All Posts Tagged With: "communication"
A Systematic Approach to Change
The decision to do a Baldrige assessment is a decision to change the organization. Questions will be asked that prompt leaders to reconsider the way they do things. Gaps in the day-to-day conduct of business will be exposed. Unacceptable results will shine light on ineffective processes. Cursed with new knowledge, senior leaders can either ignore it and accept that the current management system is unable to achieve the results they desire or embrace change.
The opportunities for improvement revealed by a Baldrige assessment contain the logic for acting upon them: Your results are flat or negative because this or that process is broken. Fix the process and improve your results. Measure your progress. Validate it with your customers. Repeat.
Unfortunately, the logic of the change is usually lost to everyone but the leaders who enact it, which can render it ineffective. In a recent article on Forbes, author Carol Kinsey Goman explains why human beings resist change. According to brain analysis technology, our work habits are controlled by a part of the brain called the basal ganglia. When we do things the way we’ve always done them, we feel good. Change stimulates the prefrontal cortex, which is linked to the amygdala, which controls…
16Jan2012 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedImproving Team Performance
When is a metric not a metric?
In “Five New Management Metrics You Need to Know,” James Slavet suggests new metrics that great teams should measure. Few are new, and even fewer could be considered metrics since they are largely unmeasurable, but being aware of them may help your team improve performance, so here they are:
- Flow State Percentage. How many hours a day team members are “in the flow”—focused on a task without interruption—divided by the number of hours they work. According to Slavet, “studies have shown that each time flow state in disrupted it takes 15 minutes to get back into flow, if you can get back at all.” Find ways to reduce interruptions and productivity will go up.
- Anxiety-Boredom Continuum. People are more productive when they are challenged without being overwhelmed, and they tend to be unproductive when they are bored. Observe team members for signs of boredom (low energy, showing up late and leaving early) or anxiety (reacting to setbacks with anger or frustration, getting sick a lot), ask them where they are on the continuum, and strike an effective balance.
- Meeting Promoter Score. At the end of each meeting, “ask the participants to each rate from 1 to 10 how effective the meeting…
Strategic Human Resources
Fast Company blogger Seth Kahan recently led a roundtable discussion among senior HR professionals about three tough questions they face (article here):
- How does strategic HR drive competitive excellence?
- What skills does HR need to develop to contribute in the C-suite?
- How is talent acquired to build the future, to achieve the organization’s strategic objectives?
The conversation produced these insights:
- HR is positioned to drive competitive excellence if it is fully aligned with business goals. The Baldrige Criteria ask a key question about this: What are your key human resource or workforce plans to accomplish your short- and longer-term strategic objectives and action plans?
- Organizational capacity building is a direct and powerful contribution HR can make if it is fully aligned with the future direction of the enterprise. In addition to the question above, the Baldrige Criteria ask: How do you organize and manage your workforce to address your strategic challenges and action plans?
- Senior HR professionals must be well-versed in business drivers including financials, industry, market circumstances, and competitive intelligence to be considered a player in the C-suite.
- As the world transitions from hierarchical leadership to self-organizing collaboration, HR is positioned to support or drive this shift. The HR section of the Baldrige Criteria addresses this shift by…
Baldrige Promotes Resilience
No matter what your organization does, it must be resilient to overcome adversity, whether that adversity comes from a recessionary economy, global competition, runaway healthcare costs, or shrinking budgets in education and government. Baldrige Award winners exemplify resiliency through visionary leadership, employee engagement, open communication, and a focus on the future.
George S. Everly, Jr., PhD is associate professor of psychiatry at The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, executive director of Resiliency Science Institutes, and author of Resilient Leadership: When Failure Is Not an Option. In “Building a Resilient Organizational Culture,” he writes that “just as individuals can learn to develop personal traits of resilience, so too can organizations develop a culture of resilience.” This occurs when key leaders demonstrate four core attributes of optimism, decisiveness, integrity, and open communication. When a few leaders model these behaviors, Everly notes, “we believe they have the ability to change an entire culture of an organization as others replicate the resilient characteristics they have observed.”
The framework for changing the culture addresses four areas:
- People prosper from success. Create an environment that makes it possible for people to succeed, especially early in their careers, and then increase the difficulty and complexity of tasks.
- People learn while observing others. Assign new…
Baldrige Model: How do your senior leaders lead?
Item 1.1 in the Baldrige Criteria asks key questions about how senior leaders lead. The following processes, best practices, and problem areas look at critical issues in this part of the Baldrige model.
Your organization needs processes for senior leaders to:
- Set, review, and refine your mission, vision, and values
- Deploy your vision and values throughout the organization
- Demonstrate their commitment to your values and to legal and ethical behavior, including promoting an organizational environment that requires legal and ethical behavior
- Create a sustainable organization that includes an environment for performance improvement and leadership, accomplishing your mission and strategic objectives, innovation, and agility
- Create a workforce culture focused on the customer
- Create a learning organization, including participating in organizational learning and developing and enhancing their leadership skills
- Conduct succession planning and develop future leaders
- Communicate with and engage the entire workforce including two-way communication, sharing key decisions, and participating in reward and recognition programs
- Create a focus on action to achieve the organization’s objectives, improve performance, and attain its vision
Best practices to consider:
- Senior leaders, including the president/CEO, are personally and actively involved in designing, implementing, improving, and following these key processes.
- Senior leaders align strategic plans and measurement systems with the organization’s mission and vision, and they talk about the mission…
What To Do About Turnover
The predominantly right-wing political assault on public employees is having an obvious impact: Public employees are running for the exits. While some may applaud this trend, we will all be worse off when fewer qualified people remain to provide the essential services we all need and expect. According to a Bloomberg Businessweek article, retirement applications from state workers in Wisconsin were up 79% in the first quarter of 2011 over the previous year. Texas expects retirements to be 54% above average this year. In New York, retirements were up 65% in 2010. Ohio saw a 27% annual rise in retirement filings and inquiries in March. Across the country, one-third of state and local workers with specialized skills are up for retirement in the next five years.
The City of Coral
Springs offers a positive path in this difficult situation. As the chart on the left, taken from its Baldrige Award-winning application (available here), shows, a government body that actively supports its employees can retain them—and it can keep them satisfied: Employee satisfaction has exceeded 90% for the last ten years.
How did Coral Springs do it? Here are a few factors mentioned in its application:
- The City fosters a culture conducive to high performance and…
Communication Tips for Leaders
In an HBR post, Lt. Col. Rob “Waldo” Waldman, a fighter pilot who flew missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, offers communication “wingtips” from his experiences that can help leaders of any organization:
- Have a mass briefing at least once a month. High-performing organizations hold what are commonly referred to as “all-hands meetings” to discuss performance on plans and key scorecard measures, changes or trends in markets, and internal issues and successes. As Waldman notes, “your wingmen need to hear important news—whether good or bad—from you first.”
- Conduct feedback sessions. Meet regularly with the people who report to you to discuss how they are doing, what obstacles they are facing, and what they need from you. In high-performing organizations, this is a critical part of their performance management systems.
- Walk the flight line. “Spend time with [your people] on the job and observe how they do business. Ask questions. Show them your appreciation by connecting with them as people first and employees second.”
- De-brief your missions. One of the features of Baldrige organizations is how they “close the loop” on every process. When a process or cycle is completed, gather those with a stake in the process and discuss whether objectives were met and how the process can be…
