Sweat the Small Stuff - Seriously!

Take care of the small stuff and the big stuff takes care of itself - or so it seems.

Because when you think about it big stuff is just huge amounts of small stuff.

I had a meeting scheduled with a senior executive this week - guess what, because of a lot of small stuff was dropped, or mismanaged, the meeting did not happen.

How come so many executives let the small screw ups, or seemingly small moments of carelessness go by without comment? Here are some of the responses I have had over the years:

• I don't want to be overly picky
• If I paid attention to every small thing that is screwed up that's all I be doing
• I feel like I am being petty or pedantic when I focus on small stuff.

Well my coaching is get over your concerns and intervene - sweat the small stuff. Lower your tolerance for putting up with, settling for, making do with, and compromising - that behavior sabotages your intentions and undermines anything you say about what your values are.

The frustrating thing about the small stuff is that everyone knows what it is. So do we think it is inconsequential just because it small? Or is it that we just have a high tolerance for carelessness and forgive it as just being human. Whatever the explanation, failing to pay attention to the small stuff is costly. Here are a few examples of small stuff that everyone knows about yet all to frequently carelessly, or unconsciously, drop:

• Being late is late, period. Whether its late for a meeting, a call, with a promised report, .... the list can go on and on. And remember, a good reason, explanation or excuse for being late does not equal being on time - even though most executives except one as a substitute for the other. How nuts is that? And, BTW, being late, its not so small stuff. If you were to calculate the cost of all the wasted time, opportunity and money caused by giving a pass to being late, it would be huge
• Convening a meeting and/or letting it start without a clear intended outcome, and the right people in the room
• Leaving a meeting without clarifying the who, what, by when, to ensure decision are executed on. Or worse still, leaving a meeting with no decisions or discernable outcome
• Letting people off the hook when they fail to keep a promise or act consistently with some agreed on practice or value.

Why it's important to sweat the small stuff? Because our unconciousness, or carelessness, is the moment-by-moment, day-by-day opportunities we get to learn, improve and correct. To fail to take advantage of these correctable moments is to implicitly commit to undermining our espoused purpose and values.

So, as I said, sweat the small stuff - seriously!

How Women Are Redefining Work and Success

Business Week report in their Work-Life Balance segment that, "Women are using their increased economic power to bring about more creative, manageable work schedules."

The article features broadcasters Claire Shipman, of ABC News' Good Morning America, and Katty Kay, of BBC World News America, and how they each struggled prior to deciding to turn down promotions and plum assignments so they could tend to their families.

As the BW article notes, "It wasn't that they weren't ambitious, they just weren't interested in the grueling climb up the corporate ladder. They yearned for a path to success based on results, not hours clocked." They tell tell their story in their book Womenomics: Write Your Own Rules for Success.

Shipman & Kay show the increasing impact of professional women on companies' bottom lines, and give practical advice on how to create "a more sane" work life.

In the BW piece their is an excerpt from the book that looks at the trade-offs many employees are willing to make to get a better work-life balance, and how companies are reacting.

This is a topic that will, hopefully, generate a lot of thoughtful inquiry and a rethinking of our long standing models or organization, management and work.

Surfacing and Dealing With Conflict: An Essential Competency of Leadership

The way in which leaders express their intentions for the future of their organization, whether in the form of a strategic intent or a BHAG what is explicitly or implicitly expresses is we are not preserving the organization of years ago.

• We are going to be at work building the organization for the future - we will be putting the future first
  
• We are going to be creating milestones – part of a necessary and ambitious support structure to realize that future
  
• We will retain and build on all that works that has been created over the years
  
• We will be dismantling and leaving behind what doesn’t work - what is insufficient or inappropriate for the future we want
  
• We will be building what is not here yet that we will need for the future we want.

In the process of realizing our intentions there will be conflict. There will conflict.

Some conflict will be intentionally built into accountabilities, for example - the CFO will be accountable to tightly control costs and the CMO, R&D and others will have accountabilities that will make more demands on resources than are available.

Some conflicts will be a by-product of missing processes and practices, or unclear accountabilities, or poor communications, unclear policies and procedures, insufficient training, mentoring and coaching.

Other sources of conflict will be a function of interpersonal relationships when individual personalities find some others difficult to deal with. Mostly when we think of conflict this is the one that most people immediately think of.

One of the things to get about conflict is that it is not evidence of something wrong. Conflict managed well will be the source of innovation and creativity - if we learn how to surface and deal with conflict powerfully

So it will be essential to create a set of practices and disciplines to surface and deal with conflict and have those practices be as automatic and and frequently used and say, using email.

Some benefits to be derived from conflicts being surfaced and then handled well:

• We discover conflict is constructive, it forwards values, goals and intentions, especially when the outcome includes a focus on important values, commitments, problems to solve and issues to resolve
  
• Authentic communication is a by product that deepens relationship - to values, commitments, colleagues...
  
