Archive for the ‘Leadership’ Category

« Older Entries

The War for Talent Continues

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011

In 2006 I was sharing with many people about the impending employee shortage that was looming on the horizon. At that time it was predicted that by 2010 there would be a 10 million more jobs than qualified employees to fill them. There were a variety of factors that were going to be in place to cause this shortage, including the beginning of retirement of baby boomers in 2006. Another reason was that jobs were becoming increasingly more technical in nature, requiring people holding even the most rudimentary of jobs to have some sort of technical skills. Then 2008 hit and threw things dramatically off track. Or did it?

Here we are in 2011, with unemployment rates still hovering around 9%, considerably much more than where we were in 2006. But after just over 3 years of higher unemployment rates we are beginning to again see the job market tighten, and employers are struggling to fill positions with qualified, high performing employees. I spent the summer of 2011 talking with current and previous clients about their employee situations. Every single one of them indicated that they were having a hard time to find qualified employees with the right skills to fill their vacant positions.

It seems that they are not alone. In a survey conducted by Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute found that there are currently about 600,000 open positions across the industry in the USA. This is about 5% of the manufacturing workforce, and is due largely to the lack of skills by current applicants. This isn’t an isolated incident. Across all industries there is about 3.2 million jobs that are vacant for the roughly 14 million unemployed.

Most claim the 3.2 million job openings is normal, a result of normal turnover and the lag in the ability to refill the jobs. In fact, this number has been fairly consistent for a number of years, even before our recent economic downturn. But with current employees hesitant to jeopardize their income, many have postponed looking for new or better jobs. So we should see a drop in job openings, not remain the same; and with the number of unemployed people, we should be able to fill the positions even quicker than before.

But this isn’t the case. In a survey by Towers Watson recently, they found that 59% of companies across all industries were unable to fill critical skills positions due to a lack of skills by applicants. This is down only slightly from the pre-recession rate of 66%; a rate that was at a time when unemployment rates were 5% or less!

What this all tells us is that finding top performing employees that have the drive and skills to dramatically impact your organization is still going to be tough. They are still in short supply while being in great demand. It doesn’t matter how many people are unemployed, the best employees will still have jobs and everyone will be competing to recruit and retain them. These top performing employees can still move from job to job with little concern, as they will always be in demand.

The challenge for employers is to be able to find and retain these top performers at all levels within their organization. This means that organizations must create a climate where these top performers can feel appreciated and have the ability to be responsible for their own work as they continue to grow and become masters at their craft. Most organizations struggle with this, while only a few excel. These few have learned how to master the Seven Elements of High Performance™, and these elements allow them to find and keep the best employees.

Posted in Leadership, Thoughts and Musings | No Comments »

Oprah, Black Eyed Peas, and Creating a Feeling

Monday, February 7th, 2011

Whether you thought the Super Bowl XLV half-time show was good or not, in the fall of 2009 the Black Eyed Peas were a part of a rather fantastic experience.  The event was Oprah Winfrey’s 24th Season Kickoff Party.  Below is the video of this performance.  As you watch the performance, pay attention to the young woman in the blue shirt at the front of the stage…

This video has gone viral, with people sharing this version or posting alternate versions, many with comments like “girl starts dance party,” or something similar.  Many of the comments talk about the amazement that a single person can get 21,000 people working together, and then lament why we can’t even solve our own problems, either for the country or at work.  The belief is that this spectacular event just all seemed to happen on its own, and all of these people just magically worked together all of a sudden.

But that isn’t the case.

I must admit that as I watched the video I felt the power from the crowd; its excitement; its focus; its energy.  And while I do believe that powerful things can and do just “happen,” I also know that this isn’t usually the case.  Powerful things that are well executed come from inspiration, yes, but they also come from good planning.  So I went off to investigate and find the real story behind turning this “mob” of individuals into a well functioning dance machine. 

What I discovered was that, like most great things, it did start with a person or at least a small group of people, although it wasn’t the young woman in the blue shirt.  It was from director Michael Gracey and choreographer Ashley Wallen, and the planning for this began many months prior, long before the young woman in a blue shirt started dancing. 

First came the idea to do this as part of the Kickoff Party.  Then simple steps were designed into the dance that would make it easy to teach others.  Then a core of about 20 professional dancers learned the dance and how to teach it, and they helped teach it to 800 other professional dancers.  On the day of the event, and prior to Oprah arriving, these 800 dancers were placed throughout the crowd, and then the crowd was taught the basic moves.  If they happened to forget the moves it wasn’t a problem.  All they had to do was watch one of the 800 professional dancers who were stationed throughout the crowd who already knew the dance by heart. 

So, no, this dance wasn’t spontaneous at all, but actually well thought out, well planned, and well executed.  And guess what?  Yep, the young woman in the blue shirt is one of the professional dancers. 

