Sunday, March 27, 2011

Finding your leadership voice

For many years, RCA used a painting called His Master’s Voice as its trademark.  The painting featured His Master's Voice, Francis Barraud, late 1800'sa fox terrier named Nipper, looking intently into the megaphone of a record player.  The picture was obviously intended to convey the clarity of the sound – so accurate that the dog would mistake a recording of his master’s voice for the real thing. 

But for someone like me who spends a lot of time thinking about how leaders lead, this painting makes a different point.  We all know that animals, including us humans, identify unique characteristics of a voice and instantly attach meaning to it.  In the same way, every leader has a “voice.”  It’s the culmination of all your behaviors – your decisions, communications, how you listen, how you prepare and even how organized or on time you are. 

All successful leaders, at some point in their careers, have to get a handle on that package that becomes their unique, powerful leadership voice – the voice that people will follow, even through difficult or uncertain times.  People’s commitment to the leader’s purpose is largely based on their level of trust in the voice of the leader.

Top three problems leaders have with their voice

Unfortunately, too many leaders have no idea what they’re saying with their voice – or worse, their voice says something completely different than what they think it does. Here are three of the most common ways leaders misuse their voice.

Problem #1: Audio doesn’t match the video

When a manager’s words and actions conflict, people will follow the actions and forget the words. I recently coached a manager who complained that her direct reports weren’t working together to solve problems before bringing them to her, regardless of what she said to them. As we dug into her behavior with her team, she saw the problem in what her “voice” was telling them.  Down deep, she viewed the team’s decisions as little more than recommendations, so she frequently overrode the team after the fact.  As a result, the team stopped trying, knowing it was pointless to make a decision that wouldn’t stick.  Her problem wasn’t going away until she used her whole voice differently – communicating with her actions what she was saying with her words – that ownership of the problems sat with her team, not her.

Problem #2: Wrong Level

Leaders can undermine how they are viewed by others when the use their Leadership Voice indiscriminately for things that don’t require their level of authority or influence.  Early in my career, the president of the organization I consulted with - a sizable division of a Fortune 100 company - was frustrated by cost overruns one particular quarter.  To show everyone he “really means business” on the topic, he sent an email to all employees saying he personally would be approving all expense reports going forward.  That’s all expense reports for the entire division. The mail contained very detailed instructions about how he wanted expense reports filled out and his process for judging the merit of each expense.  That one email shattered his image with the entire organization.  The president’s voice went from that of a leader and strategic thinker to that of a reactive, frustrated administrator in just one email.

Problem #3: Schizophrenia

Any savvy investor will tell you that the kiss of death on Wall Street, equal to poor financial performance, is unpredictability.  Why? Because future performance can only be based on the track record of the past.  A company that gives its investors whiplash every quarter – positive or negative – will see their share price erode over time. 

The same is true for leaders – no matter how likeable a leader may be, people won’t rally behind someone who is too unpredictable, because it undermines their sense of trust and stability. If your priorities shift day-to-day, or you find yourself playing whack-a-mole too often, or if you even tend to describe the same problem too many different ways to your team so they “really get it,” odds are your team doesn’t know how to follow you. 

Getting a handle on your leadership voice

So, how do you get the most out of your leadership voice?  Four steps:

  1. Get grounded in your priorities. Not everything is important – really.  So get clear about your core values, your vision and your strategic imperatives. Then review them daily.  It doesn’t take very long to do, and it keeps you grounded as a leader.  Your people can’t be focused unless you focus yourself first.
  2. Find your level. Look at the decisions you make and the things you communicate about.  Are they appropriate for your level of authority or influence?  Could someone else deal with the more tactical stuff, allowing you to save your voice for the more important and strategic messages and decisions?
  3. Identify the state of your “brand.” Get feedback from peers, direct reports and others who know you well on how you are viewed today as a leader – what your “voice” actually means to them.  This can be a formal 360-degree personal brand assessment process, or less formal info gathering.  Either way, get a baseline on the current health of your brand today so you can see where you need to tune up your voice.
  4. Get on message. Taking the above info, define how you will focus yourself – communications, decisions and actions – on those things that are most critical to you.  Simplify, simplify, simplify.  Then stay on message and at the right level, using every situation and opportunity to reinforce what you want others to be thinking, feeling and doing.

