Mike Figliuolo, thoughtLEADERS’ Managing Director, sat down with Jim and Jan of The Leadership Podcast to discuss Negotiation.
In continuation of our new collaboration with The Leadership Podcast, Mike, breaks down some of the basics of negotiation in this short form “chalk talk.” These chalk talk series are bitesize sessions on a common (but challenging) leadership issue.
Jim, Jan, and Mike talk about the bi-partisan frustration that is inherent with real negotiation and breakdown why negotiation is an important part of teams and being an effective leader, no matter where you are in your career.
Mike discusses some of the thought process around approaching negotiations and the necessity to change your tactics depending on the party on the other side of the discussion.
Stay tuned for more of these brief Chalk Talks featuring Mike, as well as many more members of the thoughtLEADERS team.
Mike Figliuolo, thoughtLEADERS’ Managing Director, sat down with Jim and Jan of The Leadership Podcast to discuss executive presence.
thoughtLEADERS is proud to announce a new initiative with The Leadership Podcast to provide very short podcasts called “chalk talks.” They’re a bitesize session on a common (but challenging) leadership issue. In this session, Mike breaks down some of the nuance that comes along with creating and growing your executive presence.
Jim, Jan, and Mike talk about the balance between “swagger” and maintaining a sense of humility in working with individuals. Their discussion breaks down the barriers that can come up with leaders who may not fully understand what exactly they are trying to convey.
Mike covers a few important rules to remember as a leader, especially when working with new people and new teams, including the critical rule of listening more than you speak.
Stay tuned for more of these brief Chalk Talks featuring Mike, as well as many more members of the thoughtLEADERS team.
It’s never a great idea to work in a silo, but you also have make sure you’re working with a strong team. Learn about how you can strengthen your team and your leadership.
Today’s post is by Mike Figliuolo, Managing Director of thoughtLEADERS.
Personalizing Your Leadership Approach
Do you feel like you’re investing a ton of time in your people and not getting the results you expect? Do you have team members who are performing well, but you just can’t get them to improve? Are some of your team members disengaged and you worry about them leaving your organization?
I’ve dealt with all of these situations, and I’ve taught countless leaders how to overcome these challenges. As a result, I developed a framework called the Leadership Matrix to help deal with these issues. I’ve also written a book that explains this matrix in depth.
Here, I’ll cover how to assess how you’re spending your time and energy. How to reward and inspire your high performers. How to get results out of team members who aren’t contributing. How to train and motivate your low performers. And how to reclaim your time from team members who tend to waste it. By using this approach, you can generate better results by being more efficient in how you lead your team members.
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Almost all industries are segmented, but sometimes big changes require creating a team with representation from all sides of the business. Here are the basics of working with cross-functional teams.
Today’s post is by Mike Figliuolo, Managing Director of thoughtLEADERS.
Imagine an orchestra made up of nothing but trumpets. Imagine a baseball team of all catchers. Imagine a medical team that’s nothing but radiologists. Those aren’t good situations.
A cross-functional team is a group of people with different functional expertise working toward a common goal. It can include people from finance, marketing, operations and HR, and other key functional areas.
Employees from different levels usually participate on a cross-functional team. The team might include frontline operators, managers and directors, you may have analysts and project managers on the team. There may be other job families involved. These teams can also include people from outside the organization like suppliers, customers, or consultants. The important thing to note about a cross-functional team is you’re bringing together people with different experiences, different perspectives, and different skill sets to jointly solve a problem or implement an initiative.
Different perspectives and skills are designed to give you a higher chance of success since you’re involving relevant experts from relevant areas. If you get the opportunity to lead a cross-functional team, I encourage you to jump at that chance. You’re going to learn so much about different functions that you may never have experienced before and you’re going to see the power of bringing together those diverse perspectives and experiences and pointing them toward a common objective.
https://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/logo.png00Ryan Shawhttps://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/logo.pngRyan Shaw2019-10-16 06:30:072019-08-13 11:49:35The Basics of a Cross-Functional Team
Leadership isn’t an unlimited resource, because time isn’t an unlimited resource. Learn how to be a more effective and efficient leader.
