Organizational Culture Insights to Strengthen Leadership and Drive Change

Leaders are Works-in-Progress I got one of my earliest lessons in leadership in college. A nerdy engineering student, I was a floor counsellor in a Georgia Tech dorm with the good fortune to have a visionary and unusual boss. Templeton was the associate dean of students, a bona fide adult in a role usually held by students. But his age and experience weren’t the only things that set him apart. Miller did things differently from the other head residents. In advance of our Monday night staff meetings, he assigned readings, typically classic leadership texts such as Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People , books on assertiveness training, that kind of thing. Now, keep in mind that this was the late 1980s, decades before the leadership industry exploded. Tim, a good friend of mine, was another of Miller’s counsellors. Tim was what you might call a natural leader. Super people-oriented, energetic, just downright magnetic, he was the guy everybody wanted to know, who we all aspired to be like. I later realized that the Tims of the world, they’re the exception. And yet, we can learn how to connect with others. Just as Miller invested in us, teaching us how to lead the kids on our floors and each other. He made us better, both individually and as a team. Leadership can be taught. And yet, so often in my decades working as a consultant or inside some of the world’s biggest brands, I’ve met dozens of leaders at all levels, from middle management right up to the c-suite, who think leaders are like Tim: born, not made. This is a dangerously limiting belief. Leadership is a set of skills you can learn. As with learning chess, say, or French cooking, your education, your quest for improvement, never ends. Leaders have to create environments that emphasize learning as a key principle AND apply that to themselves. Being in a leadership role is not a finished state. In fact, you’re never done growing and advancing. You’ve never “made it,” in this sense. But there’s another, even riskier myth: conflating leadership roles with true leadership. Your title doesn’t make you a leader. In the early 2000s, I was working on a consulting project in the maintenance department of an aerospace manufacturing company. The division was notoriously slow, and it was easy to see why: there were seven levels of management for 1,200 people. A restructuring was in order. The rub? A lot of managers would have to return to their former jobs carrying tools. I wasn’t surprised when, a month later, our team got a call from the client saying there had been grumblings about the process. What did surprise me? The company wanted us to interview those who’d been affected. I’ll never forget my first interview. Virgil was in his late 50s. He’d lost his supervisor role and been sent back to the floor. I was barely 30 and nervous. I had no idea how it was going to go, but I anticipated badly. I didn't know how to start, so I opened with something simple. “Hey, what's going on for you?” I asked. “It’s my fault,’’ Virgil said. That was not what I’d expected. “What’s your fault?” “Well, it's my fault that I didn’t get to keep my role as a supervisor.” Virgil told me that all his career, he’d aspired to be a supervisor. But when he finally landed the role, he did nothing to prepare for it. He didn’t know how to empower people. He took no opportunity to develop himself. Now, here he was, on the runway to retirement, back in his old job. He’d squandered his chance, and he knew it. And at his age, he wasn’t going to get another one. “I am who I am” doesn't cut it. I meet a lot of managers like Virgil. Some identify that they’ve got stuff to work on but avoid the effort and discomfort of growth. Others shrug and go: “This is me” or “This is just how I am.” They have no intention of changing. And then there are the people who think that when they become a leader, they've hit the pinnacle, they're done. “I have now achieved what I wanted to achieve” or “I've made it.” Done. Leadership is not a title or a fixed state. It’s a process of becoming someone who can align people around a cause to deliver results. A leader defines the gap between where you are and where you need to be and engages people in the journey to close it. Leaders know they are works-in-progress who never stop learning and growing. They know that the art of leadership is a life-long pursuit. I think of a coaching client of mine who, when he was named CEO, knew that public speaking and media interviews would be significant parts of the role. So he got to work, spending untold hours and days getting ready to face employees, shareholders, and reporters. Some might say there's no way someone at that level has time to make that kind of investment. Or, why not just offload this part to an underling? Not him. He knew this was a critical skill for the role. He knew he had to master it to deliver the best possible outcomes for the company. He knew that even as a leader, he would have to challenge himself constantly, and he embraced it.