So what does this have to do with organizational performance?  Well, the same thing is true in the best organizations.  High performance does not just happen spontaneously, nor is it left to chance.  It doesn’t happen simply because a CEO or other leader starts jumping around and getting excited, hoping that others will get excited too.  Rather, it begins with some well thought out goals and plans that are created by a small group of people; the senior executive team.  Then the senior executive team “teaches” what is important about the plan and how to accomplish the plan to the managers in the organization.  Then the managers “teach” what is important to their employees.  These managers also make sure that they are around to be good examples for their employees, and that they are being good coaches to help their employees perform within the parameters of the plan. 

When you create clarity, focus, and alignment in the organization, then all of a sudden everyone is moving at the right time and in the right way to accomplish some really great things.  Did you notice that in the dance that not everyone was doing the exact same thing at the exact same time?  Everyone had their part, sometimes being different from others.  For example, did you notice in the dance that not everyone turns around to the back of the crowd at the same time?  So it isn’t about everyone doing the same things at the same time, but about people doing what they should do at the right time. 

As employees perform, interacting with others in the organization, as well as outside of the organization, and as they follow the plan, doing their part, then great things begin to happen.  As these great things begin to happen they get excited, and pretty soon performance can take on its own energy levels, fueling higher and higher levels of performance in the organization, which leads to even greater excitement about what is happening in the organization.  

It is this feeling of excitement surrounding Purpose and the accomplishment of the Goals surrounding that Purpose that creates engagement in employees.  And while this feeling might happen spontaneously, the things that led up to it really did have to be carefully planned and executed.  It takes time to create this kind of excitement.  Often times others will not see the time and preparation that goes into creating something fantastic, like the performance in Chicago’s Miracle Mile.  All most see are the results and the excitement surrounding those results.  They think it is magic born out of spontaneity, when, in fact, there was a lot of hard work and planning that went into making that fantastic performance look spontaneous and effortless. 

To brow from and paraphrase some from the song, I’ve got a feeling that today is going to be a good day, but it takes my conscious effort and some well laid plans to make sure that it is going to be a Great Day.  Don’t leave your Great Day for you and your organization up to chance, but rather take the time to plan and share those plans with others. 

 Make a Great Day!

Posted in Engagement, Intent, Leadership | No Comments »

Being a Great Leader

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

The other day someone asked what it would take to exhibit “great leadership.” The following is the answer that I provided:

I think we need to first define “Leadership” before we can even define what “great” Leadership means. Unfortunately there are a lot of definitions and meanings out there about what Leadership is. After more than 8 years of research on the subject and over 1000 research documents, I define Leadership as “creating emotional connections in others in order to accomplish goals.”

Leadership, as I’ve defined it above, is one of the Seven Elements of High Performance™. If we turn to that model, then we will discover what things are necessary to be a “great” Leader. Since we’ve already defined Leadership, we have six remaining elements to learn from, so let’s take a look at them.

1. Put People (not profits, promotions, sales, or other criteria) at the Center of everything you do. As you work on each of the other Elements below and put them into action make sure they are all focused on this central element. This is pretty simple, yet, for so many, so hard to do.

2. Build Trust by exhibiting the Four Behaviors that Build Trust™ (Straightforwardness, Openness, Acceptance, and Reliability). Ask the same from others.

3. Encourage Personal Responsibility by allowing others to make decisions about their lives and their jobs. You don’t have to have all the answers, just ask the right questions. Accept the consequences for the decisions that you make and do not pass them off on others. Exercise your Personal Power and do not steal from others their Personal Power.

4. Have a strong Vision of an aligned Purpose, Values, and Goals. You need to first understand your personal Vision, and then understand and share the organization’s Vision with those you lead. After all, this IS where you are making that emotional connection in others. Purpose is about “why we exist” and can be a powerful motivator. Values put the boundary on our behaviors as we work to achieve our Goals. And Goals are our long-term objectives that will help us achieve our Purpose. Also, make sure your personal Vision is in alignment with the organization’s Vision. If not, then you will probably not be successful in getting others connected to the Vision of the organization because it is not something you can connect with.

5. Focus on Strengths and Accentuate the Positive. Help others grow where their strengths are. Make sure they are in positions that will allow them to use their strengths most of the time. Help them to become masters at their jobs by leveraging those strengths. Let people know how good they are and how important they are to the group’s success and don’t harp on the negative all the time (which is what most managers do). Make most of your interactions with people good interactions.

6. Encourage Innovation, because good enough is not enough. Keep pushing to be better and challenge others to find better ways of doing things. Reward creativity and don’t punish failure, because failure can uncover hidden issues and eventually lead to success. Make sure you understand the processes of your operation and try to make them better.

Those are just a few short items under each of the elements. To learn more about the Seven Elements of High Performance™, you can start on our website where we have information about the research, whitepapers, and other materials for your review, or continue to read the articles on this blogsite. 

http://www.resourcedevelopmentsystems.com/resources/seven_elements.html  

Make a Great Day!

