Napoleon’s Glance

Author: Dave Crisp

23 Feb

Strategically it sometimes pays to step back from daily routine and read or experience something different… but not necessarily too different – the busman’s holiday they call it – as when you work for a charity, gaining pleasure and learning from doing more of what you do at work. Reading for pleasure, I stumbled on a book by William Duggan, associate professor of management at Columbia Business School, an expert on strategic thinking and author of three books in the field – The Art of What Works (2001), Napoleon’s Glance (2004) and Strategic Intuition (2007). The gist: Napoleon and other amazing leaders followed a route to highly effective strategy that is very, very different from what is normally thought of as strategic planning or strategic thinking.

The principles apply directly to HR strategy. Oddly, just recently, one of the many HR/Learning & Development blogs out there published “Four tips for Effective Leadership,” namely: Be counterintuitive, live comfortably in gray areas, learn by doing and exercise soft skills – exactly what Duggan points to with his great strategists. Strategy isn’t arrived at by ‘planning’ in the sense of laying out exact steps and stages with time lines and benchmarks. Napoleon and the others ‘put their teams in motion,’ ‘looked for small battles they could win decisively,’ ’stuck to the course with firm resolution,’ and learned to evolve strategies as they went rather than work them out in detail beforehand.

Reading these, I realized that, yes, most successes I ran into along the way evolved ‘in the midst of action’ (a phrase I also recognized from a Zen master talking about finding your way calmly ‘in the midst of action’). Does this apply to HR? My former company got into elearning early and heavily, with great results, because we were asked to look at ‘expert systems’ that the CEO saw at a conference (a different computer technology) and we jumped to use the budget and just get going, without being in the least sure where we were headed, but seeing some possibilities in using technical systems to leverage more people learning more things.

If we’d waited for our IT process that called for developing a technical plan in detail, with projected costs three to five years out, we’d never have gotten off the ground. Yet planning is valuable. In the words of Eisenhower, the top allied General of WWII, “Plans are nothing, planning is everything.” The difference, in other words, is active versus passive. Get going, planning as you go, through the unexpected twists and uncertainties – don’t wait for “a plan” designed to resolve something you think may happen – it won’t.

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Filed under: 3 Strategic - Thinking, 5 Habits - Action, Books, Business/Strategy, Coaching over Command Leadership, Leaders of the Future, Learning Organization

How Fast Can a Behemoth Change Culture?

Author: Dave Crisp

10 Nov

Giant GM is struggling to change, that much is certain. But recent reports confuse the reader about what’s really going on. Take Workforce Week for October 7 and October 19. In various ways, from the headlines to content, both articles suggest that new CEO (Fritz Henderson), named March 30 to replace the former old-style executive (Rick Wagoner), has ‘done’ the work needed to change the culture.

Depending on how you read these, the messages are puzzling. The long term HR head is replaced with a former operations executive. Layers of management have been laid off to streamline things and shake up the physical bureaucracy, but whether this shakes the bureaucratic habits of thinking and behavior that inevitably form the anchors of culture remains to be seen. HR is dropped from some key operating senior teams, but is tagged as an ‘enabler’ of the change process. Enabling from the outside?

There are suggestions that the new CEO sees the culture change as ‘done’ (or more likely sees it as having been given a momentum-driving start through his bankruptcy restructuring, which appears to have been sold to managers as ‘a gift’). There are other hints he understands it must be a continuing process. I’m skeptical of calling precipitous down-sizing a gift. For sure you can try to make lemonade from such lemons and if you look at the CN restructuring (in Les Dakens excellent new book, Switchpoints) that preceded the sort of culture change GM is talking about, you can see it is possible to make necessity work more for you than against you, but it’s still a wrenching process with some uncertainty as to what it produces.

You can also see with the CN example that it took 10 years in various stages to evolve something like the full impact on culture that GM almost certainly needs. Yes, you can make early gains, but if you assume that’s all, you will certainly fall short of what’s possible and perhaps even create a situation where culture falls back toward what it used to be. Habits take time and repetition to change.

It’s very hard to tell from reports such as this whether the people managing the new structure really understand that it takes years of stable and continuing reinforcement of consistent practices to actually change culture. Are reporters putting their interpretations on things – that change is ‘done’ or that it is ‘in progress?’ We won’t know for some time, but the reporting is worrisome.