The Charisma Myth I’ve met many charismatic people over more than 30 years as a consultant and executive. Some have been leaders. But not all. And yet, leadership is so often conflated with charisma, I’d say it’s one of its greatest myths. In my last post , I wrote about my college buddy Tim, who possessed almost superhuman people skills. To know the guy was to love him. When you talked to Tim, he was one of those rare people who made you feel like you were the only person in the room. But that’s not why he was a leader. Tim was a leader because he was able to get people to join him to accomplish goals together. Did his natural magnetism hurt? Of course not. But on its own, without the skills to harness it to deliver results, it’s just likeability, not leadership. One time, I worked with a leader who was a former star college athlete. He had great stories and people always flocked to him. He was also highly influential, his opinions always heard and often followed. Sounds like a leader, right? Not so fast. Those same people who either reported to him directly or indirectly also described him as uncaring and disconnected. They didn't feel inspired or engaged working for him. On the flip side, I’ve met people who weren’t particularly magnetic but who were leaders because they could inspire people to move with them towards a defined goal. They were able to overcome what we might call their charisma deficit to get results. What Really Matters I’m talking about charisma because it is very risky to confuse it with leadership. Too often, people with big personalities end up in leadership positions but lack the skills to actually, you know, lead. Or, even worse, people DO follow them, but in the wrong direction. I worked with a charming senior executive at a global beverage company who self-described as "often wrong, never confused!" This was apt. He was always clear about where he wanted to drive his team, even if it was to the detriment of his business segment. He had a tough time listening to others or challenging his thinking. And, as I wrote in my last post, the ability to grow and change is essential to leading. The bosses I mentioned above were both missing a foundational element in the recipe for success: the ability to engage your team in the journey. And that is only possible in a values-based environment. All About Engagement Values are the key to creating environments that fully engage and inspire people because they feel deeply connected to something bigger than themselves. Values are key to this engagement because they provide moral and practical guidance on what matters, and how to act. Values nurture trust and meaning. As a leader, you are responsible both for what gets done (results) and how they are accomplished. That’s where values come into play, setting the standards of behaviour for reaching goals. In a values-based environment, results are achieved with, not at the expense of others. Your team members feel valued for who they are, and are empowered to contribute their best. In a values-based environment, people feel respected. This starts at the top, but it’s a two-way street. You can’t impose or mandate values. To create truly engaging environments, people have to trust and respect their leaders. The Leadership Trifecta Leadership training and theory often presents a series of management functions, things like delegating, planning or hiring. Those skills are important, sure, but great leadership requires going far beyond them. It requires that leaders play three critical roles, all wrapped around a core of character. Those roles? Learner. Teacher. Steward. As a learner , you must be open to a continuous journey of self-reflection and self-improvement, constantly challenging your thinking. As a teacher , you must educate your team through the examples you set, the decisions you make, and the stories you share. As a steward of the values, you show by your words and deeds which behaviours are in-bounds–and which are out. You set the parameters and are responsible for nurturing, growing and perpetuating them. Setting the right example is paramount. You can have all the charisma in the world, but without a bedrock of character and a values-based environment, you’ll never be able to connect with and motivate people to get them psychologically engaged. You’ll never truly lead them to contribute their best every day. In my next piece, I’ll dig deeper into your role as steward of your organization’s values and explore how this relates to performance. Meanwhile, I want to hear from you. What values do you seek to embody for your team? How have you struggled or succeeded in being a learner, teacher and steward of them? Let me know in the comments or send me an email .

Reflections on 2021: A Year of Constant Adaptation Another epic year of change and challenges is in the books. In 2021, as we continued to navigate the whitewater of the pandemic and other shifting factors, it was reassuring to see how many foundational ideas about leadership and strategy held fast. Here’s a recap of the most significant enduring truths that the WhiteWater team noticed when it comes to building a thriving, resilient, future-facing organization. Strategy doesn’t need to be intimidating. To some, “strategy” sounds complex or even abstract, but the concept is actually really straightforward and grounded: how do you create a sustainable, defensible competitive advantage in the marketplace? That is, how do you win your target customers’ choice? For more, check out this recent post . “Implicit” strategy can work – for a while. If you’re a small company or a startup, there’s a certain momentum you can call strategy, even if your success is more of a serendipitous by-product than the outcome of focused planning. It looks like this: You offer a product or service. People like it. They buy. You grow…until you don’t. Sustainable, long-term growth requires explicit strategy. Eventually, you have to get serious if you want to maximize the value of your organization. And even many mature, decades-old companies have to learn this lesson the hard way: organizations without a defined strategy tend to be under-valued. Strategy starts with talking to your customers. ​​The best way to build a strategy is ridiculously basic, but many organizations skip this step: speak to your customers. That includes existing, former and potential customers. They have the intel and insights you need to understand what brings value for them. Execution is vital: Despite the unparalleled success of our book, Get in Gear: The Seven Gears that Drive Strategy to Results , more than a few organizations are still not performing their best! While some of these shortcomings are due to bad strategy, far more often, organizations fall short due to execution failures. Systematically aligning the seven gears takes work but invariably results in better performance. Set explicit goals. Most people avoid setting goals because accountability is scary. What if you don’t hit your target? We must reframe failure, not as something to avoid, but to embrace as the path to achieving new outcomes and, when you fall short, of learning. Defined goals lead to better performance. Not surprising, Captain Obvious! Despite knowing this, it is shocking how few organizations, teams and individuals put serious effort into defining their goals and then – and this is essential – cascading them down through the organization, so everyone is aligned . Something like 85% of businesses come up short on results because they haven’t actually executed those goals. For some ideas on how to get started, check out this post . Communication is vital. We just gotta talk to each other and listen. And yet, in so many organizations, when team members try to give their points of view, their leaders are too busy talking or formulating responses to stop, listen and absorb what is being shared. This post shares some easy ways to improve communications today. It starts with active listening. This is a simple concept that almost everyone in our training sessions can describe. And yet, it’s alarming to learn how little truly active listening people do. Also surprising? When someone truly, actively, empathetically listens to them, how great people feel. Active listening is team-building, motivational gold. The best leaders embrace courageous conversations. The ability to hold a challenging conversation continues to be one of the leading performance drivers distinguishing great from average leaders. Courageous conversations are built on a foundation of trust, respect and caring. There is no new normal. Change is a constant. There is merely a next normal, which will be quickly replaced by a next, next normal. Your organization must be flexible, adaptable and build a resilient team capable of changing quickly and performing regardless of whatever comes next.

