Strategy – Page 18 – thoughtLEADERS, LLC: Leadership Training for the Real World

Developing Your Team: Building Individual Capabilities

July 26, 2023/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

One your biggest responsibilities as a leader is helping your team members identify the places they need to grow and then giving them the opportunities to learn those skills.

Even though the members of your team might be high performing, they can always achieve the next level of performance. One your biggest responsibilities as a leader is helping them identify the places they need to grow and then giving them the opportunities to learn those skills. As you think about an individual’s development plan, there are some very clear steps that you can take to help them get to that next level.

First, look at the skills that are required based on the competencies defined by that role. Different roles require different sets of skills and you should be able to document for each role what the set of skills is for somebody to perform well in that role. Your job as a leader is to look at the next level of performance that that individual can step into and say at their current level they’re fine and they’re meeting all the competency requirements but if I were to promote them or look at expanded responsibilities for that person, how would they stack up at that next level of performance?

Once you’ve identified the gaps, you have to take a moment to think about why the gap exists. Is is that we’ve never trained this person on this skill? Is is they’ve never had an opportunity to demonstrate the skill? Once you have an understanding of why that gap exists, you need to sit down with that individual and discuss why they think the gap exists. Help them understand where they currently perform, where you expect them to perform, and what that gap looks like in terms of actual demonstrable skills that you should be seeing every single day.

Once those gaps are identified, identify specific projects or specific deliverables that the individual can take on as their responsibilities—where they’re going to be able to start performing those tasks and building those skills. Ask for their commitment to filling those gaps, because if somebody doesn’t want to grow, no matter how hard you push them, they’re not going to step into that next role. By getting their commitment to that growth, they’re going to be much more receptive to taking on additional responsibilities, going to additional training, and working a little bit harder in areas they’re not yet comfortable.

Once you both have agreement, document that agenda and lay it out as their individual development plan. In targeting their development toward specific projects you give the individual two things. One is you give them real-world experience performing the activity that they’re not yet familiar with. Second, you give them clarity and focus. You help them link the competencies to actual behaviors so they can spend their time dedicated to filling that skill gap. My rule is they should be able to do 70% of that project very easily without a lot of effort and that incremental 30% is where they’re going to develop and learn and grow.

Document their growth over time and renew the gap filling cycle of understanding. Great, you’ve built these competencies. Here’s the next set of gaps we need to fill. Here are the corresponding projects. Then you just continue with that cycle over time. Hopefully, by the time their annual review comes around, you can say, “Here are the projects you performed against and here are the new competencies that you have.”

So your role as a leader, in terms of developing others, really boils down to understanding what the requirements are for their role from a competency standpoint and then identifying gaps and tying them to very specific projects. And in doing so, that individual will see themselves grow over time.

Want to learn more about building high-performing teams? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to build high-performing teams. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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Creating The High-Performing Virtuous Circle

July 12, 2023/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

If you’re able to take all seven the elements of building a high performing team and connect them to one another, you’re going to see a virtuous circle of performance happen on a regular basis, and your team will achieve more than you ever thought they could.

In looking at the seven elements of building a high performing team, there’s this really interesting dynamic where they create this virtuous circle, where one element links to another and enables the members of your team to perform even better than they would if you’d just focused on an individual element.

In terms of setting direction and laying out that vision and mission, your people will understand where they’re going. They’ll understand where they personally fit in to the broader whole and how they can contribute to the achievement of that vision.

Next, in terms of deploying and gathering resources, your people will have what they need to succeed. There’s nothing more frustrating than being asked to perform a task and not having the right tools and resources for doing so.

If you assemble the team correctly, they’re going to be able to work more effectively with one another. There will be that team chemistry where they’re going to feed off of each other’s efforts and push each other to perform even better than they would alone.

If you allocate the work properly and prioritize efforts, people will feel that they’re fairly treated, that they’re not carrying more of the burden than another one of their coworkers might be. That prioritization is going to enable them to focus their efforts on achieving the goals that are most important for achieving that broader vision.

If you’re executing the plan well, you’re going to be taking action and accepting risks, but appropriate ones, that enable the team to see progress and results from all their hard work.

Then thinking through motivating them, it’s going to help them build their capabilities and drive high performance of the broader organization. People come to work because they want to grow and they want to develop, so focusing on how you’re motivating them and understanding what gets them excited is going to unleash that potential.

