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Archive for the ‘Teamwork’ Category

No Theory – No Learning

15 Aug

Dr. Deming, a thought leader, in quality improvement theory and practice once said, “No theory, no learning.”  What does this mean? Don’t we learn through experience?  Isn’t experience itself a teacher?  I say NO!  I do not believe experience teaches; rather only refection on experience teaches.

It is difficult to reflect on experience if you do not have a good working theory to be the mirror providing the reflection. As a system engineer turned CEO, I have studied organizational theory and behavior for over twenty five years. Over this period of time, I learned that every company is a system perfectly designed to produce the result it is producing. If you do not like the results, you have to change the design.  I also learned that the system design did not just happen. It evolved through a conversational process, and everyone in the organization contributed to the process and the current state of the design.  How can I say everyone contributed to the design? Isn’t it clear that the executives and managers are responsible for the organizational design?  Yes, they are part of the system, and may have a heavy hand on the controls, but everyone else is also part of the system, and they do have an influence on the design, usually stronger than they believe.

Look at it this way, organizational excellence is not based on one or two factors.  It is based on several interrelated factors starting with compelling vision and effective leadership.  When I say leadership, I do not just mean leader ship at the top.  I mean leadership throughout the organization.  With a compelling vision as the context for action, the next aspect of leadership is to create a powerful strategy as a means to bring the vision into reality and effective operational structures to execute the strategy.

The underpinning of strategic and operational effectiveness is ultimately the effectiveness of the teams throughout the organization. At the end of the day companies do not innovate or execute, people do.   

When all of this is done with excellence, the result is financial effectiveness and business growth.

Here is a framework to look at many of the key aspects of your organizational system. If major capabilities and/or processes are missing or are ineffective, then your results will suffer until you change the design.

Compelling Vision 

Effective Leadership
Strategic Effectiveness

  • Strategy Formulation
  • Strategic Objectives
  • Strategic Positioning
  • Competitive Strategy
  • Technology-Product/Service Strategy
  • Business Development
  • Offers/Target Customers/Marketing Strategy
 Operational Effectiveness

  • Systems
  • Structures
  • Processes
  • Practices/Methods
  • Measurement
  • Tools

 
Team Effectiveness

  • Cooperation/Collaboration/Coordination of Action
  • Capability Development
  • Engagement/Empowerment
  • Conversational Competencies
  • Trust/Full Self Expression
  • Adapting To The Business Environment
  • Managing Mood
  • Learning/Change Management

Financial Effectiveness

 

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Posted in Business Process, Interesting Perspectives, Leadership, Strategy, Teamwork

 

The BIG WHY

27 Jul

A colleague, and fast becoming a friend, challenged me with a great question – Why do I do what I do? What resonates with me, defines me uniquely, drives me, and fulfills me.

She suggested I read the book “Start With Why” by Simon Sinek before I jumped into developing an answer to the BIG WHY!

I downloaded the book immediately and started reading it intently. I want to share the results of my reflections.  I consider this a work in progress so this may change, but right now it feels right.  It resonates in me.  I am enlivened by my inquiry.  I am fully self expressed in this post.

Sinek’s book suggests you cannot invent your WHY.  You have to access your WHY by reflecting on your pass and seeing the themes in your life.  From these themes, you can access the WHY of what you do and how you do it.

In reflecting on my past, I saw the following themes playing out in my professional life.

  • Challenge and accomplishment – Creating and playing games worth playing.

 

  • Self development – Commitment to continually enhancing my leadership and management competency.

 

  • The development of others – Commitment to empowering others to act powerfully.

 

  • Creating extraordinary accomplishments/results through extraordinary teamwork.

 

Over time, I have come to believe, at the core of my being, that everything that happens in business, the invention of business models, strategies and processes, happens by people working with people.  The business system is designed by and maintained through the conversations people have or don’t have with other people.  While this is true at every level of the organization, it is especially impactful at the executive level. 