‘Have you noticed what’s happening here?’ I vividly remember being called in to lead a group of leaders and managers through a discussion of diversity and inclusion. They worked for an organization that clearly had made good progress on this front, or at least appeared to be. This group was itself as diverse as you could assemble, a collage of people from different racial and cultural backgrounds, bringing multiple generations, and including the spectrum of gender and sexual orientation. To my mind, the perfect group to engage in this discussion. In challenging them to speak openly about the normally thorny issues involving their experiences and views, conversations flowed freely. Engagement was high. There were jokes, and easy laughter. As an outsider, I was impressed. But I couldn’t help but notice that the first time race was brought up, someone else in the group would quickly change the topic. And then again. And again. Finally, I called a time out and asked, “Have any of you noticed what’s happening here?” Later that day, breakout groups presented to the CEO of the organization on their experiences, challenges and successes for issues of diversity and inclusion. They were phenomenal – candid, emotionally charged, well articulated. They were some of the most incredibly difficult conversations I had ever heard. They had laid bare organizational gaps and proposed solutions. They presented an incredible opportunity to their leader. What did he do? Change the topic. It was a most uncomfortable moment, and crushing for all those assembled. It was a stark illustration for me of how incredibly important it is for top leadership to engage in – and take responsibility for – these issues, as difficult as they are to address.

The ABCs of Effective Training There are three types of training participants: the keeners, the vacationers, and the prisoners. Only those in the first category actually want to–and should–be there. So how do the other two groups end up in these sessions? The vacationers may be mandated to attend. Or they may volunteer, raising their hands for a day “off” work. And the prisoners? Well, they just got an email from their boss telling them they “had” to be there. Cue the crossed arms and thousand-yard stare. On the day of the training, the facilitator, faced with a room stacked with apathetic or resistant attendees, does the song-and-dance routine: trying to entertain in the hopes of keeping the group’s attention. Any learning is purely incidental. At the end of the training, a survey goes out to rate the session. And that’s….it. Early in my consulting career, I became frustrated by how much time, money and energy are wasted on this approach. So I designed a better way, and it’s as simple as A, B, C. My three-step process bookends the training session with equally important preparation and follow-through stages to leverage your investment in learning and development. Here’s how it breaks down. Step A: The Pre-Work Getting the right people in the room is essential. And getting them ready to be there is also key. But too often, the scenario I described above is what actually happens, dooming the training initiative from the start. Our process puts equal weight on what happens before the session. In this step, we explore: Who needs to be there? Who will benefit from the teaching? How’s it going to help them do their job? What problems do they need to solve? What are their expectations and needs? What do they need to know or do to prepare? With those answers, we design the invite list and the right reading and pre-work so they arrive mentally ready. Step B: The Main Event Ah, Step B. I’ve been paid a lot of money over the last 30-plus years for this part of the process. In my experience, almost all of the energy of any learning or development program is focused on the session, be it in-person classroom learning or a webinar series. Regardless of the delivery method and duration, this has been proven true. So, the training is delivered to an ad-hoc group of staffers, and then a survey goes out immediately after the session, asking things like: did you enjoy the training? Did you get something out of it? Would you recommend it? This is how training effectiveness is typically measured, and it’s useless. The real value of the training is what comes next. It’s what happens in Step C. Step C: The Follow-Through This step is all about reinforcing the learning. And most organizations fail at it because, frankly, it’s hard. It usually involves change and action and doing things differently. But what’s the point of investing in the development if you don’t want it to have real impact? I need to cite the influence of Rob Brinkerhoff, author of The Success Case Method (Berrett-Koehler, 2003), a brilliant leadership development and training consultant, for helping me understand how to bring the learning from Step B into the ongoing operations. Remember how I mentioned that post-training surveys are pointless? So here’s what we do instead: we wait. Then, a week or month after the session, we ask attendees: how have you put what you learned to work? And again, there are three types of people: those who’ll say it rocked their world, here's what I've done with it. Those in the middle with mediocre results. And those who say it didn't work at all. From there, we follow up with the first and third groups, the success cases and the failures. We interview them, their colleagues and their bosses to understand what and how they did things differently due to the training. We want to understand what drove their results and work with the organization to replicate and amplify them. And then, we talk to the failure cases to figure out why the training didn’t translate to impact. Most of the time, it’s because of systems, structures, processes, and leadership. This shines a light on where to work on improvements and mitigate against the risks of more failure cases. Our A, B, C approach isn’t complicated, but it is effective, ensuring the right people are at the right training to make a real difference. I’d love to hear your stories of training and development that stuck–or didn’t. Share yours in the comments. And email me directly if you think this approach might be a fit. Want more stories from the leadership and strategy trenches? Sign up here for WhiteWater’s free bimonthly newsletter.

