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Entries by Mike Figliuolo

How You Can Prevent the Dreaded Scope Creep from Attacking

December 19, 2011 /0 Comments/in Leadership, Project Management /by Mike Figliuolo

We’ve all dealt with the unpleasant dynamic of scope creep at some point in our careers. As leaders, our job is to manage scope effectively so our teams can get their work done without running themselves ragged. I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Kevin Eikenberry (author of From Bud to Boss) for over an hour on this topic. Today I’ll provide an excerpt of that conversation and at the end of the post I’ll provide you with a link for the actual audio file of our conversation. So, here are a few thoughts on how leadership plays a critical role in controlling scope. It’s another excerpt from my conversation with Kevin (previously Kevin and I discussed a leader’s role in process improvement – you can read that post here). Kevin Eikenberry: The thing I think is really important is this idea of giving people a clear scope and letting them know where they can play and where they can’t. This idea of a clear scope is so important. How have you seen leaders successfully deal with what I am sure we have all experienced, which is scope creep? How can we help teams work through that challenge? Mike Figliuolo: I think there are two kinds of scope creep. There is the one where the team wants to expand the area on which they are going to have an impact. The second is where you have all those wonderful external parties, like senior executives and other stakeholders, trying to expand the scope of what your team works on. Let me focus on that first area.

3 Keys Leaders Can Use to See the Future

December 14, 2011 /0 Comments/in Books, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s guest post is by Daniel Burrus, author of Flash Foresight (CLICK HERE to get your copy now). You can read more about Daniel at the end of the post. We’re all aware that there are timeless leadership principles that have been true since the dawn of time and that will continue to be valid in tomorrow’s business environment. Things like integrity, honesty, and personal responsibility immediately come to mind. While those are all vital traits, they’re not the leadership traits I’m addressing right now. In today’s world of technology-driven transformation, leaders need to embrace a new leadership principle if they want their organization to be relevant today and in the future. In the recent past, leaders have focused on agility—being able to change quickly based on external circumstances because change from the outside-in has been coming at an ever-increasing speed, and it’s only getting faster. Many of these types of changes are driven by technology, but they’re also from our customers, because technology is influencing our customers and changing the way they interact with us. We also have increasing transparency, meaning your customers and prospects have access to complaints, as well as accolades, through social media and other new forms of communication. All of these changes, which are coming from the outside-in and force agility, cause leaders to react, crisis manage, and put out fires on a daily basis. Knowing this, it’s evident that simply being agile no longer works. Instead, today’s leaders need to be anticipatory.

Best of thoughtLEADERS 2011: The Awesomest Posts Ever

December 12, 2011 /0 Comments/in Balanced Lifestyle, Books, Business Toolkit, Career, Communications, Customer Service, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Leadership, Project Management, Sales, Social Media, Strategy, Training /by Mike Figliuolo

This year is almost over so it’s time for the year in review list of the BEST posts we’ve published in 2011. It’s time for the 2011 edition of The Figgies (here are the 2010 and 2009 editions). This is an annual event here at the thoughtLEADERS Blog. Here’s how it goes: this list is comprised of our most viewed, most forwarded, quirkiest, most provocative work as judged by you the readers. There’s also a kicker bonus post on the list just for good measure (it’s a “wayback” – and speaking of wayback, check out the photo on the trophy… yes… that’s me ’80’s style baby!). Enjoy. Share. We’ve loved writing them. We hope you’ve enjoyed reading them. I don’t ask a lot of you folks so I have two small requests as your holiday gift to me (you are getting me something, right?): 1. Invite all your coworkers, friends, and family to come check out the blog and become readers. The only way we get better is by raising everyone’s game. I’m not asking a lot here. If you found this blog helpful at all this year, here’s your chance to return the favor for all our hard work. Just email folks and tell ’em to come take a look. 2. Pick up a copy of One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful Personal Leadership. Yes – I know I talk a lot about the book but it’s not for the money (I would have made more money if I worked in a sweat shop in Asia making sneakers). I talk a lot about it because I’m evangelical about the topic. Buy it. Read it. In the words of Roland Smith (CEO of Wendy’s) “It could change your life.” Thanks for your incredible support in ’11 and […]

A Revealing Interview Question

December 7, 2011 /15 Comments/in Career, Communications, Guest Blogger /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s guest post is from Bob Herbold, the former Chief Operating Officer of Microsoft Corporation and author of What’s Holding You Back: 10 Bold Steps that Define Gutsy Leaders (CLICK HERE to buy your copy). You can read more about Bob at the end of this post. In the 26 years I spent at Procter & Gamble, one of my most valuable learnings was in the area of interviewing candidates for jobs. Since P&G puts big investments into the development of talent, the company was highly selective in hiring. Hence, we sought out any research we could find regarding what individual characteristics were predictive of eventual achievement of a high level position in an organization. One particular line of questioning that I found most useful, and research suggests is very revealing as to what motivates and drives an individual to eventual success, is as follows: When you were young, who was the person that was most influential in teaching you valuable lessons about life? What were those lessons the person taught you? What are those tapes this person put into your head that are still there today and have emerged as guiding principles for you? Usually the person is a parent, an influential teacher, or some other authority figure. Often times, this person came into the individuals life as early as grade school or high school. The lessons you are looking for are basic principles that suggest a high degree of self confidence, a sense of personal responsibility, a strong drive to achieve, and solid fundamental ethics. No hint of these kinds of traits should be a red flag.