Today’s post is by Mike Figliuolo, Managing Director of thoughtLEADERS.
Do you work a 40 hour week or are you working 24/7? How much effort are you putting into your work? How much stress do you experience from the energy you’re putting in? Your time and energy are finite resources. You can squeeze more time out by taking away from other activities in your life but you can’t do that forever. That time isn’t unlimited.
If you squeeze out too much, bad things can happen. I’m speaking from experience here. I’ve had two heart attacks because I was spending too much time and energy with my work. Something needs to change. To reduce the time you spend at work, reduce stress, and improve performance, you need to approach how you spend your time and energy differently.
Leadership capital is the time and energy you invest in leading your team. It needs to be invested carefully like any other scarce resource. When’s the last time you assessed where you’re spending your time and energy? Who are you spending it with? How are you spending it? Are you getting the results you want from those investments? These are all questions I want you to consider as you assess how you’re spending the valuable resource of your leadership capital.
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Our reader poll today asks: How frequently do you shift blame for mistakes you’ve made?
Never. I always own my mistakes: 66%
Sometimes. It just kind of happens, and I don’t realize I’m doing it: 32%
Often. Usually, someone else caused the problem to start: 1%
Always. I have a hard time taking responsibility for mistakes: 1%
Mess up, fess up. While most of you actively admit to and own mistakes, there’s a large group of you who admit to blame-shifting. It’s easy to do. None of us likes to make mistakes let alone claim responsibility for them. When you do find yourself in that situation, it might be easier to split the mistake into components and own the portions of it that are your responsibility. Many mistakes have multiple parties contributing. No one wants to take the blame for someone else’s mistake so we find ourselves attributing the entire mistake to someone else’s actions. Find and own the parts of it that are yours. Leave it to others to take responsibility for their portion. The interesting thing is once you publicly claim your part of the issue, others will tend to claim theirs too since they’re no longer on the hook for the entire issue.
Do you agree with these poll results? Let us know in the comments below!
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Our reader poll today asks: How well-defined are your organization’s prioritization criteria for investments and projects?
Our criteria are very well defined and clear: 23%
We have some criteria but they’re a bit loose: 25%
We have few criteria and they’re mostly financial: 29%
We have no formal criteria defined: 23%
Criteria for fit focuses efforts. While it’s great to see many of you have criteria for investments and projects, the bigger question is how rigorously are they used to assess project fit. Without a proper balance of qualitative and quantitative criteria, you run the risk of pursuing non-strategic but financially attractive ideas. Long-term that can result in a muddied strategy. Push for clarification of what your strategic investment filters are. When you achieve a balanced set of criteria, you’ll have a better-balanced portfolio of ideas you’re pursuing that is also more consistent with your long-term strategy. For those of you without any criteria, it’s time to speak up and push to instill some rigor in your investments.
Do you agree with these poll results? Let us know in the comments below!
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Our reader poll today asks: What’s been your experience with individual contributors moving into management roles?
I’ve always seen it work out great: 4%
Sometimes it works well; other times, not so much: 85%
Usually it’s been a disaster: 12%
Set them up to succeed. Promoting an individual contributor to a manager role often seems like a good idea. The person does great work in their area of expertise and is respected by their peers for their competency. You have to realize, though, that managing is a completely different skill set than their individual contributor work. Set the person up to succeed. First, confirm they even want a manager role (not everyone does). Next, get them training and on-the-job opportunities to learn management skills. Find them a mentor. Give them additional coaching. And most important – do ALL of this BEFORE you put them in the role. A little bit of preparation over a few months can keep that promotion from going sideways and turning into a disaster.
Do you agree with these poll results? Let us know in the comments below!
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Our reader poll today asks: How closely are your priorities tied to your company’s strategy?
