One of my favorite things to do when waiting for a customer in their office is browse their book shelves. It gives me a great sense for the models and theories that they already have in their head, which gives us a good foundation for shared understanding. It's also a great opportunity for my own learning!
Yesterday I was in a new customer's office and came across "The Fifith Discipline Fieldbook" by Peter Senge. I have seen Peter speak and read the original book years ago, but had not come across this particular version. My customer was generous enough to lend it to me.
Peter made famous the concepts of "systems thinking" and a "learning organization" just as we were coming out of the industrial age into the age of the knowledge worker. I was browsing through the text (as the author encourages) and found some very valuable and timeless insights and models. Some are almost a natural part of our collective consciousness, and some are concepts that clearly we are still struggling with in businesses of all sizes.
One chapter restated that the core of having a learning organization is based upon five "learning disciplines" - lifelong programs of study and practice. As I read it, I thought to myself: "for all my exposure to these concepts and familiarity with the book, I can't name the Five Disciplines" (I would love to hear from all of you masters that CAN!)
For those of us that need a refresher, or who have never been exposed to the key disciplines, here they are:
1. Personal Mastery - learning to expand our personal capacity to create the results we most desire
2. Mental Models - reflecting upon, continually clarifying and improving our internal pictures of the world, and seeing how they shape our actions and decisions
3. Shared vision - building a sense of comitment in a group by developing shared images of the future we seek to create
4. Team learning - transforming conversational and collective thinking so that groups of people can create ability greater than te sum of individual talents
5. Systems thinking- a way of thinking and communicating about the forces and interrelationships that shape the behavior of systems.
So here is my question. Are you a learning organizaition? Do you embody these disciplines as a leader? Do you promote and build the structure so that your team and business meets the criteria for a learning organization?
It is clear in these times, more than it was when the book was written, having a "learning organization" is critical for agility, competitive advantage, and even survival.
Please click here to read more from Senge's website, and make a commitment to take action on at least one of these ideas. If you need a little help getting started, just contact us!
Seize Tomorrow!
Business as usual doesn't work anymore. The economy, globalization, technology and competition have all dramatically changed what we all need to do to be successful for the future. So as a business leader, how will you transform your organization in 2010 so that you will be successful and thrive?
These are the conversations we have with our customers to help them prepare for a future unlike the past:
- Organizing people, roles, practices, processes and systems for maximum effectiveness and agility
- Designing services to provide value in the new context
- Adopting new ways to connect and communicate with customers, employees, and stakeholders that exploit new technologies
- Rethinking sourcing models, decreasing overhead and eliminating waste
- Transforming your role as a leader
- Leading change
- Staying ahead of the curve with technology
Contact us if you are interested in exploring these conversations more and transforming your organization.
December is a perfect time for business leaders to reflect on the year's goals and accomplishments. Take the time over the next few weeks to slow down, and give yourself the time and space to consider what you and your team successfully completed this year, where you are satisfied with your progress against goals, and what areas need focus in 2010. And then, as the New Year rolls around... ACT!
- Make a SMART plan for 2010- one that is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timed
- Design a strategic 90 day project- harness the energy of the first quarter
- Hold a team jumpstart meeting - align, energize and connect your employees for superior performance
Contact us if you want to learn more about how we can help you with any of these options. Enjoy the holiday season!
Business owners and leaders must recognize that this recession has brought on a new dynamic to our markets - long term frugal customers. When it comes to selling your product or solution today, you must develop new strategies.
1. Rethink Marketing: Because most customers go to the net first, you need to get savvy with search engine marketing, blogs, Facebook pages, Twitter and so on. They will not only engage potential customers but also build a growing digital footprint.
2. Value Message: You need to reflect on and re-craft your message. There's an ROI in every decision making process these days so make sure you demonstrate your value proposition from the start.
3. Customer Feedback: During tough times, your customers may be looking for alternatives. This means you need to communicate more and perhaps even provide enhanced offerings. In fact, this may help increase "word of mouth," which could result in getting more customers. Ask your customers some questions, such as: What do you value the most? What else would you want? This can be extremely valuable in terms of targeting new customers, as well as fine-tuning your marketing.
4. Be Upbeat: In light of the negative media, it's not easy to be positive. But as a leader, you need to set a mood mood of resolve and optimism. It's critical for mobilizing your employees and building confidence with vendors and potential customers. Plus, its infectious and just plain old feels great!!!
If you would like more information about creating new marketing messages, mobilizing employees, or redesigning your sales process in light of the new situation -Request a Free Consultation. We help business leaders achieve success through all of these strategies and more.
Related posts:
Do-You-Own-the-Mood?
As a business leader, how wonderful would it be to have top talent lining up at YOUR door?
In The Encore Effect Mark Sanborn asks the question: What if as a leader, you had such a reputation for effectiveness that you never had to look for new employees? There was always a long line of job applicants ready to do whatever it took to work for you?(Example: In 2006, Google received one million job applications and made 5,500 hires.)