Leadership’s Role in Process Improvement

December 5, 2011 /4 Comments/in Innovation, Leadership, Project Management /by Mike Figliuolo

Those of you who know me well know I am not a process guy. The notion of process can make me physically ill. That said, there’s a huge role for leadership in process improvement. I’d argue that without good leadership, any process you try to improve will fail. I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Kevin Eikenberry (author of From Bud to Boss) for over an hour on this topic. Today I’ll provide an excerpt of that conversation and at the end of the post I’ll provide you with a link for the actual audio file of our conversation. So, here are a few thoughts on how leadership plays a critical role in process improvement as an excerpt from my conversation with Kevin. Kevin Eikenberry: So let’s start by talking about why process improvement is so critical for leaders from your perspective with a variety of experiences that you have got. So let’s talk about process improvement from your perspective. Mike Figliuolo: Yeah. You know, as leaders you can go in and you can manage, and we have got to parse management and leadership, and you manage things and you lead people. So when you are new to a role as a leader or even if you have been doing it for a while inherently you have got certain processes that you are responsible for making sure run smoothly. The thing that ends up differentiating people is whether you sort of take that process at face and just make sure it doesn’t blow up, or if you question everything about it and seek to make it better, make it faster, make it cheaper, make the quality higher.

End of Year Reviews are a Terrible Idea

November 28, 2011 /10 Comments/in Career, Communications, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

There’s nothing like returning to work after post-Thanksgiving holiday food comas. The best part is you get to prep for one of the most dysfunctional, time-wasting, intellectually insulting, and leadership-lazy exercises known to mankind: the end of year review. They’re stupid. Period. And before you go all “I don’t need to read this – I’m a business leader and HR people are the ones who do performance management” you need to sit down, shut up, and read because if you have that mindset, you’re a huge part of the problem. How failed is our leadership culture that we have to sit around and wait for HR or executive management to dictate when and in what form we must critique the people on our teams? How messed up is it that we have to rely on compulsory forms with rating scales to tell people how they’re doing? How sad is it that we have to hold cross-calibrations to stack rank people and force a performance distribution because our managers lack the ability to look outside their own organization and assess comparable levels of talent and performance? We’re a management disaster, people! I’ve written plenty on the dangers of bad feedback, the importance of self-appraisals, the requirement to fix bad performance before it becomes terrible performance, and how awful butt sandwiches taste. Add this post to the list of rants about why our performance management systems are broken and what we as leaders need to do to fix them. If someone works for us for 365 days, we owe them much more than a once-a-year sit-down to discuss their performance. We owe our organization more than looking at all personnel once every four seasons. If we truly want to get out of the rut of annual performance reviews being as palatable as […]

You Need to Hire a Social Media Expert. Now.

November 23, 2011 /4 Comments/in Guest Blogger, Social Media, Training /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s guest blogger is David Chapman from Webrageous. You can learn more about him and his work at the end of the post. When the world of social media began to develop only a few years ago, networking online was all about connecting with friends, sharing personal likes and dislikes, finding out about new things to do in our personal lives. The mocking snorts and disbelieving grunts began we people started to use social networking at work. And fair enough really. Change is always difficult. The world always needs time to readjust. How can being connected to Facebook truly be considered work? Well, to be totally honest, social networking is work. The time has come in the 2010s to finally put a stop to the fact that some people still look down on social networkers in many ways. It is disappointing that a good number of leaders still fail to realize that investing good money in the recruitment of a professional social networker is worth every cent in this golden age of technology. Every single business needs an effective social networker and every leader should be prepared to pay a decent salary to employ the best of the best. It takes more than a few posts or tweets here and there to be an effective social networker and the employees slaving away at all hours of the day and night in this newly developing industry deserve economic recognition for their efforts. So…

Great Lessons You Can Learn from Great Leaders

November 21, 2011 /0 Comments/in Books, Guest Blogger, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

I’ve had the good fortune of meeting some wonderful leaders and thinkers over my years of blogging. Since the launch of my book I’ve met even more. And several of them have been wonderful enough to take the method I preach in One Piece of Paper and apply that method to their own leadership styles. For your reading enjoyment and enlightenment, I’m sharing those perspectives today. It’s the least I can do to give these folks a shout out for their hard work and for spreading the message of how to make leadership personal again. For each one, I’ve provided a quick snapshot of the author and a pearl of wisdom pulled from their post about their own perspectives on personal leadership using the leadership maxims method in the book. I encourage you to take the time to read each of their posts. They’re interesting, entertaining, insightful, and helpful. They’ll also help you crystallize your own leadership philosophy. So here’s the roundup of some of my favorite leadership writers and their perspectives on their own leadership philosophies. Enjoy!

