Unbound Ideas » Lisa Haneberg

Community Building for Managers

Lisa Haneberg — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 01:40:59 +0000

In The Hyper-Social Organization, authors Gossieaux and Moran (I did a podcast with Gossieaux a few weeks ago here) suggest that leaders need to create communities. They suggest leaders:

Behave naturally, not overly formal
Ditch rule books and embrace values
Live their values
Create trusting environments
Embrace transparency
Embrace diversity
Never compromise on the quality of the people who surround you
Let go of control

Which of these suggestions might be most helpful to you?

Community building is deeper and more organic than team development. Should our training programs be shifting away from team building to community building? I think some of the skills we practice when building teams are still relelvant (learning behavioral tendencies, for example). But what about the stages of team development? I think we might need to rethink how communities of coworkers develop, create agreement, communicate, and build relationships. What do you think? Hey, training professionals, how do you plan to change your development plans will all this in mind?

Lisa Haneberg

www.lisahaneberg.com

What if your employees were like Guns and Roses fans?

Lisa Haneberg — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 00:58:29 +0000

You have probably heard that the band, Guns and Roses, were booed and pelted with bottles in Ireland because they were 1 1/2 hours late for starting the show. As I listened to the news story on the radio, I felt a moment of disgust and found myself thinking, “how dare you be so self-absorbed!” Sure, this is not unexpected from some rock stars, but let’s think this through for a moment:

What’s the cost of 90 minutes of time for thousands of people? What might the opportunity costs be? The costs are HUMONGOUS. What would you have to tell yourself that would make showing up 90 minutes late for a concert (where people PAID to see YOU) an OK THING TO DO? I can’t imagine the mindset that rationalizes that this as acceptable performance. Let’s relate this to leadership and work professionalism, now. How many of you are habitually late? What if you suffered from the politically correct versions of being booed and pelted when you showed up late? What if people did not wait for you?

As managers and leaders, we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard than the members of Guns and Roses are apparently doing (I say this because the newscaster said that the band is known for showing up late). I know that some people struggle more than others to be on time, but tough cookies. Being habitually late, when a specific time is agreed to and especially when groups are involved, is irresponsible, rude, and self-absorbed. It has to be self-absorbed – somewhere in your head you are rationalizing that this is OK and your argument will be some version of the following thought, “my time is more valuable than yours and it is OK for you to wait for me.” You probably don’t say it like that in your head, but it often boils down to this.

I am not talking about the occasional lateness caused by freak things like traffic piles ups, stuck elevators, or suddenly being called to the CEO’s office. My tough stance is aimed at habitually late people – you know who you are. :-)

Do we need to define results orientation differently?

Lisa Haneberg — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 11:59:17 +0000

I want to share three wonderful quotes I came across while writing a book about senior leadership team excellence. They share a common message at the core, let’s see if you can notice it.

”The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say “I.” And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say “I.” They don’t think “I.” They think “we”; they think “team.” They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but “we” gets the credit…. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.” Peter Drucker, from Managing the Non-Profit Organization: Practices and Principles.

“Work can be one of the most joyful, most fulfilling aspects of life. Whether it will be or not depends on the actions we collectively take.” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, from Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning.

“The winning strategy combines analytically sound, ambitious, but logical goals with methods that help people experience new, often very ambitious goals, as exciting, meaningful, and uplifting – creating a deeply felt determination to move, make it happen, and win, now.” John Kotter, from A Sense of Urgency.

Do you see the common theme? The BEST work experiences come from how we feel about work and our connection to the powerful and altruistic nature of work. So as a leader, are you creating this type of environment?

Every week I meet managers and leaders who don’t get this point AT ALL. They talk about expectations and accountability and results and change and that is all very good and important. What I rarely hear, is leaders talking about how they excite, create meaning, or help people think “we.” I can’t remember ever hearing a leader talk about their interest in creating a joyful and fulfilling workplace. Ironically, focusing on how people feel about their work is a highly efficient way to improve ownership and results.

Many organizations use “Results Orientation” as a core competency. Let’s start describing it fully – not just focusing on the importance of accountability and measurements, but also how culture, passion, and challenge impact results.

The Power of the Informal

Lisa Haneberg — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 12:54:01 +0000

I have been doing several employee engagement survey projects recently and continue to notice how important it is to employees that their bosses be real – informal, open, friendly. The bosses that get mentioned in a positive light are the ones who take the time to get to know folks, even if only for a moment while passing in the hallways. The bosses that get mentioned in a negative light are nearly never bashed for not knowing the function. They are bashed because they are negative, aloof, and unfriendly.

I continue to be surprised by this because these are issues that should not exist and cost nothing to fix. Well, I suppose that if you have to retrain all your managers to be nice, there might be a small cost. But, come on, this is fare more than common sense, this is human nature.