Very. Everything I work on links directly to the strategy: 41%
Somewhat. Links exist, but I also have some unrelated priorities: 38%
Not very. Most of my work has no clear link to the strategy: 10%
Not at all. I don’t even know what our strategy is: 11%
Aligning activities to strategy. It’s encouraging to see 80% of you have a direct link between many of your priorities and the company’s strategy. For the activities that don’t seem aligned, ask why you’re doing them. Some are out of habit. Some are required by regulators. Some should simply be stopped but no one has ever said anything about it. Trim unnecessary activities on a regular basis. For those of you who don’t have a clear link to or understanding of the strategy, ask for it. Spend time reading your company website and annual report. Ask your managers and leaders to give you an update on the strategy. The better you understand it, the more effective you can be in your job.
Do you agree with these poll results? Let us know in the comments below!
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!
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Getting your point or idea across to important stakeholders in a concise and simple way is the difference between getting approval and not.
What makes a presentation unsuccessful?
When you have a recommendation you’re trying to get approved within your organization, there are going to be a lot of stakeholders you have to get your idea in front of. You’ll have to put it in front of your manager, maybe their boss, a director, some vice presidents. Some of your ideas may even go all they up to the C-suite, and there’s something I like to call Figliuolo’s Law which states, an individual’s annual compensation is inversely proportional to the number of slides to look at before they have a stroke.
I’ve worked with a CEO who said, “If it has a staple, I won’t read it.” I worked closely with another CEO and we went in to present. The other team went to present first. He picked up their presentation, he felt it for heft, and it was only about 25 pages long, he threw it across the room and said, “Talk to me, what do you want? I’m busy.” Now, we knew better, we had presented to him before. Our presentation was three slides long. Effective communications is one of the most critical skills out there, but so many times we’re just flat-bad at it.
This isn’t about PowerPoint. This isn’t about presentations. This is all about the thinking that happens before you start writing that presentation. So let’s look at how we typically do things today.
First, we’ll start by doing a bunch of analysis because we have the data. We can slice it, we can dice it, we can create graphs and pivot tables. And once we get done with our analysis, we look for an insight. The graph went up and I thought it would go down. There must be an insight there. We then write a thick, incomprehensible, 80 page long presentation because we want to show everybody how rigorous we’ve been and how hard we’ve been working. We then go to share that presentation in a two-hour meeting, and people are watching the clock go round and round and round. And about 20 minutes in, you’ve lost them. People are falling asleep, people are on their phones. You don’t get your point across.
The negative impacts of this approach are huge. First, poor communication is inefficient. Most of that analysis you’ve done will not see the light of day. Most of the slides you put together for a presentation will never be shown. And after that meeting people walk out scratching their head and saying, “I don’t know what we just decided.” Well, you have to have another meeting. It’s a complete waste of time. It’s also ineffective. Your ideas don’t get approved if you’re not thoughtful about how you’re going to communicate, and what information you’re trying to get across, as well as what information you’re not going to share. The method is broken. We have to get better at communications. So what I’d like to offer is a very different process for thinking through how you’re going to construct and ultimately share your recommendations.
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Stopping and considering decisions before you make them is only the start to critical thinking and building on those skills makes all the difference.
The importance of critical thinking
Let’s look at the importance of critical thinking. So many times when people ask us, “Can you go solve this problem,” we rush off and start solving it without stopping to think before we do.
We’re facing new demands that require extensive amounts of information before we can make a decision. There are multiple departments involved in all of your problem-solving efforts, and each department is contributing its own input. As part of your problem-solving process, there are going to be multiple stakeholders involved. This increases the complexity of trying to get to an answer.
When you do ultimately come up with a recommendation, those big decisions will involve numerous trade-offs. Not everyone is going to be happy with what you recommend. There are going to be long lag times in acquiring the required data to make your decision, and when you finally do make the call, there’s going to be high scrutiny over whether you were right or wrong. And a bad call can have both business, as well as, personal and professional implications. Add to this unforeseen bottlenecks in getting the process done of getting to that answer, multiply it by the number of problems you’re trying to solve every single day, and then divide by the limited amount of time you have to get to an answer.
