Be Different or be dead

October 5, 2020

5 hidden secrets a great leader can learn from the frontline

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5 hidden secrets a great leader can learn from the frontline.

One of the benefits of leading many different types of organizations over my 30+ year career was having a window to observe and study other leaders.

Let’s face it, honing your leadership skills is not a one-of event; it’s a process of learning new skills that are required in the role and practising them day in and day out.

I found that looking across at how other leaders practised their craft was an excellent source of learning material; I saw what worked and didn’t work and was able to pick and choose to enhance my own repertoire of skills accordingly.

Most of what I saw in other leaders was quite pedantic. They typically followed the leader book prescribed by the experts in the field and by academics who wrote papers on the subject.
It was a rare occurrence to witness a truly different approach to what the crowd of other leaders was following.

But every once in a while I would see a leader who turned their back on traditional practices; someone who was non-compliant with what everyone believed to be a requisite for effective leadership.

They loved the frontline.

The most amazing leaders I know spend most of their time with the frontline

What I saw was a leader who was always with their frontline employees — service reps, salespeople, credit and collections people, receptionists and call center reps; the people who were on the organization’s line of execution and dealing with customers.

A leader who valued the frontline more than any other group.

They stood out because very few leaders see people down deep in the organization as a priority demanding their time.

Honouring and living with the frontline provides these benefits that enable leaders to perform head and shoulders above their peers.

1. Irritants to execution

They learn what is preventing flawless execution of the organization’s strategy; systems and process issues and other barriers that get in the way of achieving expected results.

Being face-to-face with those who have to work with the internal laws governing the customer engagement process gives them the ability to identify the grunge and dumb rules that must be eliminated to make employee jobs easier and customer service better.

In addition, this insight generally doesn’t readily come from the leader’s direct reports who either don’t know what’s going on or who want to protect their turf.
Knowledge gained from the skip level leader is invaluable and should be expected of any leader. But only the special ones get it.

2. Business plan flaws

They discover the flaws in the business plan; those elements of the strategic intent of the organization that aren’t working because there are barriers and practicalities that prevent it from being implemented in the precise way it was designed.

On paper the strategy may have looked perfect but in the naked light of day where people are involved and competitors prey, it is not possible to stay the course.

The frontline are often brutally honest about your strategy; they don’t hesitate to tell you what won’t work and the challenge for leaders is to listen to their feedback.
Listen to them and tweak the strategy to reflect the realities of execution in the field.

Old school leaders have difficulty moving off the tabled strategy and they often live to regret it.

3. Competitive activity and secrets

Leaders who are in the frontline learn what the competition is doing in real time fashion, creating the ability to take whatever evasive or opportunistic action required and to spot and attack their weakness.

Most leaders rely on traditional methods to obtain competitive intelligence. Periodic studies are conducted, findings are analyzed and action taken as appropriate.
But the process takes time; there is a lag between when the intelligence is gained and when action is taken, often nullifying its effectiveness.

Being with the frontline gives the leader a continuous stream of information on what is going on in the moment. This ability yields faster action and better results; lag time is replaced with real time response.

4. Movers and shakers

Leaders who are with the frontline constantly are able to identify people with high potential for future opportunities in the organization.

They get to see with their own eyes — as opposed to receiving reports from their direct managers or human resource folks — how certain individuals perform, their attitudes and their capabilities to offer further value.
They get to develop relationships with these people in the workplace and provide the mentoring so many need but don’t receive from leaders.

And as a result, the leader increases their personal currency and strengthens their brand as someone who is competent at spotting and developing high achievers for the benefit of the entire organization.

5. Employee engagement

By being in the face of the frontline, this leader is able to get a front row seat on what is necessary to enhance employee commitment and engagement in achieving the goals of the organization.

They don’t rely on, as their peers are forced to do, reports by specialists and other third parties in the field to advise them on what is needed to reach a higher level in employee buy-in.
They learn first hand what is needed to capture the hearts and minds of those charged with delivering results; they see what is needed; they feel what works and what doesn’t.

