helps them achieve that.  The one on one is that activity.

Secondly, it addresses one of the top issues with any leader, the ability to effectively delegate work. The #2 best-selling Harvard Business Review article of all time is Management Time:  Who’s Got the Monkey? Leaders have long struggled with taking on too much work from their people.  The inherent question from the leader in the one on one conversation is –What do you need from me? There are four basic needs a leader has to be ready to address.  The need for . . .

  • A listening year
  • Encouragement to overcome a frustration
  • Coaching to see/define other options for getting through a barrier
  • Help prioritizing/re-framing an overbooked to do list

Notice your work is not on the list.  There will likely be some commitments for a leader after a one on one, but most should revolve around working with other leaders to deal with competing organizational priorities.  There is a natural need for leaders to take on the work of their people (for that perspective read the article).  The one on one all about helping the individual achieve a state of 3 Mores/1 less:  MORE focused, MORE autonomous, MORE  successful, and LESS stressed.  In that state, everybody wins, especially the leader.

More to come on one on ones.  If you are interested, here is a sample template for getting started.

By Scott

Rule 1 – Be in the same room together

According to a study done by the Kaiser Family Foundation, children 8-18 spend 7.5 hours per day using entertainment media, 4 minutes playing outside, and 3.5 minutes per day in meaningful conversation with their parents. Hmmm . . . .

I toured a company called Menlo Innovations in Ann Arbor last month and was shocked to find a technology company that did not use email to communicate.  All project management was done with post-its on the wall and communication happened face to face.  When someone needed to address the group they called out the name of the team, everyone stopped their work, and communication happened.  The business has experienced solid growth and the they have enabled several product launches that prove their methods are effective.  By the way, this is also a place where all coding is done in pairs – two people sitting next to each other and working together.  You cannot work alone on anything.

In a world where everything seems to be going faster, maintaining the right pace in how we interact is still important.

Great leadership starts with purposeful facetime with people.

Step 1 – Be physically present with the people you lead.

Yes, that is impossible for people leading virtual teams.  So to you I ask – What would that presence look like for you?  How close can you come to ‘physical’ presence?

After 20 years working on corporate teams, being married, and being a parent I am passionate about enabling one single thing – great conversations. When I created this template, I thought of a meaningful 30 minutes together between a leader and follower.  If we spend 30 minutes, one on one, every two weeks with each of our people, that works out to  a guaranteed 15 minutes of purposeful conversation per week with each person, or 3 minutes a day.

Hmmm . . . still only 3 minutes a day.  Too much . . . Really?

Watch yourself this week – How is the quality conversation time looking for you?

By Scott

Everyone needs a Target. Everyone!

Great leaders paint their own destiny

Great leaders live/lead through ambiguity

All of these statement are true, and yet in the details of all of these statements is work.  Inherent in this work is the simple question of What is the work?

One of the core beliefs I have is that everyone needs a target. The details will vary based on the individual, their drive, experiences, self-confidence, etc.   That data that supports this is Gallup’s Q12 and the most critical question to measure employee engagement – I know what’s expected of me at work. There is no exception in the research saying This does not apply to executives.

Yesterday I saw some great training that a start-up organization had put together to help their new leaders understand the culture and expectations they were stepping into – and see the target.  I know it will make a difference as they grow, especially if their leaders provide the conversations to support the learning and build the bridge to performance.  This is the hidden ingredient to clear expectations – an ongoing conversation about wins, losses, and just being lost. This is called leadership.

When I sit down with leaders to create the one on one sheet, I am amazed at the conversation that often ensues.  Sometimes it is laced with frustration, but more often it is about relief because expectations are clear.

Everyone needs a target.  Everyone.

 

By Scott

Can the CEO Coach? 2 Myths that get in the way

I learned by diving in – Why can’t they?

This statement was not meant to be mean or pass the buck, it was born from the frustration of seeing senior level leaders not rising to the occassion after being given significantly more responsibility.  I see it happen too often.  It is a painful scenario, and it is one that can be avoided.

When the focus is put on answering the question – How did we get here?, the root cause ends up being some attitudes/assumptions that started the motion down the wrong path.  Here are the top two:

Myth #1 – I did it all on my own, why can’t they. Really?  As a parent, many times a day the thought creeps into my head “When I was little I had the same challenge, and I just figured it out .”  Nobody ascends on their own.  Whether its a spouse, mentor, friend, or some other significant person – someone stepped in hand helped you through rough spots.  Solution: Commit 30 minutes a week to review goals, review progress, and answer questions (called a one on one)  Here is a link to a template if you need one.

Myth #2 – It is okay to lose some of  my money while they learn.  Why do they not feel safe? Have you ever had the angst of telling your parents that you had an accident with their car?  It was one of those conversations that teens through the ages have crafted countless schemes to avoid.  We grow up, get a job, and all of the sudden we make a mistake that costs our organization thousands of dollars, and it is like we were a teenager again.  Solution: Make it okay to make a mistake, provided you own it and have a plan to fix it.

When people become leaders of leaders, they realize how difficult it is to work through others to get results, and sometimes the default is to either leave them alone to figure it out, or step into their lives and help manage the details.  Ken Blanchard called this Seagull Management.  Fly in, dump, then leave.

Find an answer somewhere in the middle.  Don’t be a Seagull.