Then lastly, if you’re really thinking through developing the team, you’re going to expand the bandwidth and the capabilities that they have because you’re going to push them to the next level of performance. You’re going to create growth opportunities for them to expand into, which is then going to motivate them and build their skills.

So if you’re able to take all seven of those elements of building a high performing team and connect them to one another, you’re going to see that virtuous circle of performance happen on a regular basis, and your team will achieve more than you ever thought they could.

Want to learn more about building high-performing teams? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to build high-performing teams. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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Embracing Competition for Business Success

July 11, 2023/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Overcoming attitudes about competition and turf is a key to innovation. Here are some ways to ignite a bold future.

Today’s guest post is by Scott Cochrane, author of Your Creative Mind: How to Disrupt Your Thinking, Abandon Your Comfort Zone, and Develop Bold New Strategies (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

Last weekend I was out for a mountain ride on my adventure motorcycle. I was high up in the foothills outside of Boulder, Colorado, which is full of twisty gravel roads and dirt trails. I love to glide through the curves with some sweeping power slides and just flow. Then, in a quick glance in my handlebar mirror, I see another motorcycle coming up on me from behind…Of course I had to accelerate and up my game! How could I possibly allow somebody to catch me, let alone potentially pass me? Keep in mind, this was just a Sunday morning ride and we didn’t even know each other!

Now think about this: When you are trying to figure out how to accelerate your business for growth and profitability, it is easy to wish your competitors were not right there in your rearview mirror! Or perhaps you are in their rearview mirror. All the same, in the grand scheme of things, competition drives innovation and we need it.

One of the reasons we care about building a better mousetrap, marketing it better, or producing it more efficiently, is that we know our competitors are up at night trying to figure out the same thing. Just like in sports, strong competitors force us to improve our performance or be eliminated.

Many powerful and innovative companies take their cues from their competitors. They look at what competitors are doing and ask how they can do it better, market it better, or do it more efficiently. These kinds of innovations may not seem as glamorous as inventing something new from scratch, but they benefit the consumer and the innovator just as much.

Unfortunately, our attitude toward competition often hinders creativity. When we approach the task of innovation as if there were a finite amount of creativity in the world, we can become secretive and overly protective of our ideas. This often prevents us from getting the input and feedback we need to evaluate and improve them. In larger companies, this toxic kind of competition can exist between individuals and even departments as a whole.

A study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology demonstrated the negative effects of a territorial corporate culture on creativity. It showed that people who communicate territorial control over their ideas receive less creative feedback from others. Another study in the Journal of Organizational Behavior finds that territorial feelings may prompt employees to hide knowledge that is critical for innovation.

Effectively leading an innovative organization requires cultivating an atmosphere where people are more concerned with productivity than egotistical gratification. It also requires systems that allow people to effectively collaborate as well as share credit for successes. Here are a few ways to build such a culture:

Steer clear of fear. When we are in a state of fear, the brain’s entire focus is to find safety. It looks for ways to minimize risk, which works against creativity and innovation. This is why leaders who use fear tactics to motivate their employees will see dismal results if their tasks require any kind of creative thinking. It is also why fear of failure or competition (on an individual or organizational level) can cripple innovative potential.
Lay the groundwork for innovation by seeking original ideas related to what you do. Allow employees from any department to present short pitches for new innovations on a regular basis. These may include ideas for innovative products, services, process improvements, marketing, or even business models.
Determine the right intervals to create excitement around innovative ideas without distracting from ongoing tasks.
Reward those who come up with the ideas that you implement, especially with recognition and giving credit where credit is due.

At the end of the day, people who effectively harness creative power do not waste much time or energy worrying about someone stealing their ideas, because they do not see creativity as a finite well that will someday run dry. They believe that there are just as many good ideas in their future as there are in their past.

As companies like Google and Apple have repeatedly demonstrated, the right kind of collaboration can spark tremendous creativity and subsequent innovation. But what does this look like for smaller organizations that don’t possess Google or Apple’s inherent attractiveness to potential collaborators? The secret often resides in openly exploring what we see around us and then asking ourselves a better question to get a better answer!

