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2010 / no. 3 Issue
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- The Rewards of Diffuse Leadership
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In his speech at Boston College's commencement, GE's CEO, Jeff
Immelt, encouraged new graduates to become problem solvers, to
find solutions to the challenges facing society. A recent survey of
CEOs reveals that it is creativity that they value most in their
employees. Studies on what makes disaster relief efforts
successful point to the ability of team members to improvise.
Problem-solving, creativity, improvisation are all traits of
leadership that leaders are looking to their team members to
display. Leadership is no longer about telling people what to do;
leadership is about the ability of everyone to assess issues, create
solutions and decide on their application. It is about all individuals
being able to function at their highest potential.
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- From Discouragement to Clear Action...in 4 hours
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A non-profit organization recently called us to help revitalize itself
and return to a sound financial footing. For months, the staff and
board of directors had struggled to define a new path of action.
With limited time available, we organized a half-day retreat using
our Rapid Team Awareness Turnaround process. Coming into the
retreat the team's mood was heavy and frustrated, with a sense of
impending doom. Participants were also locked into divergent
positions.
After a couple of tense hours, breakthough occurred. The group
came to see their reality in the same way, conflicts diminished and
solutions for action became clear. It happened because we
changed their basic approach to issues in 2 ways:
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2010 / no. 2 Issue
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- Making Critical Conversations Happen
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The obstacles to self-management in groups are often ingrained
in the way they interact. Too many interactions are really one-way
communications. While the use of email accelerates the flow of
information, it also reinforces monologues, where participants
deprive themselves of opportunities for common insights because
they are not focusing on the same issue at the same time. When
people eventually come face-to-face, everyone wants meetings to
be short because all believe meetings are a waste of time; in their
experience, little of importance ever gets discussed. And, for the
most part, it is true.
(Read more)
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The leaders of the teams and small or mid-size organizations we
work with often have come to question the value of creating an
organizational strategy in order to achieve the desired future. We
mostly hear that it's too complicated or doesn't seem to apply well
to their kinds of situations. Upon closer inspection, however, what
we've observed is that they tend to get mired in the tasks and
details of carving out the best future path rather than staying
focused on what they are trying to accomplish: aligning everyone's
work toward some new, future results.
(Read more)
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2010 / no. 1 Issue
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Most people know intuitively that the more negative the mood of
the team members the lower the performance of each individual
and the team. There is rarely a moment of discussion when we
show the correlation in the graph below. Leaders usually
acknowledge the fact also, yet largely fall short from implementing
the logical conclusion in their efforts to reverse low performance
effectively. We use this powerful information as a means to spark
rapid, new results.
(Read more)
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- When Not-for-Profits Lose their Purpose
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That a business can operate with no purpose other than making
money is generally accepted as a fact of life. The surprise comes
when not-for-profit organizations realize that they have no clear
sense of purpose either. How can that be? How can
organizations dedicated to service to others have stated
objectives or goals but no larger, galvanizing purpose? In fact it is
not uncommon for such organizations to have no inspiring
definition of what they stand for, no organizing principle that
animates leadership and guides every day decision for all staffers.
(Read more)
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- Create Trust to Build Performance
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The first hurdle for teams to work through performance issues is to
acknowledge, openly, what's really going on. Our experience with
a new tool and meeting format is promising, quickly surfacing what
members think and how they feel in a safe environment so the real
issues get addressed.
(Read more)
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October/November 2009
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- Leadership, Culture and Engagement
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Studies demonstrate the high value that employee engagement
brings to the success of businesses and of all organizations in
general. In a study it conducted on 50 global companies, the HR
consulting group Towers Perrin was able to benchmark the impact
of employee engagement on financial performance.
(Read more)
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- Leading Teams Beyond Current Reality - Fast
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How can leaders bring their management teams quickly to build a
strategy that goes beyond the limitations of current business
realities?
(Read more)
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September 2009
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- Don't Let Fear Run Your Business. Get Help
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Do you feel anxious about your business? If your honest answer
is 'yes', you probably also feel stuck about what to do next. We
have all experienced how intense worry can prevent us from
thinking clearly, getting new ideas and seeing opportunities.