Think Piece: The Foundation of True Leadership's All in Your Head. A few years ago, I worked with the leadership team of a massive, billion-dollar construction project in its very early stages. The general manager was a super dude but also incredibly intimidating. For starters, he’s the most deadpan person I’ve ever met. If he were at a poker table, I’d walk away. I’d be sure to lose my wager. Along with his incredible ability to control his reactions, he was also very assured in his perspective. I’d been invited to help the team think through the early, formative stages of its leadership philosophy for the project. At the time, there were only seven or eight people, but it would grow to a staff of more than 600 when things got rolling. One day, the team met for an important and potentially controversial conversation about how leadership would devolve as the project grew. The manager spoke first. I cringed inside a little. I knew the team was intimidated by him, that they’d likely just go along with whatever he said. And then something incredible happened. He started to speak, then stopped himself. “I'm probably going to disagree with myself before I finish this sentence,” he said before sharing his view. And his opening left the door open to debate, leading to a fascinating, four-hour discussion. That one little statement, “I may disagree with myself,” said to everybody, “feel free to challenge me on this, I'm open to changing my thinking.” And it changed everything about that conversation and that team’s dynamic moving forward. Check Yourself Being able to question your thinking is foundational to Thinking-Action-Outcomes, or TAO, for short, our core philosophy about how leaders grow. Your thinking as a leader has a far more dramatic impact on the outcomes you’ll achieve than anything you say or do. This framework sees leaders as works-in-process. Heck, just recognizing that you’re not and never will be done learning and growing is the first step to becoming a true leader instead of just a boss or manager. The Performance Paradox Of course, this is easier said than done. That’s because leaders are used to being right. As the late, great Chris Argyris writes in “ Teaching Smart People How to Learn ,’ in the Harvard Business Review, leaders “need to reflect critically on their own behavior, identify the ways they often inadvertently contribute to the organization’s problems, and then change how they act. In particular, they must learn how the very way they go about defining and solving problems can be a source of problems in its own right.” These well-educated, high-powered, high-commitment professionals are used to being affirmed and rewarded for their ideas. Many have probably been the stars, the standouts their entire lives. And that’s a handicap because they lose the ability to hold their thinking up for examination. They will find all kinds of ways to blame any failure on something else. It clearly can't be them because, well, they don't fail. The good news? Self-interrogation is a skill you can learn, a habit you can build. As I wrote in a recent post, leader is not a static position at the top or a title. It’s a steady state of becoming. Kickstart Better Thinking Of course, endless reflection and self-inquiry are not the goal–delivering results for your organization and stakeholders by engaging your team is. But better actions and that lead to more successful outcomes rest on better thinking, which starts with becoming conscious of what we believe, assume and perceive. Here are some ways to start the process of challenging your mental models. There are a kind of mental yoga for leaders.: Read a lot. Read widely. For inspiration, check out this post by Kate Wallace, a copywriter, on swapping in some classics among your business books. Seek out and talk to people with different backgrounds and points of view. Constantly ask, “What do they see and believe that’s different from me?” Reflect upon yourself and your thoughts as a leader. Some questions to ponder: What do I think about leadership? What is my role as a leader? How have my thoughts been shaped? What have been the key influences over my mental models? What might change if I had been born and raised in a different place, met different people or gone to different schools? When faced with tough decisions, consider: what are my thoughts, my beliefs and my assumptions about the situation? What about it may be different from what I perceive? What data am I missing? Am I filtering anything out? Who has a different perspective from mine? What are the unintended consequences of my decisions on key stakeholders? What challenges do I face? What have I done about them? What were the results? (Taking action and either not solving the problem or having it pop up in a different form are key indicators that something may need to change about your thinking.) Try arguing on behalf of another point of view. Faced with a decision, try to make the case for taking an action that’s radically different from the one you favor. Consider what’s different about your thinking when doing so. When debating a course of action with others, have everyone “flip” their point of view and argue one different from their own. Keep an open, yet critical mind about everything you read and hear. Keep a journal of your thoughts, feelings, beliefs and assumptions about your role as a leader. Watch how your mental model may change over time as you are exposed to new perspectives or new experiences. Let me know how you make out with these are simple exercises to build flexible thinking. I’d love to hear about a time you challenged your thinking and it led to better or different outcomes. Share your story in the comments below. Want more stories from the leadership and strategy trenches? Sign up here for WhiteWater’s free bimonthly newsletter. www.wwici.com

