Organizational Performance

Planning for 2010

Many people are assuming that 2010 will be better than 2009 because they believe that 2010 can’t be worse than 2009 has turned out to be.  However, success takes more than hope.  In fact, success takes more than dreams and hard work. 

Achieving the results you want your organization to achieve does happen by accident.  Achieving results requires two things.  First, successful companies use detailed but flexible plans to plot their course and direction.  Second, achieving results requires strategic thinking, not incremental thinking.

With an effective strategy, you get to choose your course instead of letting customers, competitors and market forces determine your results for you. 

So, will you decide your organization’s future or will you let your competitors decide it for you?

If Performance Drives Results……

• why do we review results twelve times per year and performance only one time per year?
• why do we focus on the results, which we can’t change, instead of the performance, which we can change?
• why do we have regularly scheduled meetings to discuss results, but not regularly scheduled meetings to review performance?
• why don’t we treat the link between performance and results as a cause and effect equation instead of “hoping” the results have improved?
• why are results dealt with at the executive level when performance is dealt with at the front line supervisor level?

What Followers Want From Leaders

What do followers want from leaders? 

It’s very simple.

“Don’t wait until after the fact and give me a grade.  Instead, please take the time now and show me how I can get an A+.” 

Is this how things work in your organization?  If leaders take the time to show followers how to get an A+, the employee wins and the company wins, right?

If this is not how things work in your organization, contact us to help you discover gold inside your company.

Do You Need Training or Consulting?

As promised in my last post, I said the next post would answer the question “Do you need training or consulting?  This question came up at a dinner meeting with a long time client.

In short, if you need new knowledge or skills, effective training is likely the answer.  On the other hand, if you need expertise, you would do well to contact a consultant that specializes in the area of expertise you need.  Of course, in some cases you need both.  However, avoid assuming that a trainer or a consultant can provide both.

What’s the goal of getting advice/expertise from an expert?  To gain insights into how a process works, get expert advice about which model would be best for a specific situation or use the expert to provide a service that you can’t or shouldn’t provide internally (i.e. behaviorial interviewing, strategic planning), etc.

What’s the goal of training?  Once you have the expertise you need, implementing it successfully is critical.  New knowledge and/or skills are introduced to impact the beliefs and behaviors of employees in order to improve their invidual performance.  When enough employees improve their performance, organizational performance improves as well.

Both training and consulting, when done effectively, provide value in improving organizational performance.

I hope you found this post useful.  There are more than 30 other articles/posts on our blog.  Feel free to use them to improve employee and organizational performance in your organization.  If I can answer a question for you, please let me know.

Boards of Directors: Horsepower or Anchor?

As a business leader, if you think leading and managing an organization is a challenge, add a board of directors into the mix and you could get a glimpse into what it would be like to be attacked by on octopus.  

Today’s article in the Wall Street Journal on GM’s new board of directors and their new activist interest at many levels of the operations of GM gives me pause to consider the advantages, disadvantages and the proper role for a board of directors.

Advantges:  A board of directors represents the intersts of the shareholders and provides additional avenues of input, ideas and resources that are interested in and available to an organization’s leaders.

Disadvantages:  If the relationship between the board and the organization is not properly set up and maintained, boards could either micromanage the company’s operations or be relegated to the role of rubber stamp for the CEO.  I’ve seen both in a variety of client organizations.  Neither situation is beneficial to the shareholders, employees or customers.

Proper Role:  Both the board and the operations side of the organization should have clearly defined roles that do not overlap.  In fact, there should be a robust monitoring system that throws a flag at the first sign of encroachment on either side.  In addition, the only link between the board and the operations of the organization should be the CEO.  The board has one employee, the CEO.  The operations side has one leader, the CEO.

If properly set up, a board of directors can multiply the value generated by an organization.  If not properly set up, you might wish that the octopus would come in and finish you off.

If you have interest in learning more about how boards can perform effectively and complement the role of the organization, contact us.  We’ll point you to several very good resources.

The Single Best Predictor of Sustainable Organizational Performance

Wouldn’t work be easier if you coud do the work of all of your employees?  Well, of course, it’s not possible for any of us who lead people to do the work of all of our direct and indirect reporting employees.

So, if we need others to help get the work done, wouldn’t THE single best predictor of organizational performance be our effectiveness at getting the work done by working with and through others?  And, to do so more effectively than our competitors.

If this is the case, why is it that we spend so much more of our time focusing on measuring sales, gross profit, operating profit, productivy, etc. than on the time we spend improving THE one thing that predicts all of these results?