(Read more)
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- Focus More on What You Don't See
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In their book Intangible Advantage, Low and Kalafut examine how
intangibles, i.e. what is not measured in the financials, have an
ever growing importance in the valuation of businesses. Their
statistics are stunning: while in traditional manufacturing,
intangibles already contribute up to 50% of the companies'
valuation, in a sector like telecommunications where change
occurs faster, intangibles explain 85% of valuation.
(Read more)
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- Facing Performance Reality...Together
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Organizations that struggle then recover often have a similar
experience: how easy it was for leaders and employees to
discover better solutions once they faced the total reality of their
situation together. The insight feels all the stronger when it follows
a long period of indecision and conflict around what to do and
how to do it. Read more
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- What Happened to GM? Lessons for All
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GM summons in me images of management and labor locked in a
mortal embrace rolling off the edge of the cliff to their common
demise.
There are many reasons, of course, for GM's failure. I would not
even try to capture all the many factors involved. What is
undeniable, however, is that when GM had the resources to
correct its course and shift into the future, it did not.
Fundamentally no one believed that the largest industrial company
in the world could possibly fail. Everyone felt free to continue to
do more of the same. (Read more)
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A frustrating challenge of team work occurs when a member (or
more) falls silent and no longer contributes substantially to the
work at hand. They're there physically but not mentally in effect.
What could possibly cause these professionals to stop
participating and not offer their ideas, analysis, options and
support for the team? (Read more)
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- Creating a Vision when the Numbers are Not There Yet
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We all do the same thing: we get energized about new ideas, new
possibilities. But then we take a look at the immediate reality of
our bank account (or profit and loss statement) and we
immediately feel that these new ideas are a "waste of time". But
there is an error here: we forget how the current reality was
created. (Read more)
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- Getting Everyone on the Same Page
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When deciding on important changes, business leaders face two
extreme temptations:
-To jump too quickly to the "obvious" solution before checking out
viable options and implications, and
-To resist making any significant change at all. (Read more)
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Future Search has a long track record of delivering solutions to
previously intractable questions. It does so by bringing together
all the stakeholders in one meeting even if the number of
participants is large (between 60 and 80 persons.) (Read more)
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Future Search demonstrates how change can happen quickly by
focusing on consensus and action for the future instead of settling
grievances. It requires that leaders hold such vision and not be
deterred by the two common hurdles of time and money. (Read
more)
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- When Business Leaders Struggle Personally
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Business owners invest themselves completely in a vision of their
business and the journey to build its future. Most of the time they
have the know-how and grit to fend pretty well for themselves and
bring their dream into reality. But when something happens that
shakes the owner's confidence to take care of what needs to be
dealt with, whether it is slumping revenues, needing to let people
go, or handling a serious health issue, the same can-do business
owners can find themselves incapable of responding quickly or
effectively. (Read more)
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- Value Innovation and Fair Process
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Throughout Blue Ocean Strategy are examples of companies that
created success in industries where business fundamentals
appeared to be inescapably dismal: Southwest Airlines, Cirque du
Soleil, and Dell Computer.
These companies stepped outside of the boundaries that defined
their industries until then, to create a new offering combining a
better value for the customer and a lower cost structure. (Read
more)
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- Can you turn around your management team on a dime?
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Well, maybe not instantly, but what about within a week? It's not
just possible; it's being done.
In this business climate, leaders who feel overwhelmed by the
need to change operations must first shift their perspective on
what they can achieve. Rapid team turn-around, we're finding,
comes about quicker when managers find solutions together than
when they receive direction from their leader. (Read more)
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Mistakes are never a good thing, but when cash is tight they're not
an option. Managers are therefore highly stressed in this
economy and the more so if they don't have the tools to evaluate
the impact of their decisions. (Read more)
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If you are looking to improve your productivity quickly, take a look
at the way you conduct management and team meetings.
Most meetings go on way too long: too much detailed information,
too much updating on activities that are not relevant to everybody,
too much time dealing with the latest crisis. The results are almost
always frustrating. (Read more)
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