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ED'S BLOGCulTure Many people in management positions have what they see as an intense dilemma, which phrases itself in the following way: “Why doesn’t everybody just know what they’re supposed to do? It’s so simple!” They see a workplace in disarray, a group of employees – whether subservient or superior – who have exceptional skills but don’t seem to understand how to use them, and a mountain of work piling up due to an alarming lack of productivity. Why, these workers must be the most lazy, undisciplined wastes of space on the planet!
Managers who think in these terms fail to recognize that the blame for such an unproductive workplace falls squarely on their own shoulders. Managers, employers and leaders of men must create a culture within their workplace. If such a mandate is ignored, a culture will form in that workplace, but it will be a far different culture than the one you intend. Let’s restate that, so that I am absolutely clear: a work culture is always being formed, simply by virtue of more than two people being put in the same environment at the same time. The question is, are you the one forming the culture, or is it forming on its own?
All people in management positions are leaders. By the very nature of those positions, the people holding them must know how to lead those they manage – whether it’s through a project, through a crisis or simply through each and every work day. So when you’re talking about what kind of culture has formed in your workplace, you’re really talking about what kind of leader you are. Let’s take a look at the word culture. Imagine the “T” as a divider between two categories, as a goal towards which each side, each type of leader, is working. One one side of that “T” we have the CUL side and on the other we have the URE side. Interestingly enough, these two letter combinations can accurately describe the managers who create the two types of culture I’ve described above. The first – the manager who wonders why his employees don’t simply know what they’re supposed to do – falls on the CUL side. “CUL” can be extended in this manager’s case to read, “C U Later.” A CUL leader isn’t much of a leader at all, but he or she nevertheless is leading his team to a specific destination. Often, this destination is called a Total failure. Total failure being something that every leader and every team wants to avoid, let’s analyze the characteristics of a CUL leader to see if we recognize any of his tendencies within ourselves. C – Careless
A CUL leader is a careless leader. He or she does not take the time to establish rules, milestones and overall goals for his team. The result is a group of directionless people. Of course they don’t seem to know what they should be doing; they’ve never had a clear goal laid down in front of them. A person standing in the desert dying of thirst is much more likely to walk across that desert in a motivated fashion if there is a clear vision of a fountain or a pool within sight. Without a goal, that person might just give up. The same is true of your team when you are Careless with your goal-setting.
Wild Card Teams: How Runner-Up Teams Get Into the Post-season There are some sports in which the regular season is important only insofar as your team makes it to the postseason. In professional basketball, for example, nearly half the teams in the NBA make it into the playoffs, which is why they take two months. The same thing is true of professional hockey. Can you imagine that? Out of thirty teams, sixteen have a chance to play for the championship. Hardly seems like the absolute best of the best competing, does it?
Professional baseball has a different method. It used to be that only division winners were allowed to have a playoff. In baseball, that meant that only four teams had a shot at the World Series. Starting in the 1990s, baseball expanded that field, but did so judiciously. The baseball leagues – American and National – were divided into three divisions. Rather than giving the winningest division leader a bye – a pass into the League Championship Series – a new rule was devised: the Wild Card rule. The winningest team in the league that had not won its division was allowed into the playoffs. This team is called the Wild Card team, and since its inception four of the ten winners have been of this variety, including three of the six in the twenty-first century. Why are Wild Cards so wildly successful? Many people have said that it’s because these teams “get hot late”; that is, they are able to gather enough momentum during the last half of the regular season to win more games than any other second-place team. They may have faltered out of the gate, but the Wild Card team uses the long season to its advantage and regroups, figuring out along the way what it takes to win. And fans in Boston, Miami and Anaheim can tell you that coming from behind in that fashion is very satisfying. Update Your Resume In a tough economy and a competitive sales environment, we can often find ourselves getting a “pink slip” from longtime clients and a “no thank you” from potential customers. This is an indirect downsizing that can lead to the real thing, if sales aren’t up to par. In a “What have you done for me lately?” industry, it helps to review, reflect and reevaluate. A good strategy could be the difference between job security and the classifieds. You can reduce the possibility of losing sales by examining your own sales process. Take inventory of what does and doesn’t works. Salespeople who are successful in the long term self-analyze, self-criticize and self-improve on a regular basis.