The importance of stopping and thinking critically before you rush off and undertake all these very comprehensive efforts is very high. That critical thinking process is what’s going to differentiate you and the solutions you develop versus rushing off without any thought at all.
Distinguish causes vs. consequences
As you begin your critical thinking efforts I’d like you to think about causes and consequences. One of the biggest challenges we’re going to face with any problem solving is that desire to rush off and get to an answer quickly because we feel like we’re being responsive to our stakeholders when we do. But think about it.
Have you ever solved a symptom only to find out there are other symptom’s that arise after you solve it? Have you ever put in place a recommendation only to find out you created new problems down the road? When you’re going through this critical thinking process, first, consider causes.
Look at the symptom that is problematic. Then figure out the real reason it’s happening. And come at that possible symptom from multiple perspectives. Once you generate a recommendation, stop and think critically. What new problems can you create, if you implement this recommendation? What are the new symptoms that will be caused? Think that through before you implement your recommendation.
Let me offer an example. I know a client situation where the organization was going to roll out a brand-new website that would be facing their customers. The problem was they continued to miss deadlines for rolling the website out and going live. Now let’s look at causes and consequences. What was the cause of the website not rolling out? Well, the code wasn’t ready. Yeah, but that’s a symptom. That’s a symptom of a problem. Why wasn’t the code ready? Well, the specifications weren’t done. Okay. Well, that’s also a symptom. Why weren’t the specs done? Well, because they didn’t agree on the features and functionality of the new website. But let’s not stop there. Why was that symptom happening? Well, they weren’t given clarity by leadership around one aspect that was a major strategic decision in terms of how they would roll the website out. That was the cause of all these issues and why the rollout wasn’t happening.
Now let’s think through, once that strategic decision is made, what are the consequences of it? So leadership finally decided to make the website a closed network. Therefore, new customers would have to call in to register, instead of registering on a website. But let’s look at the consequences of that decision and the new problems that can emerge. New customers are now going to have to call a call center associate. That’s then going to flood the call center with incremental calls. The consequence of that is the staff in the call center is going to be over-worked. And then the consequence of that is current customers are going to experience service issues. They won’t get their calls answered as quickly. And then the consequence of that is we might lose current customers.
By stopping and thinking about causes first and then consequences, once you do make a recommendation, you’re going to identify the true problem that you need to solve and, hopefully, you’ll be able to avoid causing future problems. When you go out to solve a problem, think backwards about the causes, think forward about the consequences.
As you go to apply these notions to your critical thinking processes, I’d like you to think about a problem you’re working on. Look at the causes. Spend some time thinking about what’s really causing this issue. Continue to work backward until it’s clear you’re solving a problem and not a symptom. Then, once you’ve generated a recommendation, think through the consequences. What are the new problems that could emerge, if you implement your recommendation? Think about a problem that you made a recommendation on where it didn’t go so well. Which of these two did you miss? Did you miss the real root cause? Did you miss possible consequences of your recommendation?
By spending this extra time thinking about these aspects and putting in the critical thought, there’s a much higher likelihood that whatever recommendation you come up with is going to solve the true problem and you’re going to account for some of the possible consequences down the road.
Want to learn more about critical thinking, and how to really think about the effects it will have on your business? Check out the video below or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to improve all different aspects of your business every week. 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!
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Creating goals for your business that link through the entire organization is the key to successful goal setting from all sides of your business.
Link goals to strategy
For a goal to be really relevant, it has to tie to the broader purpose and goals of the entire organization. Your strategy is going to help drive that. The strategy consists of a desired future state and definition of how you’re going to get there.
You should break that strategy down into smaller interim goals on that path. Every goal that gets set in the organization should be linked to that broader element of your strategy. How do you do that?