Posted in Leadership | No Comments »

Manager vs. Leader

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

It seems that the discussion continues about what the difference is between being a manager and being a leader, which is most important, and if someone can learn to be either.  I find that most of these arguments miss the mark terribly; after all, we don’t have a team manager and a team leader.  We have a manager who has to also be a leader of a team, as well as deal with all of the various business issues that comes with being a manager. 

In my book Leadership Lessons From the Medicine Wheel: The Seven Elements of High Performance, I share that arguing these distinctions are worthless.  Every manager must learn to be a Leader if they are going to be successful, and Leadership is all about Creating the Emotional Connections that helps engage employees, which then leads to having engaged customers.  This isn’t something that can be shoved off onto others; every, and I mean every manager must learn to be a Leader. 

But being a Leader is only one role that every manager has.  There is also that of being a Builder; one who Creates Sustainable Systems.  This role is involved with insuring that the organization has those systems that will allow it to operate efficiently and effectively, and will insure that it can continue operating well into the future.  This role of Manager also helps insure that these sustainable systems also positively support the Creation of Emotional Connections.  Together, these two roles of the Manager are key to leveraging the Seven Elements of High Performance™ for the organization. 

As we have continued to review the research on organizational performance (now up to over 1000 research based documents), we have created a Seven Elements of High Performance™ Management Competency Model.  While we are still refining it some, we share it here for the first time.

 

 RDS Management Competency Model Expanded

In the center of the model are the Personal Attributes that every good manager should possess.  These attributes allow the manager to easily move their focus about the model, accessing their different roles through an integrated approach. 

The two Management Roles are: Builder – Creating Sustainable Systems; and Leader – Creating Emotional Connections.  The Role of Builder places a major emphasis on Improvement, while the Role of Leader places a major emphasis on Engagement.  In addition to the two Roles there are also two Focuses for Performance: Performance Now, and Performance for the Future. 

Again, both Roles and both Focuses are critical to organizational success.  However, as I discussed in Leadership Lessons From the Medicine Wheel: The Seven Elements of High Performance™, achieving Balance is not about equality, but about putting the right amount of emphasis on the right areas based on the needs of the situation.  So depending on where in the organization the manager might be, there might be a greater emphasis on one of the Roles or Focuses over the other.  However, neither of the Roles or Focuses should ever be ignored, and we must always keep in mind the Central Element of Putting People at the Center.

Finally, we have the Five Management Tools that every successful manager must master:

Self Awareness

Communication Skills

Interpersonal Relationship Skills

Data Analysis Skills

Critical Thinking Skills

 

Keep an eye out for a more detailed whitepaper surrounding this new management competency model.  We will also provide even more detail in our future book Leadership Connections: Engaging Employees for High Performance.

Posted in Engagement, Leadership | No Comments »

The Payroll Efficiency Factor(tm)

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

We have just published a new whitepaper, The Cost of Being Good Enough, which looks at one of the costs for the average organization of having mediocre employee engagement levels.  Many of the researchers, such as Gallup and Towers Watson, have indicated that about one-third of an average organization’s resources is wasted because of having low employee engagement levels.  As a reminder, the research indicates that in the average organization that only 1 out of every 4 employees is engaged; that half are unengaged, and 1 out of every 5 is actively disengaged. 

In our The Cost of Being Good Enough, we introduce a new concept that we call the Payroll Efficiency Factor™.  This is a formula that allows any organization to calculate the financial impact of their employee engagement levels and the amount of work that is not being done as a result.  The formula simply asks the organization to take their percentages of each type of employee (engaged, unengaged, and actively disengaged) and multiply each percentage by a factor and then add them all together.  The resulting Payroll Efficiency Factor™ for the average organization is only 63%.

This means that the average organization of 100 employees, with a payroll of about $4 million, is wasting about $1.5 million!  That is $15,000 per full-time employee per year that is being wasted.  It is work that is being paid for and is not being received.  Of course, the whitepaper helps explain how this happens, but here is one example that is provided in the whitepaper:

This would be like spending $4 per gallon of gasoline, but the hose going from the gas pump to the vehicle is old, cracked and leaky, and by the time the gas actually gets into the tank you are only getting about 2/3 of a gallon of gas instead of the full gallon.  The rest is leaking all over the ground and is wasted.  Would you continue to buy gasoline at this station if you were getting such low returns for your money or would you take action to insure that you were getting your full $4 worth?

We also explore the impact of increasing employee engagement in the organization and the corresponding increase in the Payroll Efficiency Factor™ in the whitepaper.  An increase of 7 to 10 percent on the Payroll Efficiency Factor™ is a corresponding increase in the amount of work that is getting done.  Just imagine getting 10% more work done in your organization at no additional cost; what kind of impact would that have on your organization’s ability to achieve its goals?

The Cost of Being Good Enough is available as a free download in Adobe Acrobat PDF format on our website in the Resources Section.  As always, there is no registration required. 

http://www.resourcedevelopmentsystems.com/articles/articles.html

Make a Great Day!

Posted in Engagement, Leadership | No Comments »

« Older Entries