A few years ago, I was speaking to a director at a business school where I serve as a senior adviser to the Dean. She was deeply frustrated with the fundraising goal they had been given by their parent university and felt she had no support to help her with the enormous task before her. She also complained that she was so short on staff that her PhD professors were being tasked with putting together binders for the events she was coordinating.

I asked her three questions: 1) How many local businesses were “partners” with the business school? 2) How many graduate students did they have? 3) How could new technologies potentially reduce the need for binders and physical material? As she answered my questions, I saw the wheels begin to turn.

I proposed a mastermind speaker series with local business leaders as an ongoing fundraiser towards the university’s endowment. Graduate students who wanted business experience were happy to volunteer as support staff in exchange for the opportunity to help and interact with the business community speakers. She engaged the university technology department to explore different alternatives to physical binders. By simply looking around her with a different set of eyes, she began three collaborative efforts that were extremely beneficial to all parties involved.

So much innovation comes out of creative collaboration with others. Are you getting the most you can out of your professional relationships? Are you approaching these relationships in a compelling sort of way?

Allow yourself to approach your professional partnerships with the mindset of a shared bold future. Move forward with a vision of abundance, knowing that there is more than enough for all parties to prosper and thrive. Enjoy the sweeping curves of life’s adventure together!

For three decades, Scott Cochrane has been helping executives expand their businesses as a Growth Acceleration Adviser to hundreds of C-Suite leaders in 32 countries. His psychological and neuroscience-based methods have championed $54B in growth. Cochrane advises executives on how to strategically approach accelerated growth for both themselves and their companies to achieve exponential success. He documents it all in his books, keynotes, custom corporate programs, and retreats designed especially for C-Suite executives. Learn more at BoldMindX.com.

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How to Become a Strategic Thinker and Ascend into Leadership

July 3, 2023/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Guest Blogger, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

A retired president of a Fortune 100 company provides effective advice on how to develop strategic-thinking capability and rapidly advance in an organization.

Today’s guest post is by Fred Sievert, author of Fast-Starting a Career of Consequence (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

Ask any executive what he or she considers the most important skills for team members who aspire to leadership roles, and you will get answers ranging from clear communication to collaboration to adaptability.

During my career, especially as the president of New York Life Insurance Company, I found that many executives and aspiring leaders sought the opportunity to gain the experience of running a business, often stated as “running a P&L” (profit and loss statement).

Even in a large company, there are typically fewer positions than there are team members who are eager to run a business or department with P&L responsibility. I believe the most important criterion for ascending into these roles is the ability to think strategically. Yet strategic thinking isn’t a skill that’s traditionally taught in universities or management training programs.

Throughout my career, I mentored many employees at all levels in the organization. Over time, more than 10 of them ultimately became CEOs or presidents of their organizations. A key factor in their success was the development of strategic thinking capability.

So, what is strategy, exactly?

The word strategy was originally a war term used to determine the means by which a combatant would defeat the enemy. In general, strategy as it relates to business is how to beat the competition in a way that achieves sustainable competitive advantage.

Many employees — and even some executives — don’t understand the difference between strategy and tactics. Strategy is how to leverage a company’s core competencies to achieve its objectives and create sustainable competitive advantage. Tactics describe the specific actions that will be taken along the way.

There are three steps involved in developing strategic thinking capability.

The first step is to understand your own company’s strategies.

One easy way to do that is to read your company’s annual report and most recent strategic plan. The annual report typically touches only generally on the corporate mission and strategies. The strategic plan is more likely to contain an in-depth analysis of the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

Also, if your company has publicly traded stock, read the periodic reports of the analysts who follow that stock. There you can learn a lot more about the external view of your company’s risks and opportunities and how it fares against the competition.

Read recent articles and press releases. These documents, often available online, can uncover a company’s recent actions in the way of mergers, acquisitions, partnerships and other potential strategic actions.

The second step in becoming a strategic thinker is to understand the competition.

The easiest way to do this is to review competing companies’ websites. Next, follow the same steps you used to research your company to research key competitors. Read as much publicly available material as you can. Try to obtain their strategic plans for the future.

Also, mystery-shop the competition. If you really want to take your due diligence up a notch, and your business is in retail product sales, purchase some of the competitors’ products and compare them against comparable products your company sells. For large or expensive products (like automobiles or appliances), at a minimum, come to understand your company’s product differentiation by reading product manuals, marketing pieces and press releases. If they seem superior to your company’s offerings, determine what the competition is doing to gain that edge.