Take your vision and your mission. Look at where you’re going as an organization. Break that down into major themes over the course of the strategic planning period. For each theme, break that down into actions you’ll have to take to achieve that theme. For each action, break that down into sub-actions until you can set an individual goal for each of those actions.
I worked for a lawn and garden company at one point and I was in the strategic planning group. We said, “We’re no longer going to “just be a lawn and garden company. “We’re going to move into outdoor living.” It was a much broader expansion strategy.
For each part of the organization, we set goals that were tied to that outdoor living strategy. Our consumer packaged goods business had goals for new product line expansion and getting into new categories. Our services business had goals for offering new services. Even in the strategy group, we had goals for achieving that outdoor living strategy. We had goals for how many acquisitions we would do, what categories we were going to enter, and for each acquisition we had goals related to targets we were going to make offers to. We had a time for when we were going to make the offer. We had deadlines for making a deal. We had deadlines and goals around integration, execution of the plan, and expansion of those businesses once they were acquired. Every single one of those goals tied to a broader strategic theme, and those themes tied to the broader strategy of getting into outdoor living.
We all knew how we were contributing to the broader strategy. Therefore, our goals made sense and they were meaningful and relevant to the mission of the organization. When you set your goals, make sure that you can go from strategy to themes to actions to goals, and then explain to the members of your team how those goals roll up to the broader strategy. It will give their work meaning and help them understand how they fit in.
Learn to build goals from the top down
Goals shouldn’t just tie from your strategy down to the individual goals. When you add your goals up, they also need to align from corporate goals down to the individual. Ensure everyone’s work is headed in the same direction and people know how they fit in, how their work contributes to the broader goals we’re trying to achieve.
The way you do this is to work from the vision down to subcomponents, then down to subcomponents below that, all the way down to individual goals. Goals should cascade from the highest levels down, and when you add them all up, hopefully it’s more than you’re trying to get to at the top level. Why? Well, you want to make sure that you hit that goal. By over-allocating that goal across the organization, you’re going to increase the chances that you hit the big goal.
I worked for an operating division at one point and we had a goal of $200 million of revenue. There were five regions in the organization. Each region was given a goal of $42 million. Now, that’s $210 million. Within those regions, each branch was given a goal, and when you totaled up all the branches, it came to $215 million worth of goals. We then looked at the individual sales reps, and every sales rep was given a goal. When we totaled up all the sales rep goals, it was $220 million. Adding up those individual goals exceeded the division goal by 10%, by $20 million.
The reason we did this was to ensure that we hit that top-level $200 million goal. Over the course of the year, obviously, some sales reps exceeded their goals, some met their goals, and some fell short. Working from the top down, ensured the primary goal was focused on. Everyone was focused on driving sales, and by over-allocating that goal from top down to individual helped us achieve that goal. Now, when you do this, if you’re going to go with an over-allocating approach to setting these goals from the big goal down to individuals, be careful about overplaying that hand because you may make it such that that goal is not achievable.
One time I’ve seen this dynamic is when I was in the army and we had to be at formation at a certain time. Our company commander would say, “I want everybody at formation at 6 am.” The lieutenants would then go to the organization and say, “I want everybody at formation at 5:30 am.” The platoon sergeants then went to the teams and said, “I want everybody in formation at 5 am.” The squad leaders then said, “I want everybody in formation at 4:30 am.” The next thing you know, you’ve got this poor private standing out there in a parking lot at 4 am waiting for a formation that happens two hours from now.
Bad things can happen when you over-allocate a goal down to the individual level so balance it out. Look at the high-level goal. Break it down into subcomponents. Look at the individual goals that are going to add up to that broader goal. Make sure the goals you set at the individual level are still achievable and they’re directly tied to the broader goal you’re trying to achieve. By doing so, people know how they contribute, how they fit in, and you’re going to make sure that you hit those top-level goals if everybody hits their individual goals.
Want to learn more about goal setting, and how to really think about the effects it will have on your business? Check out the video below or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to improve all different aspects of your business every week. 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!
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