And lastly, don’t try to copy someone else’s approach – don’t ape another leader you respect by mimicking their presentation style, catch-phrases or idiosyncratic behaviors.  It’s not just ok to be yourself, it’s a requirement. Like Nipper, people will want to know and follow your authentic Leadership Voice.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Productivity Reset: There’s no such thing as a free lunch

The office has been a bit crazy for most folks since about 2008. The shedding of costs by just about everyone has put more work and stress on those lucky soldiers who have maintained their steady paychecks. And I guess we were willing to deal with it because the alternative was looming large. Better to be over-worked than unemployed.

But there's a new kind of pain hitting the average worker now that isn't caused by "unfavorable business conditions." Bunches of companies are posting solid - sometimes record-breaking - quarterly earnings again. And in spite of all the Washington rhetoric, the federal government is still spending like crazy. Sure, some industries are still hurting, but where there's a rising tide in the economy, why does the average workday make it seem like we're in a bigger crisis than before?

Because of something leaders are calling a productivity reset. That's code for a dangerous leadership mindset that gets short-term gain but long-term trouble. Quite simply, it means using the current headcount level in your organization, post-layoffs, as the baseline for how many people you need to cover the same amount of work as you had pre-layoff. You've reset the baseline for productivity higher, covering more workload with fewer people - permanently.

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The stats tell the story. You can see in the chart from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, showing the year-over-year change in productivity. We’ve had significant increases since 2006, with the exception of 2008 (when the economy tanked, productivity grew more slowly, and actually stayed flat in manufacturing). But since 2008, the shedding of the workforce led to – no surprise – big increases in productivity. Because business is back, but jobs are not – at least not yet.

So, looking at the numbers, it might seem like the plan is working – fewer workers, more revenue, better productivity. So what’s the problem?

The problem is, the dam is getting ready to break. Like dot-com boom "new economy" thinking, Productivity Reset is a nonsensical, alluring concept that whispers to leaders that they can get something for nothing - over-driving your headlights at the expense of your people. Its proponents swear it works for two main reasons, but both are flawed. First, they say the workforce post-layoffs has adapted, figuring out ways to increase its productivity for survival. Second, there must have been at least a little headcount bloat in there somewhere, what with some low performers and a few extra roles scattered about that no one really misses much…

They say the best lies have just enough truth in them to make them credible. This is just such a case. There have been some workarounds that have helped out, but not anywhere near the degree to which the labor force was cut back.  So it's still a lie - and we're telling it to ourselves to see if we can make the new math work.

Let's just call Productivity Reset what it is - bad management. On an economic upswing (especially a drawn-out version like we're in right now in the states), leaders charged up with new visions of a rosy, growing future drive new initiatives with renewed leadership vigor - but with a lingering fear of things going in the toilet again. So, we ask people to step up and drive to the new future, but it's an unfunded mandate.

How will this play out? We're already seeing it. Top performers, who are always in demand regardless of economic conditions, suddenly have lots of options that they're beginning to explore. Churn among high-potential workers continues to climb. And their departures stress remaining organizations to make up the losses and ramp new people. Battlefield promotions to fill gaps creates chaos. And the no-room-for-error situation created by the productivity reset means that critical initiatives will fall over.

So no matter what the new "collective wisdom" is trying to sell us about a Productivity Reset, the old school wisdom is winning out. There's still no such thing as a free lunch.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Leading change: What leaders can learn from high oil prices

Oil, which is like the black cocaine of our energy-hungry society, is once again over $100/barrel. At the pumps, this is translating to over $4.00/gallon, and consumers are feeling it.