Critical Challenge: Empowering Leaders to Execute. (as found in the latest edition of Navigating WhiteWater) As I reflect on the role of leadership, I am reminded of our work with a client working headlong on a new corporate strategy that, at its essence, focused on propelling this company to the top of a highly competitive industry. This firm sought to produce the highest-quality products, with the broadest product line, at the most-competitive price. They wanted to sharpen their customer experience: to become the easiest company to order from, to have the best on-time delivery, and for their customer service staff to be the best to deal with. We helped them devise a strategy that would help them get there. But as they began executing, they realized they had a leadership gap – managers and supervisors who needed the tools to execute, and to get their teams to do so as well. So we jumped in to help. Our goal was first to build the overall leadership capacity and capabilities of their senior leaders and department leaders. We did this by delivering Just Lead, Dammit! , our comprehensive program to build the leadership capacity to be effective performance managers, coaches, change agents and more. Like many leadership programs, we helped them build specific skills and capabilities. Different from many such programs, though, we also helped them build the capability to challenge their own “Thinking” — the fundamental mental models, beliefs, assumptions and perceptions they carry. Leaders’ underlying thinking has a much greater leverage over the results they deliver, and how effectively they engage their teams, than any specific leadership practice. It proved so successful that the company asked us back to deliver the same program to their next-level leaders. We were in the middle of that when the pandemic hit, and we shifted to virtual delivery. The company’s executive leaders undertook this believing it critical to the successful implementation of their strategy. They understood that they not only needed their leadership to be aligned, that they not only had to have a common understanding of how to successfully execute, but that they needed to be empowered to succeed. Empowering Leaders.

The Anniversary Post: 20 Years, 20 Lessons WhiteWater Consulting turns 20 this year, and I’ve been wondering where the time went and reflecting on what I’ve learned along the way. So, instead of the traditional gift of china, I thought I’d share 20 of the most important lessons I’ve learned from two decades of developing leaders and successful teams. Leadership is a work-in-progress. Leaders aren’t born, they’re constantly being made. You’re never done learning, growing, advancing. Charisma is not leadership. Too often, people with magnetic personalities end up in leadership positions but lack the skills to actually lead. Your title does not make you a leader. Lots of supervisors and managers are not true leaders. Leadership is not a title–it’s about aligning people to deliver results. Leadership can be learned. It requires a set of skills, both “soft” and strategic and tactical, to engage your team in delivering results. You can’t motivate people. Often confused with sticks and carrots–a bonus, a fancy title, fear of losing one’s job–true motivation comes from within. Values equal results . Clear, consistent values breed engagement. People want to contribute to something bigger than themselves. Leaders are values stewards. You lead by the example of your words and deeds which behaviours are in-bounds–and which are out. Character counts! The old adage that adversity doesn’t build character, it reveals it, is fundamental to outstanding leadership. You may be wrong. Flexible thinking and questioning your assumptions are essential skills of any true leader. Read a lot and widely. Books are one of the best ways to expand your thinking. And go beyond the business titles to get ideas from diverse sources. Most leadership training is a waste of time. Without the right people in the room and lots of follow-up after the session, it won’t stick and ultimately won’t make a difference. Training design matters. Leadership transcends management functions. Delegating, planning and hiring are important, but great leadership is about so much more. It’s about character. Simple is better. Too many consultants make the simple complex–and the complex more complex! You can't lead if no one understands the plan, process or even the destination. Don’t ignore squeaky wheels. Often, the most significant insights come from your most vocal team members, who dare to share them. Listen. That pain-in-the-ass may have a point. Leadership requires deep listening. Leaders need to practice deep, empathetic listening to understand what’s truly happening and connect emotionally with your team members. It’s not about you. Egos can get pretty inflated at the top, which can seriously hinder a leader’s ability to stay focused on the team and your goals. Great leadership requires trust. If your team doesn’t believe in you, they won’t follow you. Values nurture trust and meaning. Caring and empathy are critical, too. If you don’t have them, why are you in a leadership role? Effective teams start with structure. Focus on purpose, roles, goals, scorecard, communications, process and accountability first, then worry about managing your team’s different personalities. Almost everyone gets this backwards. Enjoy the journey : Anniversaries and milestones are prime opportunities to stop and reflect on where you’ve come from and what you’ve learned and achieved along the way. For our team at WhiteWater, it’s been 20 fantastic years of working with great people who genuinely want to be the best leaders they can be. I hope we get 20 more!