So the question is: How do great sales managers create the ‘Google affect' in their organizations?
1. Raise the Bar to Entry
Strong sales organizations know that rock stars want to hang with rock stars. Instead of making it easy to join their company, they install hiring processes that are designed to screen, eliminate and only allow the best to join. Google's culture begins and is maintained with a rigorous hiring process.
If you don't have a documented process for hiring, there is a good chance you are still hiring from the gut, bringing bias to the interview, and keeping a fair amount of finger crossing in your final selection.
2. Create Cultures of Accountability
Great sales managers know how to take a team from startup to grownup. Effective sales leaders know that even good, disciplined salespeople work best when there is a culture of accountability. This starts by having systems, processes and metrics for performance in place. If you don't have anything to measure, you can't inspect, which means you can't expect. High performing sales organizations have metrics for hiring, on-boarding, business development, sales and client retention.
3. Be Excellent Teachers
Marshall Goldsmith authored the book, "What Got You Here Won't Get You There." This pretty much sums up the challenge for a tops sales producers transitioning into sales management. What got them to management was their ability to sell and close business. This skill has zero value if they don't have the ability to teach and transfer skills. Sales managers are only as good as their sales team.
4. Create Community
We may be living in an increasingly virtual world; however, people still want connection. Look at all the different groups on LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. Strong sales leaders are connected with their sales team, regardless if they are local or global.
Arunas Chesonis, CEO of Paetech, has a Friday afternoon conference call with his 4,000 employees every week. People on his team look forward to the call because it's an update on what's happening, where the company is headed, and includes a good deal of humor. The salespeople might be located all over the country, however, are connected to the mission and vision because of the video conference.
Contact us for more strategies on attracting and keeping top producers to fuel your companies growth.
Here are some of my favorite resources of the week:
I posted links to two great resources on the Good Stuff section of my website:
If you like them, please take a moment to hit the vote button, so your favorites as a group rise to the top of the resource list. Also, I would love to hear your insights, so consider leaving comments.
One of my favorite books of the year is now out in executive summary: Who's Got Your Back by Keith Ferrazzi. Keith makes the case for business-owner-advisory-boards like TAB that create strong networks of people that enable you to "build deep, trusting relationships that create success - and won't let you fail.." He emphasizes some of the best practices we have at TAB of sharing goals and strategies and clearly establishing group commitments for ongoing success.
If you are still hungry for more...there are a few new blog posts too: Seize Tomorrow Blog
One of the most important responsibilities for business leaders is giving employees the feedback they need so that they can develop, and having a practice of continuously making well grounded assessments of your employees so that you are leveraging your most precious resource: your employees and their potential.
I was asked to speak on giving feedback to a TAB peer advisory board in Union tomorrow. While preparing, I came upon some favorite resources that I have collected over the years. Here they are for your benefit.
It all starts with well developed and communicated expectations for the role - click here for our worksheet Key Accountabilities.doc
Need help with approaching the conversation - check out these guidelines: Initiating Feedback Conversations or this article: Learn to Be Constructively Critical
Here is an example of a appraisal form your organization can adopt to ensure all employees are getting relevant feedback on an ongoing basis: Performance Appraisal Form
Don't shy away from this responsibility! In addition to the growth and alignment of the great employees you have, this is an opportunity to evaluate where you are settling for mediocrity and take the required steps to move employees who are not performing up to standards out of your organization.
What do you find are some of the best practices? As a leader are you making the time to invest in your people on a routine basis?
To be successful in today's market and build competitive advantage for the future, business leaders need to leverage every asset they have. This means business leaders must be aware of their own strengths, capabilities and passions, as well as the strengths and capabilities of their employees. Once you are aware of these assets, successful business leaders arrange the roles and responsibilities of the organization to make the most of them.
A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis is an important tool in this process. SWOTs can be completed on many levels: you can do a SWOT on your business, your team, yourself, or your employees. A personal SWOT includes reflection on these questions:
- What activities do you do well/excel at?
- What relevant knowledge, experience or natural capability do you bring to your role?
- What are your personality strengths?
- What activities do you have a passion for?
- What do others see as your strengths?
- Which strengths are req'd for success in your role?
All leaders should complete a Personal SWOT and design their own role to play off those strengths and passions. Of course this means, that you then have to find people who possess strengths and capacities you don't have and surround yourself with them!
When we work with business leaders, completing a personal SWOT is one of the first things we collaborate on. Click here to download our template: Personal SWOT. Our Leadership Style report serves as great input for the SWOT as it provides a 23 page comprehensive report of your natural behaviors, values and attributes. You can learn more and request your report by clicking: -Free Leadership Style Report
Remember: Leaders are learners! We all need to be self aware, continuously improving and modeling the way for our teams to do the same.