And they learn what works to engage one employee doesn’t necessarily work to engage another. Every person is different; everyone responds differently to motivational methods.
This leader knows that personalized methods of engagement are required for each employee, not a shrink wrapped corporate program applied to all.

6. The biggest mistake

The biggest mistake a leader can make is not be all in with the frontline where successful organizational performance is either created or destroyed.

To serve the frontline is to step out of the textbook leader herd and make an amazing contribution to their organization while those who choose to follow common leader doctrine are lost in the crowd.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead book series

• Posted 10.5.20 at 05:16 am by Roy Osing
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September 28, 2020

6 simple ways leaders can manage change better

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6 simple ways leaders can manage change better.

There’s always a quid pro quo to successfully implement any new idea.

‘If I accept your direction and agree to help you (execute it) what do I get in return?’ is the hidden question behind any change.

‘What’s in it for me?’ is the question that most implementation planning rarely asks.

It’s expected that the idea will sell itself.

That people in the organization will see the light and rally behind it regardless of personal consequences. That their loyalty to the organization (and receiving a regular paycheque) will trump any negative impact the change may have on them individually.

This is rubbish of course but I would say the majority of changes sought by organizations do NOT have the detailed ‘What’s in it for me?’ work done to make them successful.

I was recently asked by a major corporation to speak to their management team on the subject of change management. Their board had decided to move the organization to a new more modern building. Period.

The problem was that in the move, people lost many benefits they had in the old facility; smaller (or no) work stations and short commute times for example.

I was asked to come in and put a good face on the decision and provide some tips on how to deal with the employee fallout that was happening.

My challenge was that they had not done the ‘What’s in it for me?’ work as a part of the implementation planning. Or if it was considered it was assumed not to be a big deal; that employees would be persuaded that the bigger picture would outweigh any impact the move would have on them personally.

And they would buy in.

Not likely.

Employee buy-in only happens when people can see personal benefits.

Hygiene factors such as a more comfortable work environment and a shorter distance to work; career factors such as greater promotion potential and salary lift all play a more important role than the ‘strategic benefits’ of the planned change.

What are your options to sell the change if it is asymmetric in favour of the organization, and the planned change removes benefits for employees?

1. Come clean — Own up to the potential personal negatives the decision could cause for people. Trying to put lipstick on a pig and finess the downside exacerbates the situation; it just doesn’t work.

It’s best to acknowledge the negatives as well as the positives and declare what you’re planning to do to mitigate personal risk to employees.

2. Meet with employees — Pick a sample of employees and do a ZOOM call to get a more granular understanding of the personal negatives of the change.

Ideally, this should be done before the change is announced, but if it hasn’t, it’s critical that it be done before the decision is implemented.
And for the negatives expressed, ask for solutions that could be employed to keep the decision intact.

3. Emphasize the personal positives — Put the conversation on the benefits the change will have on the organization on the back burner and focus more on what it will do for people (and if you think that conversation will be light on content then be prepared to have a change that is good on paper only).

And balance the discussion between short term and long term benefits. If there are negatives in the short term, explain how people will be better off tomorrow — be as specific as you can and avoid lofty, ill-defined and vague benefits that people will not relate to — that and also what leadership intends to do to cushion people from the immediate ‘pain’ some will likely experience.

4. Be available 24X7 — It’s critical for leaders to be ’always on’ to answer any questions individuals have on the change. It’s not sufficient to only host employee group meetings because some individuals won’t be comfortable asking their own personal questions in front of their peers.

Establish a dedicated telephone number or email address for people to connect with leadership and staff the support service with your most empathetic and caring people not staffers who want to push the high level strategic reasons for the change.

5. Sweeten the offer— If you find substantial resistance to your change idea, add some personal positives to the plan in recognition of what is being taken away.

In the final analysis, if you don’t do something positive to assuage the negative feelings employees have, the change will fail so if you have to make an extra investment, make it; the return will be worth it.

6. Put leadership on the hot seat — Hold the authors of the change accountable in front of the body of employees to defend the change. This is something a leader can’t delegate to one of their lieutenants.

Leaders accountable for the change decision need to feel the hot breath of angered employees to appreciate the personal negatives of the plan. Take the punch; the leadership brand is at stake.