Execution Drives Your Strategy To Results I recently led a session for a thriving, mid-sized company based in the midwest. On the surface, they had it all together. The leadership team had articulated a strong, clear vision and translated it into four or five concrete goals for each department. The problem? No one below management had a clue what their bosses had in mind. “How effectively have you cascaded these goals down into your organization?” I asked. Crickets. “If I talked to your frontline team members, what would they know about their role in your strategy?” Sheepish looks. “They wouldn't know anything,” one department head eventually offered. “We haven't shared them at all.” No wonder 75-90% of strategy fails at the execution stage. I’ll often have clients do a “five-on-five” activity. The leader writes down the top five goals for each team member, and then I ask the staff to write down their top five goals. Theoretically, they should match perfectly. But in reality? They never do. Most times, we’re lucky to get two the same. Businesses are complex and challenging organisms, but strategy execution almost always fails for simple reasons, with communication breakdown at the top of the list. Conversely, if you nail your fundamentals, you’ll be very likely to succeed. I’m talking about things like: Communicating the goals to everyone in the organization regularly and repeatedly Ensuring each team member understands how they contribute to the bigger goals Focusing on the things that create value and stop doing those activities that don’t Putting the right people in the right roles with the right capabilities to execute your strategy And then just lather, rinse, repeat! In my last post , I wrote about why you need a solid strategy now, more than ever, how, in the wake of the cataclysm of COVID, you need to take stock, reassess. Odds are, your competitive landscape has changed. Your customers have new wants and needs. What’s your opportunity? How do you position yourself to create a competitive advantage? I advised you to start by talking to your customers and building your strategy from there. Today, we’re switching gears from why to how . This post lays out some of the basic blocking and tackling to get back on track for the last stretch of 2021. We've got a month until the end of the year, and it's a prime opportunity to refocus, get intentional and get strategic again. Communications Culture “We showed them on PowerPoint. I don't understand why they don't get it.” Very often, leaders blame their team members for not knowing the strategy or goals. That’s not fair or productive. One of the most important jobs of a leader is to communicate the company’s direction to the team. But in most organizations, there’s a gulf between the ideas at the top and the understanding in your workers. Your strategy messaging needs to be consistent, and you need to repeat it–a lot. One all-staff session and a PowerPoint isn’t going to cut it. You can’t drive strategy to results if people don't know what the plan is and their roles in it. Effective communication was always important; now, it’s paramount to survival. Here’s a quick test to see if you need to amplify your communications: Can your team members give you a brief description of how your company distinguishes itself? Can they tell you the top two or three things your company must get better at to succeed? Can they tell you the critical three to five things they must accomplish to contribute to the execution of the strategy? Not only will this give your team clarity, but it’s great for culture. It lets them know they are part of something bigger than themselves and have an essential contribution to make. Foster Focus & Alignment Executing your strategy requires that the efforts of everyone on your team be aligned to the strategy. What goals, critical priorities and actions will get you there together? To create focus and alignment, consider: What new goals do my team members need to achieve the latest results we seek? What new performance drivers (the critical tasks, behaviours and actions) are most important in reaching our goals? How will we measure them? What scorecards or tools do we need to track our performance? What should we stop doing because it doesn’t optimize the value we provide? You’ll get results by translating strategy into goals and identifying the actions most likely to achieve them. Right, right, right Success post-pandemic is going to look different from before. That implies your team will need some new capabilities. How do you ensure you’re setting your team up to be successful in this new environment? It’s crucial to put the right people in the right roles with the right capabilities to execute your strategy. What capabilities do you need in your organization as learning needs and methods evolve at a lightspeed pace? How are you recruiting and selecting the talent you need for today’s and future needs, not last year’s (or last century’s) requirements? How intentionally are you re-skilling the members of your team to be effective in this rapidly changing environment? Start Small In Get in Gear , I wrote about the seven key areas that drive strategy to results. When you align those seven gears, you get better results. But here’s the thing: you don’t need to do all seven at once. That’s a recipe for overwhelm and burnout, and we’ve had more than enough of those during this pandemic. Focus on one or two at a time. Once you get those gears running smoothly, you can turn your attention to your next squeaky wheel.