Leadership effectiveness is THE single best predictor of sustainable organizational performance. 

How will you use this insight to improve results in your organization?

Check out our blog for more free insights into improving employee performance and organizational results.

Predicting Job Performance

Which is most predictive of on the job performance when considering job applicants or developing a current employee: experience, knowledge, attitude, talent, skills, strengths, weaknesses, length of service or number of jobs?

According to The Gallup Organization’s research, led by Marcus Buckingham and presented in Now Discover Your Strenghts, talent is the most predictive of on the job performance. 

There are many compelling reasons revealed in the research, but one of them sums it up best.  When we work in an area where we have raw talent/gifting, a chemical reaction actually takes place that rewards us for using these talents.  It’s as if the body is saying, “yeah, you’re good at that - do that again.”

Use these insights to improve your hiring, employee performance and organizational results.

The Wrong People Can’t Be Motivated to Do the Right Thing

It’s true.  The wrong people can’t be motivated to do the right thing, according to Jim Collins, author of Good to Great and the newly released How The Mighty Fall. 

How woud the performance of your organization be different if you didn’t have to spend time trying to motivate the wrong people to do the right thing?  The “right” people for your organization don’t have to be motivated to do the right thing.  They just do it.

So here’s the challenge.  What percent of your employees are the “right” employees for your organization?  And, what are you going to do to improve the odds of selecting the “right” employees for your organization?

Several free resources are available here on our blog and our website.  If you want to discuss your unique challenges, contact us for a no-cost, no-obligation discussion of your business challenges.  We’ll point you to additional resources based on our discussion.

Wake Up The Elephant

As the leader in your organization, among all of the tactical meetings, tasks and conference calls that will occupy your time, there is a way to improve the performance of your organization this week.  Ready for it?

Have the courage to wake the sleeping elephant in your company.  You know that the “elephant in the room” is there.  For those who are not familiar with the expression, an elephant in the room is an issue that everyone sees, but no one wants to talk about it.  The boss knows it’s there.  All of the employees know it’s there. 

The question is not whether there’s an elephant there.  The question is whether you, as the business leader, has the courage to poke the elephant, wake it up and deal with the consequences of chasing the elephant out of your organization. 

Maybe the elephant is that your brother is not doing his job and you’re pretending you don’t notice.  Maybe the previous owner is still on staff, but has overstayed his welcome.  Maybe the “rain maker” you hired isn’t making it rain.  Maybe your spouse is on the payroll and is not “working and playing well with others.”  Maybe the merger isn’t going as planned.  Maybe it’s a 30 year employee who isn’t cutting it any more.  Maybe the new strategy has failed.  Maybe the largest division’s performance has dropped and no one is really sure why.  Maybe you’re in over your head.

Granted, there will likely be some blood and broken glass from waking up the unwieldy and possibly frightened elephant and chasing it out of the room, but the performance of the company hangs in the balance.  Admit it!  Not taking action is really much more costly than waking the elephant. 

As the business leader, have the courage to tackle the issue.  Do so with dignity and respect, but tackle the issue this week.  You’ll move the company farther ahead more than a month full of meetings ever will.

Your Missing Link

As a business leader, you have your area(s) of expertise.  But, what’s missing?  What’s the missing link?  I think I might know. 

Unless you can achieve business success alone, without the help of anyone else, you need other people to help you.  In addition, you have to create a structure to organize your group to do the work.  Here’s the missing link.  When you need to work with others and create structure, you cross over into my area of expertise.  I help companies apply organizational and human behavior models to improve organizational performance.

You know the printing business.  I’m an expert in behavioral interviewing with more than 1,600 interviews completed.  You’re an expert at providing outsourced payroll services in your area.  I understand the predictable human behavior steps in the organizational change process and how to put it to work to deliver results in your organization.  You’ve made your mark with the design and manufacture of custom heavy equipment solutions.  I understand how leaders can become more effective at building high performing employees and high performing organizations.

You have your areas of expertise.  My expertise is in applying more than twenty organizational and human behavior models to improve employee and organizational performance.  With more than two hundred projects completed in more than fifty client organizations large and small, we’ve delivered, by our client’s count, millions of dollars of improved organizational results.

I’m glad to share my expertise and insights with you through my blog.  I hope you find these free resources helpful in improving results in your organization.  If you need more hands on help, contact me for a free, no obligation, no cost discussion about the organizational challenges outside your areas of expertise that that you are facing.

If your company is under-performing your industry, there might be a missing link.  Let’s figure out what the missing link is so you can improve your organization’s results.