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Filed under: 5 Habits - Action, Books, Business/Strategy, Fix The Jerks, Human Resources (HR)

History has lessons to show us about HR

Author: Dave Crisp

10 Apr

Richard McLaughlin writing on the new Plexus community “Organizational Consultants Network quotes the venerable Marv Weisbord, expert on Organization Behavior, author of Productive Workplaces Revisited and that led me via search to the original Productive Workplaces on Amazon.

Reading their link to the “First Pages” of the older book is really worthwhile to make instantly clear the history of effective HR and OD and how early lessons apply directly today, ultimately explaining how smart financial leaders led us into the current mess.

Conclusion? McLaughlin quotes Weisbord. .from 1987! “The world is changing too fast for experts, and old-fashioned “problem-solving” no longer works. For the past forty years productive workplaces on several continents have been evolving another way entirely of thinking and acting. First, they have been moving away from problem-solving toward whole-systems improvement as the secret for solving great handfuls of problems at once. Second, they have been moving away from getting experts to fix systems toward having experts join everybody else in learning how to make improvements.”

Doesn’t that sound like social networking and The Wisdom of Crowds over command-and-control leadership? You bet! So why haven’t we arrived yet at the point where everyone understands this? I suppose double-entry bookkeeping wasn’t thoroughly accepted by 100% of business for its first hundred years either, though now you wouldn’t start into serious business management without such basic accounting.

McLaughlin goes on to link another excellent article by NYT’s Nicholas Kristof, illustrating how well-functioning groups should be able to out-do experts and ties it directly to today’s disasters. When will we finally learn these lessons and concentrate on leading in new ways?

PS: I love one of Kristof’s references to Berkeley’s Philip Tetlock (author of the 2005 book, Expert Political Judgment – which could have been subtitled ‘yeah, right’). Tetlock, he notes, uses the description “hedgehog” in a negative way. For me that illustrates balancing Jim Collins’ use of it in Good to Great to describe the positive need for focus, which in turn illustrates again the need for balance rather than too much of any one element of effective leadership. And in many cases balance only is achievable by including more people in the process of leadership.

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Filed under: 1 Balance - Judgment, 3 Strategic - Thinking, 5 Habits - Action, Human Resources (HR), Leaders of the Future

Job Searching in Tough Times

Author: Dave Crisp

20 Jan

More of my work lately is with job seekers, naturally. We’re in that cycle of the economy. So what can I say that’s reassuring? A lot actually.

First, I often am introduced for my success in handling some major mergers, not easy when 80% are known to fail, mostly for "HR" reasons – poor culture fit, bad leadership, etc. What I point out is that most of the layoffs I had to manage – and there were many in the turbulent retail years I held a senior role there… most occurred in good times, not in recessions. Layoffs don’t only occur in tough times nor does hiring only occur in good periods. Both go on all the time. It’s simply a matter that there are a few more in one or the other.

I got the watershed job in my own career history the very day a major city newspaper emblazoned this headline on page 1: Worst Job Market in 20 Years (the height of the 1982 recession). And I’m not the greatest job hunter, being basically a shy, non-marketing type. "If I can do it, you can," is a pretty accurate message.

In most years average turnover is about 15% – one job in six has to be refilled. Most are filled from within… in good times… and then replaced by hiring junior staff. This background rate of turnover doesn’t vary too much in bad times. And when many companies lay off, they inevitably find just afterward that turnover continues. Other companies are grabbing their best people hoping to fill growing gaps with better players; your own company cut to the bone and didn’t anticipate continuing routine departures of people they depend on. They still have to hire.

While it’s true that relatively speaking it will probably take longer to get a job (managers who might average 3 to 5 months searching might need 6 to 9), they will inevitably find work. Those who keep looking will at least! Of course that’s hard on people. No one likes to envision such lengthy periods without pay, but allowing for just a bit of luck, severance packages, outplacement counseling and good planning really do help.

By the time layoff are decided, paperwork processed and job searches are fully underway (usually 2 to 3 months), don’t forget that we’re that much closer to the upturn. Those laid off early may have longer searches, but they’re more fully networked and closer to finding work earlier in the upturn than those laid off later, who take a few months to get well started. So even though layoffs may continue for a while, it isn’t all doom and gloom for everyone. Those who keep their heads, stay focused and pursue all leads as consistently as they can usually end up with better jobs that the ones they left.

It’s not a time to panic and jump at the very first job offer… unless it’s a great one. Steady, logical work pays off all the way through the process from networking to negotiating the offer. It’s just a bit tougher to stay positive. As always balancing pressures and alternatives is the key to coming out on top.