Finally, get acquainted with your company’s distributors. They are out in the field, talking with your customers. They are likely to hear opinions about your competitors’ products and services — specifically about features your competitors offer that your company does not. Ask them what aspects of your business offerings that they would like to see expanded or modified.

The third step in becoming a strategic thinker is getting your superiors to notice your newfound knowledge and your strategic-thinking capabilities, which may give you a leg up in landing a role with the responsibility of running a P&L.

Now, knowing your company’s and its competitors’ strategies is great, but it doesn’t necessarily demonstrate strategic thinking capability. So, once you have gained valuable knowledge by completing the steps just mentioned, thoughtfully consider the following questions. The answers to these questions will lead you to demonstrate a strong strategic-thinking capability:

How does my company currently differentiate itself from its key competitors? What do we do differently and/or better than anybody else? Can we build on that, and if so, how?

What unique products, product features or benefits does my company have that others don’t have? Are there others we should be considering? Are there consumer needs or desires that my company and/or its competitors are not currently meeting? What can we do to meet those needs? If we fall short in some areas, what types of cost-effective investments can we make to improve significantly in those areas?

How do our advertising, marketing and branding stack up against the competition? How can we improve in this regard? Are there market segments that our competition is not adequately penetrating that we can effectively expand into?

From a competitive employment perspective, how do our compensation and benefits compare to those of our key competitors? To what extent do we need to step up our own compensation and benefit packages to better compete for top talent?

If you have done your homework, asking yourself these questions and then answering them should reveal many previously untapped ideas that will help your company create sustainable competitive advantage. A thoughtful exercise like this is highly strategic. The answers you come up with could lead to potentially new and expanded strategies for your company.

As you communicate your thoughts and ideas to your company’s management team, they are likely to recognize you as a highly strategic thinker with high potential for more senior roles in the organization. And that is the best way to land that “P&L” job.

Fred Sievert is a retired president of New York Life Insurance Co., a Fortune 100 company. His passion is positively impacting the lives of others by writing and speaking about his faith and business experience. His most recent book, Fast-Starting a Career of Consequence, is available on his website.

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The 7 Aspects of High-Performing Teams

June 28, 2023/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Assembling a high-performing team involves more than just finding great talent. Follow this 7-step formula to develop the team of your dreams.

As a leader, one of your most critical responsibilities is to turn your team into what can be considered a high-performing team. And to do that, there are seven elements that you need to bring together to turn your team from one that just exists to one that’s considered high-performing:

5 Steps to Help Someone Through a Bad Decision at Work

June 19, 2023/1 Comment/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Guest Blogger, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Learn how to be an emotionally intelligent leader or manager by following these 5 steps to help someone through a bad decision at work.

Today’s guest post is by Craig Goodliffe, Founder & CEO — Cyberbacker

At the end of the day, we’re all human. We make mistakes, and sometimes our on-the-job decisions turn out to be bad ones.

At work, our decisions can affect many people, including leadership and management. Sound decisions can bind a team together and generate success, whereas poor decisions can lead to strained relationships and far-reaching effects on the company.

One of the toughest challenges when leading a team is knowing how to support people after a mistake. Good leaders use these five strategies to help their team move forward and offer support despite difficult times.

Step 1: Lead with empathy

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others and is a key ingredient of emotional intelligence. During a crisis, it’s easy for leaders to get caught up in the cleanup and forget how their team feels about the decisions that led to the event.

Leaders who lead with empathy can better understand their team’s needs, communicate more effectively, and even help resolve conflicts before they happen. Whatever work needs to be done following a crisis, the entire company will be going through a tough time, so it’s crucial that leaders show they understand and empathize with their team.

Step 2: Define the pain points

After a mistake is made, good leaders focus on the problem — not the person whose decision led to it. The first step in supporting a team through a wrong decision is clearly defining the problem at hand, which starts by thinking through the issue and your team’s pain points.

After those pain paints have been identified, come up with some specific action items with your team to resolve the problem as quickly and efficiently as possible. Once you and your team are able to clearly define the problem, you will be ready to work toward a solution, set new goals, and follow up regularly as those expectations evolve over time.

