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Give Your Teams the Resources They Need
The better you’re able to get your teams what they need to succeed and communicate clearly the incentives and the metrics that you’re measuring, the higher the likelihood that your team is going to be successful. Leaders are accountable to a lot of people, including the members of their team. They need to make sure that they provide the team the resources they need to deliver on their own goals. Those resources include time, money, approval of initiatives, visibility with senior management, support for whatever the initiative is, and knocking down obstacles. A leader’s job is to help the team be successful, and it’s unfair for that leader to ask for results without giving the team the resources they need to succeed. Leaders must also be held accountable for setting their teams up to succeed. Leaders need to face the same consequences if they fail to deliver. If the team fails, the leader has failed, and incentives should follow. Now, if the team succeeds, the leader has succeeded, and everybody should get the right bonus and reward that goes along with that performance. Ultimately, a leader is going to build trust between themselves and the members of the team by showing that everyone is in it together. When I worked for a large financial services firm, we made sure that incentives were aligned at all levels. My boss, one year, was signed up for a $500 million goal. My part of that goal was $100 million. Then we broke that down on my team, and different teams had 30 million or 10 million or 20 million, and it all added up to my 100, which contributed to my boss’s 500. We were all very clear on what we had to deliver. We also understood what the consequences were if we […]
There’s No Such Thing as an Insignificant Turn
Discover the significance of unexpected career turns. See how choices shape your path. Today’s guest post is by Steve McKee, author of TURNS: Where Business is Won and Lost (CLICK HERE to get your copy). If I were to ask you to identify three turning points in your career, it probably wouldn’t require too much thought for you to come up with them. We tend to remember people or events that have changed our trajectory in significant ways. But if I were to ask you to consider three of the things you most value, and then to retrace your steps to recall how they came about, it’s likely that upon reflection you would identify a turn in your past that at the time you had no idea would have been so consequential. Let me give you an example. I’m not only the author of a book on the topic at hand (TURNS: Where Business Is Won and Lost), I’ve written two other books, hundreds of articles, and a number of proposals and recommendations that (I’ve been told) stood out for the quality of their prose. Being a craftsman with the written word is a core part of my identity. And while I can’t say for sure where that journey first began—probably sometime back in grade school—if I trace my professional steps back to the beginning of my career, I recall a most formative turn. I had recently graduated from college and was working at a health club while I pursued entry-level career possibilities. One day I spotted a newspaper want ad (remember those?) from a hot West Coast advertising agency looking for a field marketing manager based in my hometown to work on the Pizza Hut account. The combination of pizza and marketing sounded like the perfect job for me, […]
How to Reinforce a Culture of Accountability
Your culture is an important asset, and you need to curate it every single day. Look for opportunities to reinforce the behaviors you want to see. It’s not enough to just build a culture of accountability. You have to strengthen it and reinforce it every single day. This is about the small behaviors adding up to that broader culture. The organization is going to behave in a manner based on what it sees punished or rewarded. If people see others covering things up or laying blame, and see those people getting ahead or even promoted, then people are going to behave in a manner consistent with that. On the other hand, if they see that people are stepping up and accepting responsibility, and those behaviors get rewarded, people will behave that way. If people take responsibility for problems and say they’ve made mistakes, and that’s held up by management as, “This is great behavior,” people will behave that way as well. You need to reinforce your culture every single day. Look for creative ways to do so. When I was a consultant, we had Firm Values Day. We would take all of our consultants off of client work for a full day, which was extremely expensive for the firm. And for that one day we would talk about our values. People would share examples of when they saw the values in action, or they would talk about when they violated the values and what they did to fix it. Think about your organization. Are there opportunities to include conversations around the values and the culture in progress reviews? Can you use it as a lunch and learn topic? Or at your staff meetings? When people get promoted, hold up those opportunities to say, “This person did great work. They’re living up to our culture. This is what we believe in. This […]
Work Less and Relate More
If each of us took 10 percent of the time we devote to work and shifted it to relationship building, we’d reap impressive financial and emotional rewards. Today’s guest post is by Larry Thornton, author of Why Not Win? A Reflection on a 50-year Journey from the Segregated South to America’s Boardrooms — And What it Teaches Us All (CLICK HERE to get your copy). After more than 40 years of affiliations with prominent corporations, I’ve come to believe that most people could benefit from working a little less and relating to others a little more. Winning in life depends on the efforts of other people to support you and advocate on your behalf and so investing time and energy in relationships with others is a winning strategy. I’m not advocating for a cynical, Machiavellian approach to relationships. Chances are you’ve run across people in your working life who pretend to befriend people and then seek to manipulate them for their own benefit. To the contrary, I’m suggesting that you build relationships in a sincere way such that respect and rapport come first, and support later follows. Sometimes a relationship gets off to a shaky start and then becomes incredibly rewarding. My experience with Max Cooper illustrates this path. When I finished the training required to become a McDonald’s franchisee in the early 1990s, I wanted to build a store in my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. I planned to be the first Black owner of a McDonald’s in the city. This would send a powerful message about the opportunities available to people of color, especially given the central role Birmingham played in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. I sought advice from Max for getting started. He owned dozens of McDonald’s in the area at the time, but his […]
