BE DiFFERENT or be dead Blog by Roy Osing

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Excellent post! So often, leaders confuse walking around the office with actually engaging with and serving their employees. Saying “hello” is not the same as a “serving moment”.
I love LBSA. It describes an aspect of leadership that is critical to employee growth. By uncovering the needs of employees and removing barriers to peak performance, the leader is demonstrating empathy. Through this behavior employees are sure to reach their potential. Personally, it would motivate me to strive to exceed expectations.
Excellent post. Thanks for sharing this fantastic approach to leadership.—Jen Kuhn, The Experience Factor

November 27, 2009

Momentum Management vs Change Leadership

It is very easy to get into the relaxing position of staying the current course of your business. Continuing to manage your organizational affairs with the assumption that what got you here will get you where you need to get to. This is momentum management.

The reality is of course that the marketplace rarely lets us get away with this. It is always changing as a result of demand, competitive and economic factors. The most extreme case in point is the current economic downturn which is ravaging businesses that continue to do things the way they have always done them assuming that eventually they will pay off.

When things are going well (growing demand for your services, loyal customers and healthy market position) we can disguise certain inefficiencies but when things are not going well we stand raw naked in the marketplace completely exposed and will be punished for our inadequacies. I particularly like how Steve Gedeon from Ryerson Entrepreneur Institute Ted Rogers School of Business described this situation in a recent article in the National Post. He said ‘When the wind is blowing fast enough, even turkeys can fly. But as soon as that wind dies down, the turkeys start dropping.’

The point is that in the face of constant unpredictability you need to be driving change in your organization, you need to be a Change Leader.You need to be forcing organizational discontinuity to prevent the momentum management dilemma from happening. I appreciate that change, particularly being the forcing agent of it, is uncomfortable. But if you want to be identified with moving your team successfully into the future and avoiding the recessionary road kill you really have no choice.

Th essence of Change Leadership is to BE DiFFERENT. To initiate new creative ways to cause an overwhelming distinction between you and your competitors. To take responsibility for this change within you organization. To take risks. Yes, to make mistakes but to learn from them. To be the BE DiFFERENT champion to which all Momentum Managers would like to aspire to, but never will due to the inertia they possess and the momentum they wish to promulgate.

Cheers, Roy Osing

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Posted 11.27.09 at 05:18 am by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (1)

November 24, 2009

Be Anal about Execution

Chapter 18 of my book, BE DiFFERENT, advances the notion that we spend far too much time planning what we intend to do as an organization and not enough time figuring out how we will get there. The challenge is expressed a number of ways but I think Peter Drucker nailed it when he said ‘The biggest challenge for most businesses is executing well - not devising helium-filled plans for reaching the next level.’ How true. But this has been aid over and over forever it seems yet organizations toil on believing the essence of their strategy will ‘deliver them from evil’. The fact is it won’t, and unless execution gets recognition as the true driver of success we will continue to witness the demise of businesses.

The BE DiFFERENT way of addressing this is to understand that results are a function of execution and that requires a disproportionate amount of time be spent on this element of the strategic planning process. I suggest that you devote 20% of your time to determining the essence of your plan and 80% of your time on the detailed implementation plan - who needs to do what by when to breathe life into what you want to achieve. Sooner or later your brave idea must degenerate into a number of crude deeds. Make it a cultural change objective.

In addition, assign a Strategy Hawk to lead the execution process. Select the most senior person with the most tenacity and currency in your organization to do the job. Make it the most
important item in his or her Performance Plan and hold them accountable to deliver the execution deliverables. And communicate openly and regularly on progress made. Execution heroes - find them and recognize them. Hold them up to the rest of the organization as examples to be aspired to.

Get your plan just about right and execute it with tenacity and perseverance through the hearts and souls of turned-on people. That’s BE DiFFERENT. That’s winning. That’s Change Leadership.

Cheers, Roy Osing

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Posted 11.24.09 at 05:47 am by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 17, 2009

The Strategy Hawk

As you probably know by now, I am an uncompromising zealot on the importance of execution in determining the success of an organization. Get your plan just about right, execute it flawlessly and you will win. No question about it.

So who owns execution? Generally since many functions share in the responsibility to execute the plan it rests with an executive team. But it needs an owner. It needs single finger accountability to ensure that it gets done. Shared responsibility, however noble, is simply not up to the task.

Enter the Strategy Hawk.

This is a role deserving of a person with superior currency in your organization; someone who is respected and viewed as a ‘go t person’ when results are expected. Tenacity perseverance, passion and energy are all apt descriptors of the Strategy Hawk.
This person is handed the reins to ensure that your Strategic Game Plan is executed to the ‘letter of the law’. He or she is empowered (generally by the Chief Executive) to do whatever it takes to see that the plan is executed as committed to by all stakeholders.
The job description of the Hawk looks like this:
- Follow up on commitments
- Interrogations on negative variances
- Reporting on status of plan execution to executive
- Probing to understand why commitments are missed
- Encouraging/cajoling/nurturing people on to fulfill their obligations to the plan

Not a role for the faint-of-heart!

Strategies get executed because there is someone with fire in the belly who is constantly in the faces of the deliverers. It doesn’t happen naturally. People are too busy?

Accept this reality and appoint your hawk to ensure your strategy gets executed. Dedicate your hawk to the task. Give them no other responsibilities. Pay them only on how effectively they perform this role and achieve plan progress. Pay them handsomely when they succeed. Honour them among their peers.

Cheers, Roy Osing

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Posted 11.17.09 at 12:18 pm by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 14, 2009

Your Strategy Document has a schizophrenic role

Most organizations look upon their Strategy document as a description of their desired future. It is the culmination of hours of excruciating work that has tested a number of alternative courses of action and has landed on one that is believed to deliver the maximum benefit.

Indeed the strategy document does perform this valuable role. It communicates to one and all (although I have seen instances where the strategy is held in confidence on a need-to- know basis for fear that its unintentional release would cause irreparable harm to the company) where you are going and the activities necessary to get you there. From this perspective it is an essential tool in the internal communications plan to ensure all employees are on board.

But I think there is a more vital role that the strategy document plays - to record the things we learn in the course of executing the strategy. It’s one thing to declare the direction we intend to take. It’s quite another to witness the extent to which we conform to our grand intentions in the market with real customers and real competitors.

In Chapter 16 of my book I talk about Planning on the Run, the notion that you set your direction and you adjust it based on the learning you get from executing it. The Plan never turns out the way you imagined; there are too many random market variables impacting us that get in the way.

That said, the strategy document must be viewed as a destination for depositing everything that we have learned during the arduous execution process. What worked? What didn’t? Why? What is the variance diagnosis? You need to record your experiences just like you would journalize what’s going on in your personal life.

Documented experiences lead to learning which leads to adjustments to your strategy. Dump on your planning document! It’s ok to have pages ear-marked, coffee stained, scribbling and the odd blood stained paper cut. It shows that it has been used to journalize your strategic journey. The dirtier the better.

Cheers, Roy Osing

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Posted 11.14.09 at 12:26 pm by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Be Different or Be Dead

by Roy Osing

BE DiFFERENT or be dead Blog by Roy Osing

Momentum Management vs Change Leadership

Be Anal about Execution

The Strategy Hawk

Your Strategy Document has a schizophrenic role

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