Step 3: Turn “you” to “we” conversations

Bad decisions notoriously lead to the blame game and awkward workplace politics, but turning “you” conversations into “we” conversations can help mitigate this. By turning “you” into “we” conversations, you will create a feeling of support and teamwork instead of alienating employees for their mistakes. Remember: realigning with the long-term goals and mission of the organization are more important than one bad decision.

Instead of criticizing the person who made the poor choice, try shifting your language towards solutions instead of problems. For example: “I’m sure this wasn’t an easy decision for anyone involved; let’s figure out how we can move forward from here together.” Or: “We’re all working hard to find ways around this problem; let’s keep brainstorming until we come up with something good!”

Step 4: Treat mistakes as lessons and opportunities

A critical part of helping your team through this difficult time is teaching them to learn from mistakes. A mistake is an opportunity for growth, so encourage employees by asking questions such as “What did you learn?” or “How will this situation change the way you approach similar situations in the future?” Conversations like these encourage employees by showing them you care about their development and want them to succeed.

Mistakes are inevitable — it’s how you manage those mistakes that truly matters. A poor decision is an opportunity to make your team stronger. When you treat mistakes as lessons and opportunities for growth, instead of failures or shortcomings, you create an atmosphere where people feel comfortable taking risks. And when people feel comfortable taking risks, great things can happen.

Step 5: Provide solutions for the future

If a decision has been poorly made, take time out of your schedule to listen and understand what went wrong before presenting solutions. When you fully grasp the past problem, leave it behind and focus on how things will be done differently next time around.

Rather than dishing out blame and punishment, be ready to give positive feedback, provide encouragement, and offer support. Show that you are there to help them get back on track and make smarter decisions in the future.

Moving forward, remember to emphasize the importance of good decisions over quick decisions and that everyone makes mistakes. Even your “best” employees will inevitably make a bad decision once in a while. When things don’t go as planned, you will need to help your team deal with the consequences.

As a leader, you are most effective when you use emotional intelligence to lead through empathy and understanding. This will allow you to focus on what went wrong instead of who went wrong, treat mistakes as learning opportunities, and provide actionable solutions for the future.

Craig Goodliffe is the CEO and founder of Cyberbacker, the leading provider of virtual assistance and administrative support services from anywhere in the world to anyone in the world. Goodliffe is an expert on business development and shares his insight as a MAPS coach who helps clients earn seven-figure incomes. Read more about him in the Top 100 Magazine, International Business Times, Inc, and the Forbes Business Council. Cyberbacker is changing the lives of small business owners and remote workers through its world-class business solutions.

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Using Incentives to Drive Accountabilities

June 14, 2023/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

The better you’re able to clearly communicate your team’s accountabilities and the corresponding incentives, the more likely you are to drive the behaviors that you want.

Once you’ve defined what people are accountable for, you need to drive their behaviors. Incentives are a very powerful way for doing so. Leaders can create incentives for people who over-deliver on their accountabilities. Things like bonuses or promotions. You can also use punishment or disincentives when people fail to live up to those accountabilities.

Allow me to offer an example. When I was part of an operating division of a large corporation, we knew very clearly what we were accountable for. We had revenue targets and customer account targets. One year we missed our numbers and we didn’t get a bonus. It was extremely frustrating. Now we knew exactly why. We knew what the metric was and we fell short. But it was really difficult watching our colleagues in other divisions get big bonuses that year because they met expectations.

Now the next year, again, we knew what we were accountable for. The numbers were clearly spelled out and we exceeded our numbers and got a huge bonus that year. So the incentives worked. It drove the right set of behaviors. Additionally, in that situation, individuals could still get merit increases based on their own performance of their specific accountabilities. So even in the year where the division didn’t get a bonus, we did have people who had done a great job and they did receive extra incentives.

There are different ways to create incentives, as well. It doesn’t always have to be money. Sometimes you can give people visibility. Put them in front of senior management and let them present. That would mean a lot to them. Or, send them to a training course. Help them build a new skill. Let them work on a project they’re very excited about. Sometimes just a simple thank you note can go a long way in creating the right incentives.

As you look at your team and look at driving accountability and driving the right set of behaviors, review what your people are accountable for. Lay out those metrics in a very clear and concise way. And then help them understand that if they meet that metric or exceed it, they get a reward. And if you miss it, here’s the consequence.