Strategy Execution Falling Short? Check Your Follow-up/Follow-through Why do your kids often not do their homework or clean their rooms after you’ve asked them “hundreds” of times? Do you ever get frustrated when team members fail to complete tasks on-time? For that matter, how often do you find yourself wondering about the status of a project and how close a team member is to completing his/her assignment? In every case, the failure is due to the failure to establish and execute Follow-up and Follow-through. That’s the reason, we’ve made Follow-up/Follow-through the last of 7 factors that drive Strategy-to-Execution (S2X™).  As one leader told us, “Follow-up/Follow-through is the most critical step in the process, and we stink at it.” When done well, Follow-up/Follow-through: Shifts responsibility for both performance and accounting for that performance from the leaders to the performers; Generates learning about the overall execution effort; Creates accountability for delivering results; Frees up leaders’ time that is otherwise spent tracking people down or wondering what the heck is going on; Provides a powerful platform for effective coaching. Focus on Learning… Obviously, creating accountability is important. Often, however, when we discuss Follow-up/Follow-through, that’s where all the attention goes. The Focus on Learning embedded in effective Follow-up/Follow-through is at least as important. We start with this belief: by and large, people come to work every day trying to do their best. So, why does performance ever come up short? For dozens of reasons, most of which are integrated into the S2X™ framework: Maybe they are unclear on their goals, or the goals are poorly defined. Remember what happens when we play 5-on-5? Maybe the performer doesn’t have the capabilities necessary to effectively execute his/her Performance Drivers. Or, as we discussed here, maybe there is misalignment in the architecture that punishes doing the right thing or rewards unproductive work. Approaching Follow-up/Follow-through from a learning mindset allows those issues to bubble to the surface. If the objective is just to create accountability, then factors like those might be missed. We end up with the classic control-accountability mismatch: We’re holding performers accountable for performance in which they are, at best, only partially in control of the outcomes. Wells-Fargo Melt-Down : A Failure of Learning The Wells-Fargo sales scandal, was partly a failure of “learning” versus accountability. (We say “partly” because it was also a massive failure of leadership from executive levels all the way through the organization.) It’s well known within the banking industry that customers are more profitable when they have more products with a financial institution. So, it’s not surprising that Wells-Fargo, and many other banks, would set goals for account penetration, i.e., selling more products to each customer. Some Wells-Fargo leaders at virtually every level of the organization held their team members ruthlessly accountable for selling products – including threatening them with the loss of their jobs if they didn’t hit their sales goals — even if it meant “selling” them to customers who didn’t need or want them. Had the focus been on learning… Which customers will buy additional products? Which ones won’t? Why not? What, if anything, needs to change about the products we’re selling to be more marketable? What other customers might actually want these products? …much of the disaster might have been avoided. So, “learning” through the Follow-up/Follow-through process must come first, while you must also… …Create Accountability “Accountability” is not a bad word! Yet, the word has earned a negative connotation to many people who may have experienced being “held accountable,” which means they got their ass kicked for something that might have been outside their control. In that sense, yeah, “accountability” is not fun! (Nor productive). But, when there is no accountability, it means that performance, and/or your values, don’t matter. That is one of the most disrespectful thing we can do to high performers. Left unchecked, it can create a downward spiral in performance.… “If results don’t matter, because that dude over there hasn’t done a lick of work in months, then why should I bust my tail to perform?” Lack of accountability kills team member engagement. And, unfortunately, lack of accountability is far more prevalent than it ought to be. Done well, though, Follow-up/Follow-through does more than “create accountability.” It allows people to “be accountable” versus “being held accountable” by their leaders. This is subtle, but critical. In high engagement environments, people are responsible and accountable for their results. As one phenomenal leader we know says to all the new team members in his organization, “Own your results.” Then, he and all the leaders in his organization ensure people can truly own their results and be accountable for them. Effective Follow-up/Follow-through helps create ownership: Leaders and performers mutually agree upon the Follow-up/Follow-through frequency or cycle time (more on that in future posts) Performers are responsible for setting the specific Follow-up time on their manager’s calendar – or short-circuiting the agreed upon cycle if they hit a stumbling block; and, then, The Performer is responsible for leading the conversation about what the goals are, what performance has looked like since the last conversation, what caused any performance gaps and what the plan is moving forward to lift performance to a higher level or close any performance gaps. What do you think? How consistent is the Follow-up/Follow-through process within your organization? How often do commitments fade into oblivion and you find yourself wondering “whatever happened to that goal or commitment or project?” How well does your Follow-up/Follow-through process focus on Learning, versus exclusively on creating accountability? To what extent are people “Accountable” versus being “Held Accountable?” Intrigued by what you’re reading? Download our white paper on converting strategy into execution and learn more about us by visiting our website . WhiteWater International Consulting, Inc. helps organizations understand the challenges they face and helps enterprises achieve and sustain outstanding performance through unleashing the passion and capabilities of its people. Because an organization is only as good at the people who power it.