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Filed under: 1 Balance - Judgment, 2 Positive - Feelings, 5 Habits - Action, Building A Career, Coaching Yourself

When to Coach; When to Lead

Author: Dave Crisp

5 Oct

Maybe the title gives this away, but maybe not. With Coaching-style Leadership, there are still times when more directive leadership makes the most sense. Speaking at the HR program I mentioned a few days ago, there were a number of professional coach trainers in the audience. One who is totally committed to coaching as the best solution for all situations took me to task on this after my presentation, zeroing in on this one comment.

I’d said there are times when command and control is still the most appropriate style – and used an example of a sinking ship where you want the person who knows best what to do to assume control and direct the best actions for everyone, the more firmly the better – no panic, life Emergencies require direction jackets, lifeboats, line up here!

The coach trainer insisted that even on the Titanic, if the captain had coached, everyone might have been saved. In fact, it would undoubtedly have led to a better outcome if the captain had coached the crew sufficiently before the emergency so they knew how to take charge, but I can’t honestly see the opportunity to coach once the iceberg was hit. If you think about the coaching process and questions, is it really an appropriate time to ask people “how’s it going, what do you really want, what should our strategy be, what needs to be different and what will we do now?” Or do you hope the crew lines people up firmly, guides them into lifeboats and tells them how to launch?

The one antidote to panic is clear confidence from a leader who remains calm and balanced and seems to know what to do when you don’t. This is true for any situation, but in true emergencies, it can take a pretty directive leader to convince people. Once things are underway, you hope individuals will take initiative and you may be able to coach that once everyone’s in boats and away, but in those first stages of crisis finding the right balance of command first before coaching seems wisest.

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Filed under: 1 Balance - Judgment, 5 Habits - Action, Coaching over Command Leadership, How Simplicity Works

Marcus Buckingham’s “Strengths” Approach – Right or Wrong?

Author: Dave Crisp

28 Aug

Marcus sure gets mentioned a lot both by those who agree you shouldn’t waste time trying to change your weaknesses, only work on strengths and those who strongly dispute that. If you’ve followed my posts you may guess I believe in doing both! That’s the Zen answer. But which ones when and how much?

A key function of Human Resources is trying to get people hired or existing ones moved into jobs that fit their strengths. Buckingham would be right in thinking I’d be wasting my time aiming for the Olympics, definitely not in my strengths. But every athlete or manager who legitimately wants his or her role and has Olympic athletes work on weaknesses, too talent still has “weaknesses” to work on. It would make no difference to me if my biggest problem in the 100 meter dash was my start, but for those who win or lose by microseconds, knowing their weaknesses and working on them is huge. And to suggest they not bother would be completely wrong.

So, should we only work on strengths – no way! But starting with strengths and working on them as well as what makes them weaker than they could be is essential. Since studies show the lowest rated skills for most leaders are all aspects of working with people (versus things), we clearly need to promote those with inclination and relevant ability, but we also need to work hard to ensure they get exposed to experiences that help them grow people skills.

Tips: How to choose what to work on

Ideally trial and error and solid self-reflection have landed you in a job you like a lot. (If not, figuring out what you really prefer is priority #1.) Then, to get better at what you like doing:

1. Try to evaluate and especially ask others for their opinions of your strengths and weaknesses for this work. Take time to assess accuracy. Don’t be reactive to emotional issues about these and don’t take anyone’s first word, especially your own.

2. Work on your three or four biggest strengths… by looking at your weaknesses in those areas, planning a strategy to improve them and consistently doing a bit each day whenever they come up. Set reminders for yourself or you’ll forget.

3. Then look at your two or three biggest weaknesses. Really look. Some may not be as bad as you think; others are worse. Be aware you have a couple of approaches – first, get someone else to do those things instead (a team member, co-leader, spouse, etc.). Figure out how to be great without ever doing these. Don’t let yourself be tempted. Pamper the people who do this for you so you’ll never have to. …But also… decide on one, just one, weakness you really, really, really want to change. Create a plan and work on it every day, asking people continually how you are doing and asking for their help and suggestions. Make this into a daily habit of practice. In a few months or a year or two, evaluate your results. Chances are you’ve made enough progress (and built some continuing habits) that you can choose a second miserable area to work on. But expect to keep working on these for the rest of your life. They will never come entirely naturally.

4. Periodically assess your results and the balance between work on strengths and weaknesses, not letting either completely absorb your energy – do both. The proportion of time you spend on each is a balance only you can decide.