The better you’re able to clearly communicate those accountabilities and the corresponding incentives, the more likely you are to drive the behaviors that you want.

Want to learn more about building accountability into your culture? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to build accountability into your culture. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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Tell-Tale Signs of Fake DevOps

June 12, 2023/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Discover the Tell Tale Signs of Fake DevOps. Learn the three steps a leader should take to prevent Fake DevOps and the five principles of DevOps.

Today’s guest post is by Nikolay Gekht, CTO of Gehtsoft USA.

Let’s say you want to know whether your DevOps works well. The answer is simple: measure outcomes!

What’s the best way for a Leader to spot signs of Fake DevOps?

The DevOps community builds a whole philosophy around delivering proper things fast. If there is no delivery, we miss the entire purpose of DevOps. So, consistent failure to deliver or a slow pace is a good sign of problems. However, it is not enough to call it fake. Problems happen. The diagnosis requires another check. You inspect how the DevOps team handles slow and wrong delivery. If they proactively reveal, analyze, improve and share problems, it is just a change that requires time. Suppose they don’t… Most probably, you have to deal with fake DevOps.

These are not random checks. Both leverage DevOps principles. By measuring the outcomes, we validate the purpose and inspect whether the first way of DevOps work. I mean “simplify and improve the value production flow.” By checking the problem handling, we ensure the second and third ways. The second way is “create and shorten feedback loops.” The third way is a “culture of continuous experimentation, learning, and sharing the information.” Inquiring about the problem-handling also evaluates a safe experimentation environment. This environment is essential to building the proper DevOps culture.

What causes Fake DevOps to occur?

As any fake, fake DevOps occurs when actions trump meaning. A bogus doctor can simulate a procedure. But a phony MD doesn’t understand why it is required and what is the desired outcome. Likewise, fake DevOps perform actions (typically focusing on automation of the process only). The fake process doesn’t care about business outcomes and the core values of DevOps. Lack of outcome-based metrics or lack of feedback loops based on these metrics facilitates the faking process.

But I know this is not the answer to “what causes it.” The right cause should answer the question “why?” Why do they fake it?

The simple answer is “because it is easier.” Repeating the actions and doing them by recipe is less complicated than understanding. It also relieves accountability for making the right decision. “Everybody does it, and so shall we!”, “Experts said so!”, etc…

But even this is not the ultimate answer. We need to dig deeper. Why are people disconnected from business outcomes? Why are they not interested in learning principles? Would they benefit from implementing DevOps or not? Why so? People always choose the most efficient strategy. If faking DevOps is efficient, the answer to the question “why” is the key to the problem.

What steps should a leader take to prevent Fake DevOps?

Every employee may have no desire to understand and embrace the whole DevOps philosophy. And that’s ok. But the people who lead DevOps shall. Plain and simple. At the strategic level, DevOps implementation needs to be built around three ways and five principles of DevOps. They work altogether, and we can omit absolutely nothing.

Three ways are:

Create, simplify and straighten the flow of value production
Create and shorten feedback loops
Create a culture of continuous improvement, learning, and knowledge sharing.

The five principles are:

DevOps Culture
Automation of routine actions
Lean management
Measurement
Sharing

Any tool, process, or method works in support of the ways and principles of DevOps. Any action is as successful as it contributes to the outcome and improves DevOps implementation.

By implementing this approach, a leader of an organization would facilitate the building of an efficient and state-of-art DevOps process.

What can a CIO do to fix a project afflicted with Fake DevOps?

Let me rephrase Lev Tolstoy’s quote. “All successful processes are alike, but every broken process is broken in its own way.” This truth makes fixing the broken process incomparably more challenging than building right from scratch. Unfortunately, there is no ultimate recipe for how to fix what’s broken. Fixing the problem will be a difficult quest full of unexpected events and hidden dangers.

However, there are a few tools a pensive CIO can leverage to support the recovery process:

Understand the theory and principles behind the actions.
Don’t look for a silver bullet; follow kaizen (the art of small changes), not kaikaku (the radical change). Use Toyota Improvement Kata: set the direction, make a hypothesis, experiment, learn and adjust. Live the approach “a small change right today is better than a significant change by the end of the week.”
Recognize the social part of the problem. Fixing the broken process always involves handling assumptions, habits, beliefs, and relationships. And sometimes, it is a more significant part of the problem than merely the process aberrations.

