Posts From: Leadership

You’ve all heard about – perhaps even talked about – the issue of women’s roles in the leadership ranks and business. The conversation continues, though it’s happily evolved from the 1970s Equal Rights Amendment days (as if there could even be a debate about that) to Hillary Clinton’s famous 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling. You’ve come a long way baby … even though that silly cigarette ad slogan is about as politically incorrect as smoking is these days.

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Having made the case for the change to Agile, communicating when the change would take place and how it might affect both the organization and the individuals, the next step was to ensure that all of the team members had the tools that they would need to implement this new approach. This was accomplished by ensuring that everyone in the organization was trained in the agile methodology.

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Most organizations that measure their customer satisfaction still do so by a 0-100 point scale. However, recent changes in known customer loyalty for products/services appear to indicate that this metric may no longer be a sound one to use. I learned this myself recently when talking with my esteemed colleague and recognized expert in this area of business performance, Phil Forrest. Phil is the President of the International Customer Service Institute (ticsi.com) and the founding Chairperson for the British Business Awards shown annually on BBC-TV. Here are the questions I asked him and his revealing answers that could mean the difference between success vs. failure for your business.

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Do you want to keep growing, keeping your life meaningful, interesting and fun? Is part of your job as a leader or coach to help others see their careers flow instead of stagnate? If you answered yes to one or both of these questions, you need set your brain to focus on the future.

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My March blog post introduced the Seven Levers of Change. Used together, these levers engage employees and help them recognize the potential of a change initiative. The levers deal with getting the word out (Personal Contacts and Mass Exposure), gaining expertise (Hire Advocates), dealing with resistance (Shift Resisters), and fostering an environment that encourages people to adopt practices necessary to make the change successful (Infrastructure, Walk the Talk, and Reward & Recognition). The seven levers have the most synergy when used together.

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Change is one of the most difficult components of any leader's job, especially when the change includes adjustments that the leaders themselves must undergo. The management team of DTCCL was unanimous in the belief that in order to better meet the needs of the lines of business that the customer training organization supported the team needed to both adapt an organizational structure and development methodology that better enabled rapid and iterative development, quick reaction to change, and closer customer collaboration. The decision was thus made to restructure the organization from one where designers reported into one silo, instructors into another and business analyst into a third, into one where teams that were made up of designers, instructors, analysts and technologists reported into learning domains that were responsible for all learning support for specific lines of business.

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Whether you are an entrepreneur or work for an organization, you can follow two routes to success: 1) exceeding goals and expectations or 2) challenging goals and expectations to create something better.

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The technology changes that have occurred over the past five years have drastically reshaped how all of us live and learn. The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) suggests that the net of this change is that we (as consumers) react faster and are more demanding. We expect instant access to information, frequent updates, and flawless performance not just in the technology space, but with every product that we interact with.

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The phrase “short-termism” was coined to describe the financial markets’ focus on quarterly reports and quick profits at the expense of long-term value and sustainability. In organizational change initiatives, we often see something similar: quick fixes applied to urgent problems—or problem symptoms— that ultimately undermine the initiative. Last July, I wrote about applying systems thinking to break the cycle of short-termism. Recall that systems thinking is a tool to help clarify the underlying interactions and interrelationships that cause the everyday events that we experience. Seeing and understanding this causal structure improves decision making by demonstrating both the short-term and long-term effects that can result from any decision.

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Just as an observer alters behavior by the fact that the behavior is being observed, whenever you enter or leave a room, your presence affects the thoughts and behaviors of those in the room. Even if no one seemed to notice, their brains selected to ignore you, minimizing your impact.

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