Any planned change requires quid pro quo work if implementation is to succeed.

Don’t rely on lofty strategic reasons to persuade anyone to support change efforts.

Make it personal.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead book series

• Posted 9.28.20 at 06:17 am by Roy Osing
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September 21, 2020

Why leaders who actually ‘serve around’ are the best ones

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Why leaders who actually ‘serve around’ are the best ones.

Popularity breeds, in some circles, believability. What is a popular notion soon becomes the belief of the day.

It’s the age of movements

There are many popular concerns in the world today that define the conversation around what’s important — topics such as COVID-19, women’s rights, ‘black lives matter’, drug decriminalization, sexual misconduct, sexual orientation, climate change, the environment, indigenous rights, pipelines, and the charter of rights & freedoms tend to define some of the popular narrative in society in these times, and the priorities people turn their attention to.

In a relative sense, not much attention is given to the people who define the economic agenda of society — the leaders of our organizations whose quality of leadership defines how people live their lives in the other pluralistic society that engulfs them. Their daily environment is shaped by how they are treated; how they are motivated and how they are engaged in fulfilling the strategic agenda of their organization.

And when attention is paid to the topic of leadership it is typically dealt from an academic and theoretical perspective.

Studies discovering relationships between leadership behaviours and employee performance are discussed and conclusions reached on the skills people should possess if they want to aspire to be an amazing leader.

Rarely are emotions targeted as the means to hook people to engage in a leadership conversation; certainly the same cannot be said about debates on the environment, oil pipelines and allegations of sexual misconduct.

These topics are dripping with emotion — how people feel about something often dominates the position you take rather than the facts presented.

Leadership isn’t a ‘sexy’ topic

Certainly other social narratives get more emotional conversations going than leadership.

This is unfortunate. The practice of leadership is every bit as important as any other social narrative. People spend most of their life in a working context with a boss they coexist with.
And it is the boss’s skills, capabilities and attitudes that can impact the lives of individuals much more than any movement could.

But I’m not talking about the same-old traditional leadership practices borne out of a more theoretical view of the art; rather I’m referring to a new style of leadership that has grown up in the trenches where real people work and profound performance is achieved.

It’s a practical leadership approach grown from knowing what it takes to ignite the passion and emotion in people to achieve the organization’s goals and objectives.

The next generation of leader

Leadership by Serving Around — LBSA — is next generation. It’s the imperative if people are to have meaningful and rewarding careers and if organizations are to stand apart from their competitors and achieve remarkable levels of performance.

Organizations exist to serve. Period. Leaders live to serve. Period. — Tom Peters, author of excellence

It’s a fashionable notion because it relates to the fundamental human needs of people to feel they have a compelling purpose and that they are needed and cared for.

And it’s different from its predecessor, MBWA — Management by Wandering Around — where managers wander through the workplace without a whole lot of focus, trying to ‘find out what’s going on’. MBWA is relatively undisciplined with the intent of discovering clues on team performance, observing the efficiency of business processes and trying to spot dysfunction that impedes productivity.

There’s nothing wrong with MBWA, but it doesn’t go far enough to create teams of passionate, turned-on people necessary to ensure organizations thrive and survive in today’s highly unpredictable and volatile world.

Here’s how LBSA works: Leaders purposefully go through the workplace with a strategic purpose, looking for serving moments or opportunities to help someone.

Managers ask: “What’s going on?”

Serving Leaders ask: “What can I do to help you?”

The leader’s agenda is to offer personal help, recognizing that if someone’s individual problems are solved, performance enhancement follows. If you take care of the person, performance takes care of itself.

Serving leaders are the icons of tomorrow. They earn followers through an undying display of caring for people and their wellbeing

This is what LBSA looks like:

1. Question

Leaders ask; they don’t tell. They are not present to give a presentation on anything.
Their serving job is to listen to what people have to say about what’s going on in their world as opposed to directing them on what they have to do.

They know they don’t know; that the people in the organization are the experts, so they ask them. These leaders have conversations that have a minimal transmission element. Their communications style invites commentary, opinion and the truth on what needs to be changed.