Strengthen Your Brand with a Culture of Accountability
Your brand is one of your most valuable assets, and a culture of accountability can help you protect it. Your brand is one of your most valuable assets, and a culture of accountability is going to help you protect it. A brand is a promise, and you need to remember who you’re ultimately accountable to. Ignoring that bond of trust between you and that final accountable party, whether it’s a patient or a customer, is going to damage your brand. This comes out a lot during a crisis situation. How you handle crises or shortfalls can make or break your brand, and a culture of accountability is what’s going to drive the behaviors in those situations. For example, Johnson & Johnson had an issue with Tylenol. Some of the pills had been tampered with. Rather than sitting there and figuring out are there specific markets or types of packaging that have been tampered with, they just said “We’re accountable to our customers.” They pulled all the product off the shelves despite the huge negative financial implication of doing so, but by taking that action decisively, they strengthened that brand and that bond of trust between them and consumers. Contrast that with the auto industry. Many times in the auto industry, we’ve heard of safety issues with a vehicle being covered up or ignored because the manufacturers knew it would have a large financial cost to do a recall. Eventually, it always came to light. People found out, and that bond of trust was broken between the manufacturer and the driver, and ultimately, it damaged that brand. Contrast that with another auto manufacturer, Tesla Motors. They had an issue that was a safety concern. They immediately looked at it and said, “This is a problem. Let’s recall the vehicles, spend the money, […]
What Investors are REALLY Listening For
Keep these three things in mind when preparing your next pitch. Today’s guest post is by Donna Griffit, author of Sticking To My Story: The Alchemy Of Storytelling For Startups (CLICK HERE to get your copy). Startups spend A LOT of time tweaking their pitch, their numbers, and (they should be tweaking) their story before meeting investors. Often, though, they miss out on a huge opportunity – how to speak to what investors really listen for. Humans process information in steps – it goes through our mind by various questions popping up, seeking answers; then it starts traveling to our heart; and finally, our gut – which is where we truly make decisions. It would seem that the “top of mind” questions are the most important part to address with investors. That’s true – but we can’t ignore the other parts as well. In my experience, there are three things investors really listen for throughout the entire pitch. And if you can point to at least one of these on each slide – you will be creating an entirely different dimension of communication. In my new book, Sticking To My Story: The Alchemy Of Storytelling For Startups, I detail how to prepare each and every aspect of an investor pitch. I want to give you a peek into these three very important things: Credibility – This is where your numbers and preparation come into play. You must be able to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you know what you’re talking about, you are an industry expert (even if you didn’t start off in your industry) with the numbers, the credentials and the evidence to back up your words. Also, credibility is proven through your stellar team, who should be experts with unique knowledge and experience in their domain […]
How easily distracted are you and your team from pursuing key priorities?
Our reader poll today asks: How easily distracted are you and your team from pursuing key priorities? Not at all — we consistently stay focused on top priorities and never get distracted 12.85% Somewhat — we generally stay focused and on task but get distracted occasionally 60.55% Very — distractions tend to be more frequent and hinder focusing on priorities 21.10% Exceedingly — we truly struggle to focus on what’s important 5.5% Focus, focus, focus. Look at how many unfinished projects are sitting on your desk and in front of your team members. Distraction and diffusion of effort is an execution killer. Sure, priorities change and that’s fine. Just maintain a focused priority list and drive execution on the items at the top of the list. Don’t start anything new until you’ve completed something else and resources are freed up. The constant stop/start/stop/start dynamic drains energy and causes inefficiency. It’s fine to put new ideas on the list and prioritize them as “not yet” then communicate and reinforce priorities to your team. This improved focus will actually accelerate completion of top projects which then enables you to pursue the next ideas on the list. And if something truly is a distraction and isn’t aligned with core goals and priorities, the best thing you can do is quickly say “no” and move on to your real priorities. – Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!
Creating a Culture of Accountability
Learn how to create a culture of accountability by establishing a set of principles for how you want your teams to behave. Once you understand your accountabilities as a leader and you’ve clearly defined them for the members of your team, you need to start thinking about the broader organization, and how you can create a culture of accountability. Culture is nothing more than the sum of our daily actions. And to change culture, you’re going to want to set in place a series of principles for how you want people to behave. And those principles are going to drive those daily behaviors. This will take time. Culture will not change overnight. But those small behaviors every single day, over time, are going to create that very strong culture of accountability. The values need to be articulated and clarified in a manner that everyone in the organization understands them. You also need to give them the latitude to behave in a manner where they’re not afraid of taking a risk and trying to live up to those values. For example, I ran a large customer service organization at one point. We said we wanted to commit to the customer to give them great service. We also knew we had financial obligations to the broader organization. So what we did was we said we’re going to tell our associates who are on the phone with our customers to just ask themselves one question: is this right for the customer? Whatever they were thinking about doing at that moment in the interaction with the customer, they had to ask themselves: is this right for the customer? If the answer was yes, they should do it. If the answer was no, they needed to find some other solution. Now, we got some great behaviors because of that. The associates felt empowered to help our customers. And our […]