$4.00 seems to be the point where real Gas lines, circa 1973discussion begins about alternatives. Over the kitchen table, it’s reducing driving or getting a hybrid. In government, it’s about funding research and giving tax credits. Entrepreneurs smell opportunity for alternative energy markets. In any case, we have a real discussion, because people are feeling it personally. So this round of high prices is not just a problem in the petroleum supply – what we have are the conditions necessary for change.

 

Creating a personal connection to a change

Piper Alpha Oil Rig fire, 7/6/88 - the "Burning Platform"It’s been touted by many in the field of change management – achieving a personal connection to the problem is a key prerequisite to any major change. A leader will try to wake a sleeping company by story-telling and laying out cold, hard facts to create urgency around a change. Stephen Elop, Nokia’s new CEO, did just that in his compelling “Burning Platform” memo to all employees last month, using the story of the Piper Alpha oil rig fire in the North Sea in 1988 (oil again…) as an analogy of the state of Nokia and how they have to move forward.

It’s a great story, but for most employees, it’s still just a story. What employees feel is what happens within arms’ reach – they need to be touched by the problem, not just hear a business case describing it. For example, employees can’t “feel” lost market share, so they won’t commit to painful remedies that leaders push when trying to fix it.

The same is true for changing the minds of executives. With the velocity and ambiguity that execs deal with, the executive mind is often set to “screen out” mode or “decide and move on” mode. When people deep in the organization flag a need for change that challenges the status quo of the business, it’s tough for executives to wrap their brains around it.

John Kotter, Professor Emeritus at Harvard Business School and organizational change guru, wrote about this in a recent blog post. In the post, he talks about how an employee had to get the attention of leaders about a purchasing problem wasting the company’s money, but the execs weren’t getting it. What finally got everyone’s attention was bringing over 400 different pairs of work gloves – all bought from different suppliers at different prices - and dumping them on the CEO’s desk. The tangible example of the deeper issue helped the CEO, and then the senior leadership team, finally “get” the problem, leading to change in the company’s operations.

 

How to help employees connect with the need for change

So how do you connect people to the case for a change?  It’s a lot of work, but without doing the work, you can’t expect the change to actually happen.  And recovery from failed change implementation is far more difficult than tilling the soil for your change in the first place.

Here are three ways you can create the connection:

  1. Simulate the change: Create a way for people to “experience” the change before it happens.  Two popular approaches are:
    • Experiential exercises: The old “rocks and ropes” exercises usually don’t do much to teach people new skills, but they’re great at helping people see something that’s broken.  This is particularly good for showing gaps in team dynamics or cross-organizational processes.
    • Business simulations: A true simulation actually creates a model of the business – a “before” model, an “after” model, or both.  People run the business, the process or org that will undergo change and personally see how their actions matter.  Sims aren’t cheap, but if the change is deep and strategic, it can be well worth it.  Companies like BTS in the US specialize in building business sims.
  2. Publicly execute the old way of doing things: In change management there’s a saying – “change is more about what you stop doing than what you start doing.” Until the old way dies, change can feel like a bolt-on to the old way, instead of a departure from it.  I once consulted with a metal parts manufacturing company trying to change its manufacturing processes.  On the shop floor, the crew measured success by total weight of parts produced that day.  This drove the team to pick the heaviest jobs to run in the plant, even though these products were the least profitable and often sat in inventory.  It wasn’t until the day that the shop supervisor ceremoniously tore up the log for tracking weight that the crew began to understand what was expected in the new world.
  3. Involve people in creating the change: We’ve all heard about this – it seems so obvious, doesn’t it? But too often the involvement is superficial just to claim it was done. People take you seriously when you pull a couple of the sharpest front-line folks out of their day jobs and engage them in the planning – and you actually use their contributions.

So when you look at the price at the pump next time you fill the tank, and you feel that pinch, remember the feeling for the next time you have a change to implement.  If you or the people you work with aren’t feeling that same four-buck-a-gallon twinge yet, chances are that change won’t happen.