• Self-expression that is part of the process releases tensions, expresses emotion, unleashes passions, and defuses anxiety, and stress
  
• Collaboration and cooperation expands
  
• in itself learning to deal with conflict is social skill building
  
• It accelerates innovation and idea generation rather that stop and block it
  
• And it Increases individual self-confidence and the confidence of the organization as a whole
  
• Finally, the give and take of dealing with conflict ends up maximizing outcomes with finite resources.

Most People at Work Under-Perform! How Come? And, What to Do About It.

We at The London Perret Roche Group have the point of view that almost everyone at work underperforms – almost everyone!

Many executives have their own perspectives about how come, and their own ways of dealing with under-performers.

In a recent article, Life at the Bottom: How to Handle Underperformers the author quotes the often cited example of Jack Welch's practice when CEO of GE: "Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, implemented a strategy of annually eliminating the bottom 10% of his company’s employees. This effective strategy is one of the keys to GE’s long-term success."

When 3M CEO George Buckley was asked in a recent interview, "Jack Welch recommended firing the bottom 10%. Do you agree?" He answered, "I think the concept is right, but it's a little dehumanizing." However he went on to say, "When you have identifiable poor performers, it's in the best interest of the organization for them not to work there." Bottom line: dehumanizing or not they have got to go.

Few executives would argue that poor performers, after all the training and development efforts have failed to produce a transformation in performance need to be let go.

However, don't stop there. That is dealing with the effects of a problem not the source of the problem. I recommend as part of the after action review that hiring, and the initial training induction procedures, be re-assessed to discover whether new employees are going to be performers. Far too many potential under-performers get hired because of missing or inadequate initial screening. Hiring manager take note.

New employees are often dropped into their new jobs with no support, no coaching or mentoring, insufficient feedback from supervisions, insufficient clarity about what it takes to excel, insufficient acknowledgement and appreciation, and most of all insufficient excitement and enthusiasm for the mission, vision and values of the organization - if they even have discovered from leaders what it actually is. So under-performance is an indictment of leadership as much as it is a failing of an individual contributor.

It would be worth taking a leaf out of Zappo's play book and learn Why Zappos Pays New Employees to Quit--And You Should Too as one place to start introspection about your own role in being the cause of your peoples' under-performance.

President Obama's Commencement Speech at Notre Dame

Is there anything to learn about leadership from the events that surrounded President Obama's invitation to Notre Dame, his acceptance of the invitation and how he spoke about the controversy?

Obviously I think so.

Without taking sides on the issue of abortion, the appropriateness of Notre Dame extending an invitation to the President to give the commencement address, and their decision to confer an honorary degree on him and any of the other issues of contention there are some aspects of leadership that should not get lost.

1. The decision of Notre Dame's President the Rev. John Jenkins to invite President Obama in the first place. In his own words he expresses the areas where he is aligned with, supportive of and even an admirer of President Obama while at the same time distinguishing where they have different position in important areas.

Leaders can and do speak for their commitments and values without vilifying or alienating those who hold different, even opposing commitments. They recognize that differences can only be reconciled in respectful relationship and open dialogue.

Leaders are informed by opposition and resistance, but in matters of principle, commitment, and values they are not shaped by it. The Rev Jenkins was at the receiving end of a lot of opposition, often expressed with emotion, and with the conviction of righteousness. Through all of it, he presenced himself with grace, tolerance and compassion for the views of those who wanted him to make different decisions yet remained steadfast in following through with what was, for him, the right course of action given his principles, commitments and values.

2. The decision of President Obama to accept the invitation, in the face of what was clearly going to be a heated debate on a very polarizing topic, with a lot of organized and vocal resistance is another expression of leadership. Leaders do not shy away from controversy. They do not minimize, or attempt to neutralize resistance. They do not demean, or attempt to marginalize the resistors, or the validity of their perspective, or in any way invalidate them. Leaders meet the opposition to their principles, commitments and values head on, and look for aspects of agreement, areas of common cause, and ways in which affinity, respect and dialogue can be pursued and honest disagreement respected as the context for further discussion not as and excuse for alienation and conflict.

3. Leaders do not shy away from facing the facts, especially those that conflict with "our better angels". In his commencement address President Obama said clearly that, "...part of the problem, of course, lies in the imperfections of man..." and that, "...bringing together men and women of principle and purpose -- even accomplishing that can be difficult." Leaders are both grounded in the facts of their condition and rooted in their principles, commitments and values.

4. Leaders are in action making decisions and plans and rally their followers and opponents alike, "So let us work together to..."

Regardless of our views about individual leaders there is always something to learn from them.

Generosity as an Aspect of Leadership

Generosity is a "way of being". It is an expression of our humanity at its finest. It is an expression of self - for its own sake.  Generosity does not have an "in order to" element to it .  As in, in order to get a payback, in order to look good, in order to be seen as a "good" person, or in order to get along.

Paradoxically, leaders who are generous - with their time, with their knowledge, with their relationships, with the way they respond to and deal with peoples' concerns do get huge paybacks. 

Their people are more loyal, they are in better shape, they have the experience of being supported and cared for, and so much much more - all of which at some point shows up in behaviors that benefit the leader's intentions for his/her organization.