1. Why does any professional, espectially any leader, think it is OK to be impersonal or unfriendly?

2. Why does any leadership team tolerate leaders and managers who are not likeable?

A leader is, by definition, someone who has signed up to lead the way. This does not mean leading the way in percentage of time spent in meetings or leading in creating plans and charts. This means leading people so that they might do their best work on behalf of the enterprise.

This should be simple. A no-brainer. Something that consultants like me NEVER get paid to resolve.

Leadership LOVE

Lisa Haneberg — Wed, 26 May 2010 11:14:57 +0000

I was on a panel discussion at SOBCON2010 and ran into Steve Farber, who was speaking there. He talked about leadership and the importance of LOVE. When I talk to leaders and managers, I also mention the word LOVE. We recently got on the phone to chat about this on my podcast and you can listen to that here.

What is leadership love? It’s what we are sharing when we show employees, peers, managers, and others about what matters to us – what we are passionate about, why we love our business, and what about our work we are committed to.

As we mention on the podcast, all leaders can and should show love. Extrovert, introvert, verbose, or reserved. People commit to people, not enterprises. Employees feel connection to leaders, not missions.

Lisa Haneberg — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 22:14:50 +0000

I’d like to start a discussion about how senior leadership teams measure their success. Most stick to the usual top business measures like profitability, quality, and marketshare and these are critical. But they are not sufficient because the impact leaders have – and leadership teams have, in particular – is immense. Are you building an organization that is agile? Likely to remain union free? The senior team makes a big difference.

Here’s what I would recommend including in a good definition of success for leadership teams:

Strategic implementation – The extent the organization’s goals and intentions are brought to fruition and the efficiency with which they do this.
Growing the business – whether the team moves the organization forward in terms of invocation, growth, and expansion of capabilities. Whether nagging issues and threats are reduced and opportunities are seized and acted upon.
Success of decisions – individually and over time, quality of reflection (number one indicators of decision accuracy and success is reflection and learning from previous decisions)
Create and propagation of mission, vision and a rolling strategic plan (it is not enough to create a strategy and a list of values – these are tools for their ongoing leadership practices)
Remove barriers and enable the management team (enabling strategic implementation)
Define the ideal culture (updated regularly) and build and align organization practices to reinforce the ideal culture
Define and model excellence (with behavioral detail and granularity); model the way for all professionals, especially middle management.
Build leadership and managerial talent – create and use bench strength analysis and succession plans for key positions and personnel
Build relationships and their leadership team’s reputation within the organization and with key stakeholders
Intra-team coaching, mentoring, collaboration – team members help each other get better
Build organizational agility – within the leadership team and throughout the organization
The extent to which the members of the leadership team are accountability to each other (co-management, and co-ownership of organizational success and health). Part of this measure includes broadening team member perspectives and capabilities and may involve project-based or job rotations.

What do you think? There is a lot here and probably too many things to focus on. Are there three or four indicators that would make a difference in helping your team having a greater impact on your organization?

X-Factor Meeting Ground Rules

Lisa Haneberg — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 21:08:24 +0000

The higher up the food chain you and your peers are, the more expensive your meetings. AND the higher your hurdle rate should be for the value that the time you send in meetings produces. Regular ground rules are not enough to help you ensure that this precious time is spent wisely. To that end, I created a suped-up set of meeting ground rules just for you! Let me know what you think.

X-Factor Meeting Ground Rules

Participation is not an option, nor is it an invitation to grandstand or over-participate. Everyone is expected to participate in team discussions in ways that moves conversation forward. Each person is also expected to help bring out the best thinking in others. If participation is not strong and focused, it is a team failure.

Share relevant information in ways that will be heard and understood. Your candor about concerns, worries, reservations, and ideas is important and required, but say things concisely and clearly.
Discuss and agree on communication plans. Your meeting outcomes can be of value only when others in the organization understand how decisions and strategies impact them and your expectations for next steps and measure for success. Each issue resolved in a team meeting should have corresponding agreements about how and when the information will be communicated and managed.
Meetings are where leadership and management occur and are the primary tool the team has for creating common understanding and leading the organization forward. The effectiveness of meetings, therefore, is of paramount importance to all team members and this shows in how you model meeting and teaming skills.

Don’t tolerate low-value added conversations. If you do not see the worth or value of a leadership team meeting discussion, it is your responsibility to address this concern with the group. It is not acceptable to become distracted or disconnected from a conversation – be proactive in fixing the situation.
Time is precious and expensive – don’t waste yours or your peers. Every moment that the team is waiting for late attendees represents dollars wasted. Get the meeting started on time regardless of who is missing or disband and reschedule the meeting if a quorum is not present. Late or absent participants are expected to support and represent the decisions made by the quorum.
Meeting agenda items and goals should have the potential for meeting or exceeding the Value of Meetings Hurdle rate. Other agenda items should be handled in more economical methods, delegated, or eliminated.