One good strategy to keep your sales approach fresh and vital is to update your résumé at least once a year. Good sales associates will make this an annual ritual, if only to celebrate their accomplishments on the year. Even if they are not looking for a new job, they will often look outside the company in order to evaluate their own market value. When you take a look at the competition that would be present if you were to look for a new job, you are able to judge your own importance to your company and to the field of sales in general. So let’s take a look at the contracts you won in the last year. Are you on pace with previous years, or has the rate increased or decreased? Are you on or ahead of the curve in terms of others’ sales? Make a separate section for new techniques you’ve used, new contacts you’ve made, and new avenues you’ve explored. If you radically changed an aspect of your sales method during the past fiscal year, evaluate its effectiveness. Has it shown positive results, or should you junk it? It’s time for your employee review. Be honest and objective: would you re-hire you? As the world of sales changes, assess the ways in which you are able to change with it. Stodgily holding to the old way often translates to a drop in sales and a rapid loss of relevance. In this business, relevance is all we have. If you and your product cease to at least to seem to be relevant to customers, you might as well write up your own pink slip. Finally, make goals for the coming year. Proactive entrepreneurs constantly ask themselves, “How can I reinvent myself to meet the ever-changing demands and needs of the customer?” Anticipate new trends or changes in your market and address them with new approaches and techniques. Remember, the “sold” demanded the solution currently in place. That which is yet to be sold demands new solutions. Moving and changing with the industry will ensure that the world of sales doesn’t pass you by. Are you updating your repertoire along with your résumé? Remember, you are CEO of YOU, INC. Act like it. You can’t always guarantee your employment…. But you can always guarantee your EMPLOYABILITY! Building a Wining Culture As a man who coached sports professionally for over ten years, and as someone who has coached executives, leaders and managers for more than twenty, I feel that I have some insight into what it means to be a coach. But the title of “Coach” gets bandied about an awful lot these days. It seems you can go to any street corner and purchase the services of a life coach, a management coach, an executive coach, or a leadership coach. When you scan the business landscape, it almost seems as if anyone can be a coach, if they have a little bit of experience and a grasp of motivational catchphrases and industry buzzwords.
But in reality, there is an intangible quality not present in just anyone that is prerequisite to being a coach. I’m not being elitist here; those who possess that quality usually are the only ones who want to be coaches, real coaches, in the first place. That quality is the ability to build a team. It is the ability to bring a diverse group of talented people with different strengths, different personalities and different drivers together and turn them into a cogent, cohesive unit unified in the pursuit of a common goal. It is also the willingness and the bravado, if you will, to presume to lead such a diverse and talented group. I spent over a decade of my life, as I’ve stated above, as a professional athletic coach. Specifically, I coached high school wrestling and football. I’ve seen well-formed teams with chemistry and I’ve seen unruly groupings of players who all seem to be going in different directions. I’ve coached losing squads and I’ve coached champions. The one thing that championship teams have in common with teams who underperform is the same thing that every group of people placed in the same situation at the same time for an extended period has in common. A culture is in place which informs that group of people as to how to behave, how to interact, and what is expected of them. What separates a truly great coach from other coaches is the ability to install a winning culture in his or her team. Legendary coaches are able to win championships consistently and repeatedly at their respective institutions, regardless of who the players are. The culture that they implement, not the talent which surrounds them, ensures victory. And so the question you ask is, how can I install a winning culture? How can I become a winning coach? How can I tell a winning coach from all the others? Think about it this way: a winning coach is committed to building a winning culture. Building is an operative word. Cultures come about in one of two ways: they are either built or they are allowed to happen. Cultures that are allowed to happen are haphazard, loose and overly permissive. The best way to go about things is to take an active role in building your team’s culture. The first step towards building a winning culture is to build a winning attitude within yourself. A good coach has all the right answers for his or her team; in order to have those answers for your team, you must also have them for yourself. Think about the questions you must answer in terms of the five W’s and an H: Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How. WHERE
The Where question can be answered in the form of a vision statement. Where are you going, personally? What are your ultimate goals; that is, where do you ultimately want to be? When you have answered this question within yourself, you can also answer it in team terms. What are your ultimate goals for any team you coach? A coach who can present a clear and well-defined vision statement for his or her team is a coach with the potential to win. When a team can see where it is going, it is much easier for them to get there than it would be if they had no idea where they were aiming.
WHY
The Why question can be answered in the form of a mission statement. Once you know where you are going, you need to define for yourself the reasons why you absolutely must succeed in getting there. You may have heard the old cliché: an actor asks his director, “Yes, but what’s my motivation?” Believe it or not, that cliché holds true for men and women and children and you and I in everyday life. It is much easier to carry out a task if you have a good reason for doing it. “Just because” doesn’t motivate you or any of your team members towards anything at all. Define the reasons why you want to succeed, and why you want to do so in the particular arena you have chosen. You’ll find it’s easier to motivate yourself and your team when driving factors are clearly explained.