Related content:
Developing Key Accountabilities
Jim Collins - Hedghog Concept
Smart, effective leaders share a common trait: the desire and ability to learn new things. To be successful in the future, and build organizations that are able to respond to continuous change, learning is a performance essential.
Business leaders need to be able to quickly learn new concepts, adopt them, and put them into practice within their organization. They also must ensure their employees are always learning.
Learning is a team sport, and winning means using the knowledge you and your team accumulate to gain competitive advantage, build a sustainable organization and achieve your vision. Here are three reasons why:
1. Effective learning requires reciprocity - interaction with others.
Every so often I meet a business owner who tells me that they don't need a peer advisory board because they read books. Now don't get me wrong... I love books, and blogs and all sorts of other content that I can get my hands on. But reading books on your own, pales in comparison to the effectiveness of reading something and then having an interactive conversation with peers to delve more deeply into the subject, how it might be relevant to your situation, and what action you can take. The act of interacting with others is called reciprocity and is a fundamental of learning. It is part of our biology since we are inherently social beings.
I am a big fan of online universities. One of the reasons they are effective is because interaction is built into the design of the course. Meetings with study groups, 1-1 conversations with peers and other similar techniques are very effective for learning. Even though the interaction is virtual, it can be more effective than the stale semi-comatose interaction we have all experienced of sitting in a room with a talking head, and not participating at all.
Online learning can be economical and effective. Just make sure your team has an opportunity to interact and continue conversations about what they've learned after watching the information. I work with teams who have unbelievable access to online content, but no one takes advantage of the courses. Make it a team event: set a time, buy pizza, watch it together, and stimulate some conversation afterward. The rewards will be tenfold.
2. Effective learning requires commitment, discipline and a game plan.
Learning is not a casual pursuit. There is a cost for learning, even if the content is free. Effective learning requires a conscious commitment to use time and resources to gain new capacities. Much like the need to practice before a game, you need to learn before you need to use the knowledge. That means you always need to be thinking ahead about the new practices and capacities you will need in the future. Then you need the discipline to devote time to the learning, even when a dozen urgent things are pulling at you.
3. Until you can put what you learned into action, you have not learned it sufficiently.
Effective learning is defined by gaining a new capacity to do something. In business, the new capacity must be relevant. Just understanding something doesn't cut it....reading about golf or Tiger Woods does not mean you can golf. Understanding is an important but preliminary step on the path to gaining new capacity. Practicing the new behavior, process or practice is essential for learning. Again, this requires others: colleagues, customers, coaches, mentors etc.
"Anything that we have to learn to do, we learn by the actual doing of it" Aristotle
If you are a business owner or business leader, make a commitment to your own learning. Find colleagues, peers advisory groups like TAB, teachers, mentors or coaches to work with. Then commit to building an organization that is always learning. Call us if you want someone to reciprocate with, we'll be glad to have a conversation with you about building effective and always learning organizations!
CARPE MANANA...
Seize Tomorrow!
On my Sunday bike ride along the boardwalk this morning, I ran into an exceptional array of religious diversity. Some Jewish people out for a stroll in Bradley Beach, an open air Methodist service on the boardwalk in Ocean Grove, some people wearing all white returning from the sea where one of them had just been baptized. In Asbury Park I came across an older gentleman wearing an "I Love Jesus" baseball cap and a Mennonite family on the playground. I have had that experience before on Sunday mornings on the boardwalk stretch from Belmar to Asbury Park, and it always makes me appreciate the diverse area I live in. The ocean calls people of all faiths to the boardwalk for reflection, celebration and community.
I kept thinking about diversity as I pedaled home. Building a strong team requires diversity. As a leader, if you assemble a group of people with similar cultural backgrounds, similar talents and similar communication styles your organization will be shallow, and unable to compete in a rapidly changing and global marketplace. Smart leaders embrace diversity because it makes their organizations stronger, more capable and more effective. Innovation comes from the ability to look at problems from diverse perspectives.
To build the capacity to act effectively, leaders must design and build the following types of diversity into their teams and organizations:
Diverse cultural backgrounds so that your organization understands and can coordinate, cooperate and transact with a wide array of suppliers, customers and employees.
Diverse talents so that individual strengths overlap and make weaknesses irrelevant (props to Pete Drucker for that thought - it is one of my favorites, although not an exact quote:)
Diverse working styles that complement each other: assertive people, patient people, people that lead, people more comfortable following, steady people, people who love change, analytical people, people who honor the rules and traditions, people who say "break the rules" when they no longer make sense, and so on...
If you are a corporate leader, you may have more diversity training than you can handle, and the real meaning and purpose of why diversity is important may sometimes get lost.
If you are a small business owner, you may not have the benefit of human resource professionals that can help you build strategies for diversity.
In either case, take some time to reflect on the organization you lead. Where can you benefit from more diversity? Where are you lacking? What action steps can you take to increase the strength of your organization today?
Contact us if you are interested in learning more about building strong diverse teams for the future, or want to see how diverse your current team is in terms of talents and style preferences.