Assuming the executive team and other teams within the organization have the intellectual capacity to effectively run their business and respond to environmental changes, I believe what gets in the way of fully accessing the totality of their intellectual capacity is their fear of full self expression.  To be fully self expressed means, I am not withholding how I feel and think about issues, real time, face to face.  This full self expression releases the creative genius of the team because of the free interplay of ideas and concerns and keeps everyone in the conversation, authentically, until the AHAH is reached. 

Can it be this simple?  Yes, I think it is this simple, at the core.  If I am fully self expressed then you have access to my mind and creativity.  Anything I withhold is due to fear.  Drive out fear of self expression and the possibility of extraordinary creativity and innovation arises.  If I am in an environment where I am fully self expressed, then I will naturally become fully engaged and empowered.  Why? Because I am part of the system and I have a direct contribution to make to the system design and outcome.  I will make a big difference when I am fully self expressed compared to when I let myself be shut down.

Out of this reflection, I was able to access the essence of what gives purpose and meaning to my work and my life.

MY BIG WHY

  • I am passionate about seeing people in their full self expression.  My facilitation provides a roadmap for my clients to access their creative genius, increase innovation, productivity and business results.

 

  • I love working with clients who are enthusiastic and inspired about creating corporate excellence.  My contribution enhances their competitive strength with their people fully aligned, engaged and empowered. This alignment and cohesion bring a synergistic advantage in creating a thriving organization.

 

  • I enjoy enhancing the leadership capacity of individuals and teams to achieve their specific outcomes.

 

  • I am energized when I help clients create and realize their extraordinary future.
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Posted in General, Teamwork

 

Do you have or see meetings after the real meeting?

13 Jul

We live in language similar to how fish live in water. It is transparent to us. If we want to improve our conversations in a fashion as we discuss here on the Executive Perspective blog, you also need to understand the type of conversations that you are currently having within your team and organization.

  • Have you ever been part of an organization laced with politics?
  • Do you recognize the person who is not there to help the team agenda but is trying to push their own agenda?
  • Do you ever feel that you are not receiving the information you need to be successful at your position?
  • Do you participate in meetings where you or someone else is not saying everything, but are calling a smaller meeting after the meeting?



One common denominator in all these organizations is what we call ‘Inauthentic Conversations.’ In this conversation, you as the speaker are communicating certain things, but more importantly you are withholding other information that you should be sharing with the listener. The listener now cannot interact to that what you are not saying, has to make their own interpretation, and typically will withhold information themselves in their response.

These withheld conversations unexamined will not allow you to break through the cycle of politics, dysfunctionality or those meetings after the meeting. These withheld conversation represent an automatic and immediate break in trust. This will always impact employee performance, and hence organizational performance as illustrated in this recent study from Watson Wyatt.

What do you think the impact is of stopping the withheld conversations at your organizations?

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Posted in Change, Conversational Dynamics, HR, Innovation, Teamwork, Uncategorized, Videos

 

Are you part of a High Performing Team?

29 Jun

We often hear that high-performing teams happen by accident. “If you hire the right people, you feel it when you are on a high-performing team.” Does that sound familiar?

That is not our reality. We strongly believe that you can create high-performing teams by design but in order to do that there are three things that you need to know:

1. Where are you going?

    Does your team have a strong purpose and a clear mission of what it needs to achieve? The difference between a team and a group is that a team has a shared goal, and the team members are aligned and committed to get to that goal. However, they will not talk about the goal, or any issues they see in getting to that goal, unless there is sufficient amount of relationship and trust.

    2. How are you going to get there?

      How is your team working together, and are there clear accountabilities of who is doing what in order to achieve the goal? If there is no clear conversation about how you work together and being sincere about your accountabilities, team members will have to start guessing about what it is that you will or will not do.

      3. Where are you now?

        None of the first two distinctions will matter at all, unless you as team have a clear idea of where you are currently. Additionally, you are prepared to have an open conversation about what it is you need to do to achieve the mission. We have a simple high performing team survey that we use to get that conversation started. What is interesting about the results of that survey is that there often is a difference between how you think the team will answer and what they will actually answer.