2. Help

The key questions they ask are: ‘How can I help?’; ‘What key changes should be made to enable you to do your job easier?’; ‘What do you think about…?’
They see themselves as instruments to make life easier and more productive for others. If this leader can remove roadblocks and barriers that prevent people from doing their job, they know results will skyrocket.

Apart from a one-on-one engagement — and appropriate physical distancing of course — with an employee, LBSA can be extremely effective with groups of people.

I tagged the process ‘Bear Pit Session’. I assembled a group of people in my organization and went through the ‘How can I help?’ process. I structured each audience to give me a good cross section of the functions in the organization that were pivotal to the success of its strategy and where execution was critical.

Each session guided me to where I could affect change and improve performance (and get to know the up-and-comers who had the potential to assume leadership positions in the future).

3. Notes

They take notes, lots of notes. This shows the leader believes what employees say is important — because it is — and that their words are taken seriously and they will be supported.

Standout leaders get a ton of writer’s cramp every time they go out of their office.

They pay particular attention to people’s names and something interesting or special about them, which is often useful in follow up. Note taking shows that a leader cares about what people have to say and is one of the simplest and powerful ways to evoke emotion from the questionee.

4. Homework

They are prepared. They determine what and where the issues are and serve around according to what they learn. For example, they would visit the customer service operations if customer feedback suggests improvements are needed in that area; if sales needs a boost, they serve there.

Serving around isn’t a fluffy thing to do; it’s not about showing up spontaneously and chatting up employees to showcase the leader’s charisma and people skills. On the contrary, serving is a ‘hard act’ with a defined strategic purpose and specific expected outcomes. And to fulfil its prime purpose it requires meticulous planning. No homework = no results.

5. Solo

They fly solo when they serve around; they lose their entourage and groupies.
They explicitly don’t want any filters between what people say and what message they take away. The manager groupy crowd always has an agenda to protect themselves from their leaders and they try to do this by managing — controlling — the flow of information between the employees they have reporting to them and the boss.

To be effective, serving cannot have any filters. It must be a personal leadership act.

If you’re uncomfortable with flying solo and you feel you need backup, you shouldn’t lead.

6. Repetition

They routinely allocate time on their calendars every week to serve around. They know that a serving moment cannot be seen from an office bubble. Serving is hardwired into their list of priorities.
The routinization of the task actually makes it more effective as time goes on.

The word gets out that Roy serves regularly by either one-on-one conversations or by bear pit sessions and people proactively prepare for the event when they get their opportunity to participate. Their input is clear and more focused and is easier to respond to to make any changes required.

7. Listen

Because their primary role is to question, they shy away from giving stump speeches, monologues or presentations. They share information when asked but would rather assume the role of absorbing information.

For most leaders, this is extremely difficult because of their ego. They find it difficult to resist the temptation to share their words of wisdom or pronounce something that they think is thoughtful and wise.

Serving leaders know to zip their mouths and open their other senses.

They give people time to tell their story; they interrupt only to clarify the points made to ensure that any action they take will have the right outcome.

8. Humility

They are humble. They don’t create a splash wherever they go. They are the antithesis of what most people view these days as a stereotypical leader.
They don’t need charisma to be effective; that veneer isn’t consistent with who they are. They leave their ego at the door.

People like the serving leader because they are like a ‘normal’ person rather than the stereotypical leader who for some reason is portrayed to be ‘above’ the common employee.

I’ve always considered humility to be a strategic attribute of an effective leader because it invokes trust, believability, engagement, and commitment from the people the leader touches.

Simplicity inspires humility. The serving leader understands that complexity often gets in the way of achieving superlative results. They wrote the book on dumbing stuff down for people.

9. Practicality

They are practical in orientation. They’re unimpressed with theoretical concepts that can’t be implemented.
They are more receptive to ideas they believe are both consistent with the strategic intent of their organization and are likely to have strong support by people who would be asked to implement them.

Their ‘would they be emotionally all-in?’ filters dominate their decision-making on potential innovation and they test new ideas with the frontline and in their bear pit sessions.

10. Defective solutions

They are not only ok with defects and flaws, they insist that people focus on making as many tries as possible rather than seeking the ‘perfect’ solution before taking action.