You Should Fix Small Problems Before They’re Big Ones

November 14, 2011 /0 Comments/in Books, Communications, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s post is an excerpt from my book One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership. This excerpt is about a time I screwed up. You can get your copy of the book by clicking here. All that said, here’s an excerpt that covers why it’s better to fix small mistakes than big ones. If you are committing to a team member’s growth you first have to give them the opportunity and then ensure that they do, in fact, grow. The only way they will learn and develop in those roles is with coaching and feedback. Giving feedback can be challenging. Many times we nail the easy feedback when we say things like “great job on beating your goal by 37%!” That is not a particularly hard message to deliver. Such feedback is not remotely useful either. There is no action being requested of the recipient. Your job as the leader is to provide an observation on the recipient’s actions and give them ideas on what they might do better or differently going forward. That is easy to do in a goal-beating situation but what about more difficult conversations? Many of us avoid having them because they are uncomfortable, but when you ignore the problem it festers until those conversations turn into the “very difficult conversations,” then “extremely difficult conversations,” and eventually the “here’s your severance check and pink slip” conversations. I know my gut instinct is to avoid these discussions at first but I also know it is my responsibility to have that feedback conversation as soon as possible. I have adopted a maxim designed to hold me accountable for doing exactly that. My maxim is “It’s easier to correct course 100 yards into the journey than 100 miles into it.”

How to Build Your Team by Getting Rid of Your People

November 7, 2011 /10 Comments/in Career, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

That’s right. You heard me. Want to build your team? Get rid of the people who are on it. Of course I mean to do so in a good way. Become what I call a “net exporter of talent.” What exactly does that mean? You need to develop your people to the point that they’re ready for new challenges. Build their skills. Make them more valuable to the organization. Grow them and their responsibilities. And once you can stand back and admire the fruits of your labor, send them somewhere else to work. Actually, if you’ve done a good enough job developing them, others will be trying to poach them from your team. Madness you say? Not so fast my friend. The benefits of becoming a net exporter of talent are many. Before we get into them, let me elaborate on how to become said exporter. First, recognize almost everyone on your team wants to grow. Your obligation as a leader is to provide those opportunities and help people succeed in them (check out “But he’s never done that job.” “I know.”). Once you’ve expanded the skills and scope of your team members, you’re ready to begin. Start by talking about how great your people are. Let other managers know you’ve got a fantastic A-player on your team. Give your team members opportunities to shine (see “He knows more than I do”). You’re advertising for them. You’re creating new job opportunities for your people. Once others see how great your people are, the ball is in motion. Simply sit back and wait. The next part is interesting.

Bad Feedback is Worse Than No Feedback

October 31, 2011 /9 Comments/in Communications, Leadership, Training /by Mike Figliuolo

We ask for feedback all the time. We’re encouraged to give feedback to others constantly. Many times that’s exactly the right answer. Sometimes it’s not. When you don’t have something intelligent or productive to say, don’t provide feedback. It’s bad for the recipient and it’s bad for you. I understand we live in a time where feedback is a gift and in the era of 360’s, performance appraisals, constant coaching and mentoring, and a healthy environment of job insecurity where we seek feedback as a form of validation that we’re not getting canned there is a tremendous amount of pressure to give and ask for feedback. But just because someone asks you for feedback or you’re directed to provide feedback, it doesn’t mean you should. Yes – I know some HR manager’s head is exploding right now and a touchy feely executive coach is having an embolism but someone has to put a stop to the stupidity. I figure if I see it, I own it (which is one of my personal leadership maxims I explain in this post and in my book). If I see a problem, it’s my responsibility as a leader to point it out and work toward a solution. This post is part of that solution. Yep. I’m ranty today. That’s because I’ve seen too much poor and lazy feedback lately and the negative effects it can have are tremendous. Allow me to explain.

How to Prepare for Your Next Career Change

October 24, 2011 /5 Comments/in Balanced Lifestyle, Books, Career, Training /by Mike Figliuolo

Careers have changed and you need to look at how you’ll advance differently than people have in the past. This ain’t your daddy’s or mommy’s business world anymore. I’m sure you’ve figured that out already. First of all, people use cell phones. This is a fact I’m constantly reminding my father of… “Dad, turn on your cell phone when you’re not home.” “Why? Then it will ring. I’m retired and I don’t want to be bothered by everyone.” “Dad, the only people who have your number are me, Mom, and my sister…” He still doesn’t get it… The career world he lived in has changed as well. Dad had a first career for 17 years at a large company that rhymes with AT&T (which makes his aversion to phones even more bizarre). After those wonderfully predictable pension-based years, it was a series of smaller “careers” – 6 years, 6 years, 3 years, 5 years, retirement. For him, it was no big deal. 5-6 years is plenty of time to get settled in a home and community. It’s not a huge issue to demonstrate progression in a “career” at a company in 5-6 years and to move after that. But the world continues to change. For those of us in the workplace, we’re part of a new dynamic. Let’s spend a little time with Roger Daltrey “talkin’ bout my generation.”