Final Words

Please, don’t limit yourself to a couple of articles about buzzwords or one expert opinion. People have an enormous degree of misconception about trends. DevOps, Agile, psychological safety… all of them are full of myths and distortions. The best way to avoid regretful mistakes is to understand the theory and philosophy of this method. The most crucial “why” questions to understand: Why do I need DevOps? Why does it work? Why is it the right tool for me? Why is it essential to my company? Why should people be motivated to adopt it?

When we speak of DevOps, I highly recommend starting with the “DevOps Handbook” by Gene Kim et al. Reading and understanding this book would help to avoid many misconceptions and mistakes.

As a managing partner and CTO, Nikolay Gekht directs the Gehtsoft USA team in requirements analysis, architecture design, and product development. His technical expertise, leadership and client advocate voice ensure that every project is value optimized and delivers the results clients expect from Gehtsoft.

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Give Your Teams the Resources They Need

May 31, 2023/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

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 failed and what the rewards were if we exceeded. Fortunately, we had a great year and everyone on the team got a great bonus because we hit our accountabilities.

So, for you as a leader, assess what your team is accountable for and ask them what resources they need to be successful. Then ensure that they have it. If they need budget, go get them budget. If they need you to knock down an obstacle, get to it, because the more you’re able to give them what they need, the higher the likelihood that they’re going to be successful. Next, review the goals and incentives, and make sure they roll up. Everybody’s goals should drive toward the same set of outcomes, and everyone should know, “If we hit our goals, here’s the reward, and if we miss, here are the consequences.”

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.

Want to learn more about building accountability into your culture? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to build accountability into your culture. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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How to Reinforce a Culture of Accountability

May 24, 2023/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

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 is what we want.” Others will look at that and say, “That person got promoted based on those behaviors. I want to behave the same way.”

Your culture is a very important asset, and you need to curate it every single day. So look for those opportunities to reinforce behaviors to drive a culture of accountability.

Want to learn more about building accountability into your culture? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to build accountability into your culture. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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Strengthen Your Brand with a Culture of Accountability

May 17, 2023/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

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, fix them, make them safe, and get them back in the hands of our drivers.” In doing so, they strengthened their reputation and their bond of trust between them and the driver, and that culture of accountability is what drove that decision.

As you think about your organization and strengthening your brand, clearly communicate who people are accountable to. Offer stories for them of expected behaviors. Let people know this is what great looks like. Make those values highly visible, and when people do it well, celebrate broadly. If they fall short, provide the feedback and make the change because it’s the sum of those daily behaviors that is going to build and strengthen your brand.

Want to learn more about building accountability into your culture? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to build accountability into your culture. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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

May 10, 2023/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

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 customers loved it. The service level scores were fantastic. Occasionally, we’d get an associate that would do something that was too right for the customer, and give away a little too much value, which then hampered us on our financial goals. So we were constantly trying to find that balance between delivering great service and meeting our financial goals. But by putting in place that one principle, we were able to shift those small, daily behaviors of our associates on the phone, and create that culture that we wanted.

I had another call center environment where we wanted to treat our customers well. And they were in collections, so it was already an adversarial relationship. We wanted to change that dynamic. So we told our associates to look for signs of willingness in our customers. Let’s believe that they want to pay us back. That they want to meet their obligations. When our associates looked at that principle and started treating our customers that way, we got very different behavior. Customers started finding new ways to pay us back. They actually put us higher in the payment hierarchy than other creditors who were beating them up on the phone, and telling them that they needed to pay now, and threatening them. We were willing to work with them. It was that small principle that we put in place that changed those small behaviors. Our associates knew they were accountable for living up to that set of principles.

As you think about your organization and creating this culture of accountability, first determine the key behaviors that you want, and make sure they’re aligned with the brand of your organization. Communicate those values, let people know who they’re accountable to, and then figure out those small desired daily actions that you want to see out of your people. Be patient. Reinforce those behaviors. And when you see somebody do it right, celebrate that success. Communicate it broadly across the organization, so people know what you’re looking for. And if you’re able to be patient, have that clarity of principle, over time you’ll have the culture of accountability you’re looking for.

Want to learn more about building accountability into your culture? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to build accountability into your culture. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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!