The bottom line is you can’t easily change weaknesses, but you better know what they are and have a strategy to prevent them de-railing you. Over time you can certainly improve some of these areas, but only if you work hard on one at a time and choose only those you really want to change… and then persist, persist, persist. For me this has meant a lifelong drive to get over feeling shy. I’ve developed tons of behaviors that work most of the time, but there are still areas where my original habits continue to affect what I do and unless the day ever comes that isn’t the case, I’ll keep this in mind and keep working away at little bits.

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Filed under: 5 Habits - Action, 5 Skills - Instant Leadership, Building A Career, Coaching Yourself, Leaders of the Future

Does Blogging About Leadership & HR Help?

Author: Dave Crisp

28 Jul

Today’s Training Zone (UK) item about pros and cons of blogging (free registration) drew the main opinions – it can be good for marketing, certainly for self-reflection by the writer, but nay-sayers cite their lack of time (and a wide-spread belief that it’s a vanity thing).

The larger question is who reads blogs and do they help? Clearly most of the people writing business blogs intend them to help and most must believe at some level that they do. Vanity undoubtedly drives a lot of short term efforts to get seen on the Internet, but to stick with it year after year, disciplining yourself to write two or three or more times a week on your subject takes something more than vanity, especially if few ever read or comment on the majority of what’s out there.

Why bother? Of course some derive solid marketing benefits. I doubt that I will. I’m not great at marketing in any forum and see that a more of a by-product of the real question. For me that is… can blogging about leadership really help?

In organizations over the year, my most startling observation is there are so many people talked into leadership roles, for the money, the power, the prestige, the challenges and on and on, who have no training, no real inclination to lead or much knowledge of what its about at least when they start. In some ways perhaps that makes sense because leadership is best learned by doing. But lots of people never learn, which produces pain and misery for vast masses of employees, co-workers and organizations themselves so to speak.

The hopeful fact is that the best approach to leadership is extremely basic, human and easy to follow. Conversation about it can help. For me, I haven’t fully been able to figure out the best way to say it or develop those conversations widely. This medium may work. Only time will tell. It’s a new way to feel that I’m making the effort. As time goes on the results will enhance reflection and perhaps jointly the blogging community will ultimately identify what creates value and how. Right now it’s a bit of the wild west.

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Filed under: 1 Balance - Judgment, 2 Positive - Feelings, 3 Strategic - Thinking, 4 Honest - Finding Reality, 5 Habits - Action, Weblogs

Marketing Lessons for Human Resources?

Author: admin

15 Jul

Sometimes ideas seem to converge because human behavior and human expectations are pretty consistent in every area. J. Ragsdale Hendrie writing about hotel HR and performance in Hong Kong-based on-line travel publication ”4Hoteliers” points out the need for HR to be more long-term strategy oriented – and to market more in-house what they can do for their organizations.

McKinsey & Company in their latest weekly points out long term recruiting strategies are necessary in China to overcome growing shortages of managers – an external marketing challenge.

Susan Abbott who runs an excellent blog on marketing and branding points out in her newsletter today that for a group to be effective they need to keep focused in for the long term… stick to the strategy.

And finally, Sherrill Burns of Culture-Strategy Fit Inc. emphasized in a presentation this morning that a strong culture makes HR work – and that requires a long term, consistent marketing strategy focused on getting everyone step by step into the same cultural mold and keeping them there.

Happy staff... not an accident The message? People don’t just work superbly together by accident. There needs to be a strategy, clearly focused and consistently pursued, to make that happen. It’s simple enough, but so few organizations manage it that the ones who do win awards. Sherrill brought along the President/Founder, Pat McNamara, of one such award-wining model company, APEX, a 32-consultant PR/issues management firm with remarkably low turnover for their industry, achieved by internal marketing to their staff – which enables them to use that as a powerful selling feature with clients and thereby earn exceptional returns.

Awarded “Best agency of the year” twice in a row, Pat has also been named one of the Top 100 Women Entrepreurs. One of her comments – “it takes a lot of time – more than you ever expect – to engage every single person, but it’s absolutely worth it.” They turn business away to keep the positive culture and people’s lives and sanity intact. And make enough money to give perks like an extra five days off in an employee’s fifth year and a month paid sabbatical in the eighth. Sticking to those policies requires commitment… long term. The message – basics: long term, strategy, commitment, consistency and marketing internally as much or more than externally… if you want happy staff and great results!

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Filed under: 5 Habits - Action, How Simplicity Works, NewsLetters, Weblogs

It’s Not Really Multitasking, Is It?

Author: Dave Crisp

26 Mar

Often when you’ve had a chance to sleep on it, some remark you’ve made the day before seems incorrect (that’s the polite word) or maybe just dumb.