"We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give" Winston Churchill

Where Do You Want to be When the Recession is Over?

Most executives recognize that the world they lived in before the recession will not be the one they return to when the recession is over. 

There will be repositioning, rethinking priorities and strategies. We will see executive teams work to reexamine their assumptions, many of which they'll discover turned out to be invalid and is part of what got them (and the whole economy) into trouble this time round.  Things like, debt ratios, risk tolerance, growth expectations and so on.

For some the task will be easy - they will focus on their core purpose and fundamental organizing principles and values, and get back to work with renewed intention and vitality. These folks will see change as an opportunity and will move fast to take advantage of it. Cisco under John Chamber  is a good example of this way of responding to change and Chambers and Cisco have a track record.

For others there will be a period confusion, uncertainty, mistakes, even disintegration. New leadership will be critical. Leadership in which the leaders reinvent themselves, and create a reinvention process for their organization. Paraphrasing Einstein, they will recognize, we can't solve today's problems with the same thinking that created them in the first place.

So the good news is the current meltdown is a call to transformational leaders to settle for nothing less than a transformational change of their organizations. 

We are not going back to business as usual so: rethink, reinvent, rebrand, reenergize and recommit the the core purpose, organizing principles and values of your organization and get to work. 

And if core purpose, organizing principles and values are not clear start there. Pile on all the help you can get until the "what you are up to" is clear. Alignment, collaboration, teamwork, and all the other building blocks of great organizations can't we put in place until this step is complete.

Take Care of Employees You Let Go

You would have to be living in a cave to be unaware of the extent of job losses in the US and around the world over the last year or so. And, as a C-Suite executive or senior manager, it is highly likely that you have had the task of telling people that they are to be let go.

Most organizations have rigorous practices in place to handle all the procedural and administrative steps the take an employee of the payroll and off their premises. Sounds pretty cold when expressed like that.

Keeping morale up after a round of layoffs, and doing all the necessary things to make sure that the company recovers and continues to grow is often challenge enough for most executives. That said, I recommend that attention is paid to the now former employees too. And that practices and disciplines be put in place to support them find their next jobs. I can make a case for doing so simply on the basis of generosity and compassion. If you like, the golden rule in action.

And there are other practical reasons for taking care of people who have been laid off: they may end up with suppliers, with customers, with competitors, they may be people you would want to rehire when the economy recovers, so it also makes good business sense. See Business Week 5/4/09, You're Fired - But Stay in Touch

So I recommend you do everything possible to ease the transition for fired employees from their current job, to no job, to a new job. Give them some practical coaching:

Do what you can to ensure they leave you with, as the TV commercial says, “You’ve got to have a plan!” And, what can you provide to support them execute against the plan? As BW reports many companies have put up support web sites.  A job search requires focus and discipline, especially in a crowded job scarce market. Prepare employees, many of whom may not have been in the job market for years, for how much work will it take? Encourage them to plan for more than they think it will take.  

Make sure they fully appreciate that until they find paid employment “job hunting” is their full-time job. This means they need to approach their job search with the same rigor and discipline their future employer will expect. If you can't find any other context for putting in the time and effort to do this then put it down to corporate brand building, or to existing employee morale building, or to future employee recruitment incentives.

We have worked with clients who have set up alumni support groups to help former colleagues transition to their next career move. The payoff for everyone involved is much much higher than any investment in time effort or other resources.

Here are a few elements of a plan we recommend that you support fired employees leave with. Some daily activities or action items:

1.    Day 1 Create an Action Plan:

a.    What outcomes will you produce and by when – be specific. You need the specific outcome to know what actions are needed. For example: speak to ten people every day and let them know I am looking for a job; have my resume ready by X date

b.    Create a tracking mechanism for the plan, for example who to contact, title, company, when contacted, when you sent a resume, meeting scheduled and so on. DO THE MATH – HOW MUCH ACTIVITY DO YOU NEED TO ENGAGE IN TILL YOU GET THE DESIRED OUTCOME – YOUR NEW JOB? AND PLAN FOR MORE RATHER THAN LESS.

2.    Day 1 Continued: And Every Day Till An Offer Is Accepted:

a.    Tell everyone you know you are looking for a job – have a specific number in your plan.

b.  Post on all your social networks: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Alumni sites, and so on, that you are looking for a new job. If your former employer has a support web site use it 

c.    Ask all your contacts for one or two referrals and ask them to put the word out to their network, don’t rely on them to think to do that

d.     Stay in touch with your contacts on a regular basis remind the people you have already told about your job search that you are still looking. Ask if they have thought of new referrals, or heard of any suitable openings, or have any advice for you. Ask is the operative word

e.    Speak to X number of contacts or referrals ideally in person, or on the phone, to arrange exploratory meetings or interviews. Remember that most people find jobs from loose ties. See The Strength of Weak Ties

f.    Research: visit job sites, post on job sites, read trade press, go to networking meetings, job fairs and trade conferences

g.     Send your resume to all your search contacts

h.    Do an after action review at the end of each day and prepare the plan for the next day.