        For a limited time, we offer our readers of our blog access to this high performing team survey that they can fill out with their team. If you are interested to take this survey with your team, contact me at kbogaert@strategic-momentum.com, and I will be happy to set you and your team up for a free survey that will take each team member 10 minutes to fill out anonymously.

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        Posted in Change, Conversational Dynamics, HR, Teamwork, Videos

         

        Alignment Is A Critical Success Factor

        09 Jun

        Organizational alignment is a critical factor for success.  At the top level, successful companies continually have to align their strategy to the evolving political, business and marketing environment, and they have to align their capabilities to their strategy.   Igor Ansoff, the father of strategic management, studied the power of this alignment and found that aligned companies outperform their competitors in their industry.  His model looked like this:

         While misalignment impacts all aspects of the company, there is a significant negative economic impact when the company’s marketing and sales organizations are misaligned. 

        A 2005 Global Study of 1,400 marketers from 84 countries, sponsored by Math Marketing and MarketingProfs, showed that aligned companies outperformed unaligned companies as follows:

        ▪       5.4 % faster growth

        ▪       38 % more won proposals

        ▪       36 % fewer lost customers

        Just think about the potential positive economic impact when you create a fully engaged, fully empowered, fully aligned marketing and sales team committed to improving revenue growth significantly. 

        Take a look and check out your alignment score.

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        Posted in Leadership, Strategy, Teamwork

         

        Is HR more than administration? Or can they play a role in Innovation?

        17 May

        In many companies HR is not considered a strategic player.  They play an administrative and compliance role, but they do not sit at the strategic table.  They are not invited to participate with the operational executives when it comes to issues dealing with the business.  They are invited to work in the business, but they are not invited to work on the business.

        Traditionally, HR’s role has been seen as an administrative function focused on recruiting, compensation, benefits and compliance. Unfortunately, that is HR’s public identity. In an increasingly complex environment, the status quo for people is no longer good enough as highlighted in the Future of HR.

        If an HR professional wants to be a strategic player within their organization they have to expand their competencies to include developing an understanding of the business, its strategic objectives and the depth and breadth of competencies necessary to fulfill the strategic objectives.  Also, the HR executive and manager has to be able to develop and guide the change process, build and develop an appropriate culture, and put in place the strategies and initiatives to develop high-performance teams at all levels of the organization.

        Is HR willing to step up to that plate? Or are they comfortable in their current role? If HR is not participating in the strategic conversation, it will help if they can define the following questions:

        • What does it mean to think strategically from an HR perspective?
        • What strategic competencies does the HR professional need to develop?
        • What should HR professionals be focused on strategically?
        • How should the strategic focus fit and support the corporate mission?



        Defining the answers to these questions will allow HR, and any other executive that wants to be involved in the strategic conversation, to build their strategic muscle and claim their place as a strategic player. More importantly, it will define their role in the innovation success of the company they work at.

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        Posted in Change, General, HR, Leadership, Teamwork

         

        New Masters of Management: Are you innovating?

        03 May

        Almost every company that we have either worked with or observed claims that innovation is very important to them. Yet, our findings and other studies show that most cannot quantify or are not happy with the results generated through innovation. That is why the following is so critical:

        Every organization is a system and as a system it is perfectly designed to produce the results it is producing!

        This means that innovation often happens within your box, as opposed to outside of the box. Now, I don’t know anyone these days that would be adamant about staying in their specific box. Heck, I think most might not even be able to define what their box is exactly. Yet, they stay in it, as it is largely driven by the type of conversations that you are having within your organization.

        If you think about the organization as the system, then the conversations you are having in the organization make up the design. So if you want to change the design, you have to have different conversations. What are the different conversations that you can come up with that can drastically change the design, and deliver better and more quantifiable results for innovation?

        This is illustrated in this article in The Economist: The New Masters of Management from April 15th, 2010. It compares the level of innovation that is happening in developing countries compared to the developed countries. These developing countries that were supposed to compete on cheap labor are more and more competing on creativity. Do you think they are having different conversations than the ones most Western companies are having at the moment?

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        Posted in Innovation, Strategy, Teamwork

         
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