Every meeting will have mandatory pre-work and preparation. The time a leadership team spends together will be of greater value when all team members take sufficient time to prepare. Meeting leaders or designates should define the pre-work and preparation that will best enhance meeting discussions and desired outcomes.
Focus on the quality of conversations. While every meeting has a desired focus and goals, the quality of the dialogue (which leads to better thinking, actions, and results) is most important. This may mean that some discussions will take longer than expected and others can be quickly concluded.
Preparing for meetings and completing assigned action items is a core function of each leader’s job. A failure to meet these requirements will constitute a performance issue and could result in career consequences. The cost of meetings requires a high level of results orientation.
Meeting outcomes shall be communicated in one consistent voice. It is not acceptable for leaders to share the nature of disagreements discussed in meetings and it is never OK to bad mouth peers. It is the team’s responsibility to represent each other well at all times, because a division at the top becomes a gorge of dysfunction at lower levels in the organization.
Demonstrate respect, trust, and care for each other, even when discussing diverse ideas. Strained or unproductive relationships wreck the quality of thinking, actions, and results. Leaders are expected to work well with all team members and not let differences in style clash and get in the way of the team’s results.
Bring your best energy and passion to each meeting. An energized and engaged leadership team will imbue the entire organization with a high-velocity vibe that will impact how everyone approaches their work. Be the culture and disposition you hope to see at lower levels of the organization.
Be and model agility and good change leadership. Your organization’s capacity for change begins with how their leaders lead, communicate, and manage change. Your leadership team will be making decisions that create change, and it is important that your meeting discussions demonstrate agility and best practices for how to implement changes. Be cognizant of the “marathon effect,” and that you are farther along in understanding and accepting changes than the folks who you will rely on to make changes the new norm.

Organizational Agility – A Definition

Lisa Haneberg — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:53:30 +0000

I am working on the materials for a two-day class on organizational agility and have adopted the following definition:

Organizational Agility is your enterprise’s capacity to be consistently adaptable without having to change. It is the efficiency with which your organization can respond to nonstop change.

What do you think about this definition? Let’s break it down a bit.

What does it mean to be consistently adaptable?
What does “without having to change” look like? What would this look like in the world of sports or the arts?
What does the phrase “efficiency with which your organization can respond to nonstop change” mean and how does this contrast more traditional change management techniques and methods?

These are interesting questions and I like the idea that agility is a state where we don’t need to change to change. I think a lot of folks confuse agility with change management and being accepting of change. Agile organizations select, manage, and implement changes very well BUT all change accepting organizations are not necessarily agile. What’s the difference?

Agile organizations are set up to regularly adapt – their practices, systems, habits, and goals are nimble and this nimbleness is part of the fabric of how work gets done. There are three types of organizational agility:

Focus Agility: Having adaptable strategies and goals.
Resources Agility: Deploying resources (people/roles/structure, processes, financial assets, brands/products) flexibly.
Performance Agility: Realigning how work gets done (process improvements, culture, skills, measures).

As you tackle the week, think about how agile your organization is and which type of agility you need to cultivate.

Treat Your Middle Managers as !!Special!! Because They ARE.

Lisa Haneberg — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:18:12 +0000

Middle managers have a tough job and they are the engines that fuel stretegic implementation. Great middle managers engage their employees and create an environment where people are focused, results oriented, and interested in helping the business thrive. Middle managers are a key lever (maybe THE key lever) that a senior team can pull to ensure their intentions come to fruition. So you would think that organizations would know to invest in the care, feeding, and development of their middle managers. I find that the opposite is more often true.

Many of the organizations I worked with using improvement processes and philosophies like Lean. They make HUGE investments in money, time, and other resources to do Lean well. When I ask why they are willing to make this investment, most of my clients talk about how Lean has helped them manage their business, do things more effectively, and involve everyone in quality improvements.

Hmmm…somthing seems amiss here.

If you knew that a similar investment in your middle management function would improve strategic implementation and provide a great ROI, would you invest? Here are a few lower-pain/cost ways that leaders can better align, tune, and develop their middle management engine:

Spend time with widdle managers to review and discuss strategy, goals, the desired culture (AKA values) and major intiatives. Make these meetings DISCUSSIONS not one-way informational meetings. This will go a long way toward ensuring that your middle managers are focused and able to best represent your intentions with their teams. They will make better decisions, too.
Provide training specifically for middle managers that addresses the unique challenges they face. Help them manage multiple priorities, greater complexity, and be proactive change agents and implementors. Help them learn how to engage team members while improving accountability.
Be very picky when hiring new middle managers. Middle management is THE toughest management gig out there and you don’t want someone who will drive away your talent (the #1 reason people quit is bad management). Change your job descriptions, interview questions, and promotion criteria so that you can better assess each candidate’s fit. Hire a great manager first, then look for functional expertise. It is much harder to find a great middle manager!

What do you think? Let me know.

Lisa Haneberg

Author of 10 Business Books including, The High Impact Middle Manager

www.lisahaneberg.com

www.managementperformance.com

lhaneberg@managementperformance.com