They encourage people to try as many imperfect solutions as they can, and preach that the more tries made the more likely that success will eventually be achieved.

Serving leadership addresses a compelling societal need — to create organizations with a human face where people can grow, prosper and be valued.

It’s not a cause or fad that will fade with limited media life. In fact it won’t attract the traditional and social media attention that other current narratives garner.

It is a sustaining force because of its universal — rather than special interest group — appeal.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead book series

• Posted 9.21.20 at 04:23 am by Roy Osing
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September 14, 2020

How the best leaders get people working remarkably well together

Source: Pexels

How the best leaders get people working remarkably well together.

A colleague of mine, Ron Cox, Founder and CEO of Tailwind Consulting in Tampa Florida says that “a staggering 95% of employees in a company are either unaware of or do not understand the strategy”.

No wonder execution fails!

One of the biggest issues in any organization is the lack of congruence between what the strategy says and what people do on a day-to-day basis.

The strategy says one thing and not only do people do another, they do different things out of sync with the strategy.

Massive inconsistency and dysfunction results.

This is a failure of leadership.

Leadership tends to place more focus on direction-setting rather than on determining how the strategy will be executed.
Precision is applied to getting the strategy exactly ‘right’ and less attention is given to how it will be implemented in the trenches where the real work gets done.

The gap between strategic intent and actual results is due to this skewed attention.
If only 20% of leadership’s attention is placed on the details of how the strategy will be implemented, the strategy will likely be hit and miss as employees find it necessary to execute the plan the way they believe it should.

Effective strategy execution occurs when there is clarity between the functional roles that employees play in the organization and its strategy.

It is about translating the strategy into what it means to each function involved in delivering it. What specifically should the call center rep do differently? The product analyst? The sales person? The internal audit manager?

If at the most granular level each employee in the firm doesn’t know how to behave and what results to produce within the context of the new direction change will simply not happen and improved results expected by the new business plan won’t be achieved.

Line of sight

Line of sight to the strategy means what it implies; each employee can ‘see’ the strategy from their position and they understand what they specifically need to do to contribute to the strategy.

If direct line of sight is defined for every role, flawless execution results whereas indirect line of sight results in people having a clouded understanding of what action the strategy demands.

Most leaders absolve themselves of ensuring activity and strategy are aligned. It generally gets relegated to functional heads to sort out by declaring their priorities that they contend are homeomorphic with strategic imperatives.

The problem with this process is that subjectivity is introduced at a very high level in the organization and is magnified again and again as teams are asked to do the same thing through middle and junior management levels.

And the tipping point, of course, is that leadership doesn’t approve detailed functional plans which would at least show whether they were bordering on out-of-alignment or not.

Any inconsistencies between activity and strategy at the highest level in an organization are multiplied by an order of magnitude factor before it reaches the frontline people.

Under these conditions it’s not difficult to see why strategy and organizational activity diverge and not converge.

What can leadership do about this problem?

First, ease the precision around the strategy creation and tighten it up around execution. Get comfortable with getting the plan just about right and applying rigour to implementation and adjusting the plan on the run.

Next, take ownership of aligning organizational activity to strategy.

Alignment Plans

Institutionalize ‘Alignment Plans’ with functional heads; ask for sufficient granularity to the determination of whether or not a team has direct line of sight to the strategy or not. Make them work at it until they get it right and your leadership team approves.

Alignment Plans submitted to the leader should:

▪️ Define the key elements of the strategy that everyone in the organization must align with.

There are many dimensions to any strategy but it is critical to prioritize and focus on the critical ones. Greater alignment success will occur by focusing on a handful of the critical strategic imperatives rather than trying to ‘herd the cats’ around a dozen.
                         
▪️ Define what needs to change in every functional team with an action plan to achieve it.

If the organization is pursuing a new or revised strategic direction, there will most certainly be projects, company values, people skills and technology that will have to be re-vectored to enable the execution of the new plan. Details of everything that needs to change must be defined in detail.

▪️ Identify activities, projects and behaviours that have to be dropped in order to take on new activities required for alignment.