Yesterday I suggested that "multitasking" would be OK if you’re working to help people become better while also working toward an objective was an exception to the rule against trying to do two things at once. That’s not what I intended, I see in retrospect.

In fact, it’s better to say you should look for ways to achieve two ends at the same time with the same, single action. By helping others improve, you get work done – through them, with them and even on your own as you model for them how they could approach things. It’s a way of working and thinking about work that ultimately produces better results in every situation.

It really isn’t a "multitask" because you’re not stopping to help them and then stopping that to go back to work, you are doing both together, sometimes working alongside them on a problem, sometimes on your own, but with the objective that your work will help them move forward in some way.

Of course, we can’t avoid distractions. They happen all day long inevitably. But we can avoid distracting ourselves by attempting multiple tasks at the same time. Everyone gets caught up in the sense of urgency and the layering on of one new demand on top of the last.

We have to catch our breath sometimes and say stop the roller coaster, let me sort out what to work on first, second and third and then do those in that order… without trying to do every task simultaneously. If the goals of every task include how this improves things for people as well as achieves results, we’re on the right track. If we can’t see how, we need to rethink our approach to it until we find a better strategy for it.

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Filed under: 3 Strategic - Thinking, 5 Habits - Action, Coaching Others, Coaching Yourself

New Year’s Alone Doesn’t Produce Effective Resolutions

Author: Dave Crisp

16 Jan

Networking expert Michael Hughes wrote a comment in a newsletter that captured a key insight. It isn’t only New Year’s Day that produces resolutions. I always resisted that idea. After all what’s different about one day, just because it’s designated as the start of something.

Rather it’s the combination of a designated new start following a substantial mental break with the preceding grind and what you do after that. The elements work best when the work together.

Mentally we think "the old can be left behind at least partly" and "we have an accepted point at which to start something new," where, for instance, sales people begin with a fresh set of goals, a blank page. There’s nothing they can change about the past, but mentally a "do over" opportunity appears.

Whatever different stresses the holiday season presents – last minute shopping, more family than you see all year, special efforts for parties, celebrations, dinners and possibly travel – the new stresses ensure time for the old routines to fall into a bit of perspective.

You can think in terms of a "do over" each day, too, as Mark LeBlanc, outgoing President of the US National Speakers Association captures in his book, Growing Your Business (reviews at bottom of the linked page).

It’s a great idea for tasks with targets like selling or losing weight – do just one thing each day. Get into a habit. Don’t beat yourself up if you didn’t do it one day, but make sure you do that one thing TODAY. Don’t feel you have to "catch up" and do two today. The goal is simply to get into the pattern of one per day until it feels comfortable, you know where in your typical days to fit it in and it starts to get done regularly.

One sales call a day, or one task on some project you need to get done (sending out those resumes?) or one step in building a strategy (signing up for or scheduling training?) or implementing an idea. One-a-day.

Even Jerry Seinfeld says, "Mark each day on the calendar when you do that one thing. Don’t break the chain whatever you do." If you keep shooting to lengthen that unbroken chain the habit becomes more and more automatic and you get better and more comfortable. Doing whatever it is just once in a day generally seems easy enough to keep you going. Once you’ve mastered the flow, you can move on to a new "one thing."

Not a bad reminder for two weeks into the new year. That’s when I start to see people at the gym who made an early new year’s effort start to drop away. Are they doing just one thing to stay fit somewhere else? We can hope. It’s fine for the way you do it to evolve. Just don’t stop. But don’t beat yourself up for one miss. Make sure you do it next time… today, tomorrow, the day after, somewhere, sometime, somehow. Get into the groove.

By the way. If you find you just can’t, that you rarely or never get it into your day and that continues week after week, it’s time to think up a new strategy to try out, a new variation that you CAN do once each day. You only get better at what you can tolerate doing regularly. Don’t wait for another New Year’s to modify your plan. The real commitment is to progress, whatever it might be or however it comes about.

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Filed under: 3 Strategic - Thinking, 5 Habits - Action, Books, Coaching Issues

Archive for the ‘5 Habits - Action’ Category

Napoleon’s Glance

How Fast Can a Behemoth Change Culture?

History has lessons to show us about HR

Job Searching in Tough Times

When to Coach; When to Lead

Marcus Buckingham’s “Strengths” Approach – Right or Wrong?

Does Blogging About Leadership & HR Help?

Marketing Lessons for Human Resources?

It’s Not Really Multitasking, Is It?

New Year’s Alone Doesn’t Produce Effective Resolutions

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