WHAT
It’s all well and good to set goals, however small or large. It’s even better to define the reasons why you want to achieve them. But you’ll never get anywhere unless you understand the critical success factors involved in reaching your goals. Simply put, What do you need to have to do it? Make an inventory. Know what you need in order to achieve the goals you’ve set, not in order to keep up with the Joneses. A team full of role-players that works in tandem with each other will always accomplish more than a team of superstars each trying to outshine the other.
HOW
There are many different ways to win championships. The way that you choose, the how that defines your team will also define the type of success that you have. That said, How are you going to choose to implement your critical success factors, your What? Whether you use that tailback with size but no speed as your starter or as your third-down back will have an effect on the way your team performs. How will you use your team members’ talents? How will you implement your gameplan? How will you set incentives and rewards for team members?
WHO and WHEN
Once you’ve determined your How, you can turn that overall strategy into specific tactics to be used in game situations. You understand the talents of your team members. You understand what must be done in order to achieve your goal and the way in which it must be done. The final step in building a winning team with a group of roleplayers is to determine which roles they play, and how they play those roles. That is, Who does What, and When? In what situations do certain team members step up, while others stand down? What instances require a full-out blitz, and which instances merely merit a simple draw play?
The When and the Who make up the execution of your overall strategic plan. All too often most strategic plans or visions are rushed, they are announced to the public, and then they are forgotten or pushed aside for some daily urgent task. Remember, while coaching is grounded in the execution, it must always be propelled by the strategy or vision and mission. If that mission and that vision are strong, your culture will be ready to win, and win often.
Align Yourself to Success Have you ever been driving down the road and felt the tug and pull of your car’s steering because the wheels were out of alignment? You muster all that energy to keep control of the car only to get more frustrated as you steer in the opposite direction just to keep the car straight.
Often times when organizations undergo change they also get out of alignment. For employees and management, this may mirror what it feels like when driving a car that is out of alignment. Feelings of frustration, immobility and lack of control over their job may soon prevail.
As with a car’s wheels or a person with a bad back, an organization that is out of alignment can face significant wear and tear. Whether it’s the employees or the profitability of the company, everyone suffers in the end.
So, how do you align an organization that is undergoing change? Building trust is essential.
In order to establish trust, it’s important to have personal alignment before achieving organizational alignment. How can we align others if we aren’t aligned ourselves? Since alignment is a process of making a vision a reality, it relates to many factors in the workplace such as: integrity, values/ideas, decision making, problem solving, motivation and empowerment. Always keep integrity in mind when realigning yourself, members of your team or an organization by remembering the three Cs – candor, consistency and congruency. By maintaining candor, you’re keeping the lines of communication open by encouraging people to put their thoughts, feelings and ideas into words. Be consistent by putting words into action and setting an example by practicing what you preach. Establish congruency by creating a team atmosphere and unifying everyone to pursue the same goal. Alignment also ties into the company’s vision and values. Think of the physical elements of alignment and how they can impact a situation. I have sciatica that causes my back to sometimes get out of whack. This is very painful and usually makes me temporarily immobile. There’s nothing more frustrating than not being able to move and feeling like I have no control over my body. These feelings of frustration and immobility hold true for employees in an organization that is out of alignment. Staff needs to feel mobile, that they are being valued and that they have some control over their job. As a result, this allows everyone to better prioritize their time and manage projects efficiently. Proper alignment can also lead to effective decision making. It creates a structure for strategic planning and for implementing sound policies that will ultimately yield successful results for both the employees and the company. No matter what the situation is in a company, there will always be problems to solve, which is another reason why alignment is so essential. It allows for the assessment of limiting factors to get to the root cause of a problem so that you can find solutions and get your team back on track. Alignment can also help mitigate problems by preventing them in the first place and by avoiding the “law of reversed effort” – the concept of a conflict between someone’s will and their imagination. If a person feels that they can’t do what they want to accomplish, then they typically do the exact opposite making the task impossible to achieve. Take micromanaging for example. The more you interfere, the more immobile an employee feels thereby affecting the alignment of that person, creating distrust and resulting in an incomplete project. So, what are some of the barriers to aligning people and an organization? People are creatures of habit, which can be a hindrance in achieving alignment. Not only are you trying to alter work-related habits, but also personal habits. Existing systems can also present issues because you’re ultimately varying the way people do things. Boundaries are another factor. People may not want to overstep their boundaries and often want to stay in their comfort zone. While realigning an organization and your staff may feel daunting at times, alignment in the end is worth it. It brings balance, peace, and harmony and therefore motivates people to get the job done. It also generates feelings of empowerment. By being aligned, people feel more in control of their situation and therefore feel valued and that they can get the job done. Stephen R. Covey of Franklin Covey once said, “An empowered organization is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organizational success.” |