Leadership is just as much about what has to be stopped as it is about what has to be started.

If out-of-alignment activity is not stopped, additional unnecessary resources will be most certainly requested. All non-strategic activity must be isolated and resources removed and redeployed to new challenges that must be undertaken.

Personal initiative

If you’re an employee in an organization that chooses not to impose a process to explicitly align activity to their strategy, take personal initiative to align your own work priorities to what the organization wants to achieve.

Successful careers are built on the backs of the organization’s strategy and those that execute more effectively than others are quicker to reach their personal goals.

These personal actions will propel you forward.

Translate for others

Help others translate what the strategy means to them in the organization.

Once you have determined your own line of sight, help others through the same process.

Everyone needs to understand the new things they will have to do and the CRAP they will have to dispose of. Unless this translation for all employees is done, the organization will be frozen in momentum management and no progress in the new direction will be achieved.

Get involved in organizing and leading workshops with various departments in the company and explore a new blueprint for each that represents the new course for them to follow. 

The role of translating the new strategy for various employee groups is one that rarely gets performed. It’s a difficult task as it requires an intimate level of understanding of the strategy.
You can’t drill a strategy down into individual action if you don’t truly understand it at a detailed level.

If you’re a leader, you must dedicate much more of your time seeing that people treat this as a priority and hold them accountable.
Wander through the workplace asking people to clarify the top three things they are going to do to help deliver the new strategy and what dozen-or-so things they are going to give up.

Source: Unsplash

And get the expectations hard wired into the performance planning process. It is the difference between an effective one where everyone is working in parallel to support a common purpose, and a dysfunctional one where people are working at odds with one another to deliver some things that are on strategy and other things that are not.

Synchronized outcomes release the power of execution - and competitive advantage; inconsistent outcomes zap the energy of the organization, encumber execution and impair competitive success.

Set your calendar

Let the organization’s strategy guide your daily calendar. The ultimate manifestation of direct line of sight is a calendar composed only of activities relating to the outcomes you have deemed necessary for you to deliver the new strategy.

If you can’t strategically relate a particular activity you plan to do on a given day, question why it is occupying your time.

Zero base your calendar and build it through the weeks and months ahead in the image of your strategy.
If you are in a leadership position, ask to see the calendars of those reporting to you. Is each of them doing the things required of the new direction or are they continuing on as custodians of the past?

Communicate the strategy personally

Communicate face to face with others in your organization as the most effective way of injecting the emotional component necessary to get people to believe and act.

E-mail blasts to a broad distribution list, employee newsletters and other mass means of communication don’t work as effectively. Use technology like ZOOM if physical distancing is a challenge.
These mass communications vehicles preclude the ability for people to engage in a conversation to enhance their understanding of where the organization is going.

You need to press the flesh even if it’s virtual, and make it matter by showing up in person, explaining the strategy and answering the tough questions.

In non-pandemic times, I used ‘Infonet sessions’ to communicate the company’s strategy to all employees.

They required high levels of energy and were extremely time consuming, but what else could be more important?
People in the organization need to understand where it is going and they have a right to challenge it if they are not convinced it is appropriate. You can’t capture their hearts and minds if you’re a ‘no show’.

Use the strategy as the context for solving problems

When confronted by a business problem or issue, always assess it and talk about it with others from the perspective of your strategy.
Create the strategic context for the discussion and then assess your options. What does your strategy suggest is the appropriate action to take?

It’s an effective way to increase understanding and awareness of your strategy and establish you as a leader and the strategy hawk for your organization.

People suddenly forget that they have set a new course in motion for the organization and they look for solutions to problems in the old strategic context.

The opposite is also true; people often don’t relate the visible changes being made in their organization to the new strategic direction that has been put in motion. They don’t get that the cause of the changes they are witnessing is the new strategy.

Assume the role of connecting the dots for people in your organization. Reinforce that the changes that everyone is seeing are the result of your new strategy.

Line of sight leadership is necessary to build teamwork and commitment to the organization’s strategic intent. Take a personal role is making it an essential ingredient in your culture.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead book series

• Posted 9.14.20 at 05:38 am by Roy Osing
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