Follow-up/Follow-through Rhythm: The Drumbeat that Drives Execution A Horrific Case of the Missing Follow-up/Follow-through Process Early in my career, I was responsible for a team of technical sales engineers. After a few weeks, I inherited an engineer who had worked for our company for about a year and had developed a reputation as lazy and ineffective. Yeah, I know: the proverbial Thanksgiving Special: the organization was playing “Pass the Turkey” with him. Yet, as I got to know him, I found that he was bright, energetic and highly motivated…the complete opposite of his reputation. I asked him what he’d been doing for the last year. His completely honest response: “Not much.” Why? “Well, frankly, no one has asked me to do much, and then they never check on me. So, I spend my time researching, reading and, generally, hanging out.” Besides the obvious lack of direction or anything that resembled a critical goal, the Follow-up/Follow-through process was totally non-existent. While the sales engineer bore a lot of the responsibility for being missing in action, his previous leaders also clearly failed him. The good news: after we established a few critical goals and started a regular Follow-up/Follow-through process, the sales engineer began to put all that reading and research to work. Within months, he had earned his new reputation as being smart as a whip and doing great things for our customers and our organization. Follow-up/Follow-through: Generating Learning and Accountability for Results In our last post, we talked about the 7th gear in the Strategy>Execution>Results Framework: Follow-up/Follow-through. It’s the gear that keeps the other gears aligned and translating effort to results. As the story above illustrates in stark terms, when Follow-up/Follow-through is missing or ineffective, the other gears wobble, grind and waste time and energy. Effective Follow-up/Follow-through: Set the Rhythm Performers and Leaders need to establish a consistent rhythm for following up and following through. They should create a consistent time frame for meeting, updating and assessing progress toward the project’s goal. Once the rhythm has been established, the burden is on the performer to follow-up with the leader at the agreed upon time. This shifts the responsibility and accountability for performance to the performer and away from the leader. Instead of having to nag performers about scheduling their next status meeting, leaders can focus their attention on their own critical goals and priorities. Follow-up/Follow-through Rhythm: Driven by the Performer’s Needs and the Goal How frequently should they meet? The answer is generally driven by: • the performer’s needs • the nature of the goal or task. Let’s say you just hired a new team member who brings a ton of new capabilities, raw talent and enthusiasm to the organization. But, she has no experience with how things work within your organization and has not proven that she can apply her talent and enthusiasm to consistently achieve critical goals. In this case, you would be wise to start with a fast follow up/follow-through cycle. This enables the leader to provide the guidance the new team member needs to be successful. It also allows the leader to celebrate quick wins and understand her quickly evolving development needs. In the first few days on the job, the cycle might be daily or even every few hours. Or the new team member might be assigned to shadow or be shadowed by a mentor, in which case, the cycle might be nearly continuous. As the new team member demonstrates that she can operate safely and effectively on her own, you can (must) gradually decrease the frequency of the follow-up/follow-through cycles. On the other hand, your “pros in position” will feel smothered by an hourly or daily Follow-up/Follow-through rhythm on a goal or task they are expert in. Weekly, monthly or quarterly better fits their needs. A Recipe for Disaster Establishing a Follow-up/Follow-through rhythm that is less frequent than quarterly is a recipe for disaster. Waiting for the annual or six-month performance review creates too much potential for performers to drift out of day-to-day alignment with their critical goals. (Wait a minute…are you still doing annual performance reviews? We should talk.) If you’re not already comfortable with follow up/follow through, I suggest that whatever interval you choose, make it regular, such as every week at the same day and time. But follow up/follow through can also occur at specific, but not necessarily regular, intervals if that’s what a project plan or task requires. For example, a foreman at a commercial windows and doors company might follow up with his manager within a day of completing an installation. Depending on the size of each job, their meetings could be days, weeks or months apart, but they still occur at specific times. What do you think? To what extent have you established a Follow-up/Follow-through cycle for each of your goals? Is Follow-up/Follow-through driven by the Performers’ needs and the nature or the goal, or driven more by crisis? To what extent does your Follow-up/Follow-through process push responsibility and ownership to Performers, rather than Leaders? Next: The project’s role in setting the Follow-up/Follow-through rhythm. Intrigued by what you’re reading? Download our white paper on converting strategy into execution and learn more about us by visiting our website . WhiteWater International Consulting, Inc. helps organizations understand the challenges they face and helps enterprises achieve and sustain outstanding performance through unleashing the passion and capabilities of its people. Because an organization is only as good at the people who power it.

Take the 60-Day S-E-T Goals Challenge Most of us are horrible at setting goals. We often have many things we want to accomplish… At work, it might be improve sales, improve quality, drive down costs, improve the bench-strength and capabilities of the organization, earn more money, get promoted. At home, it might be lose weight, prepare for retirement, save for a new house or condo or that really great vacation to Tuscany or Tahiti. Yet…incredibly few people set goals that enable them to accomplish those things. A 1979 Harvard study of their MBA students suggested that only 16% of us set goals. Only 3% created plans to achieve those goals. Other studies have suggested a larger percentage of people may set goals, but a much smaller percentage work on them for even two weeks before dropping them. That clearly explains why new gym memberships explode the first week of January, but most people stop working out by early February! Even when people say they have goals, they are more likely to be: Too broad or ambiguous to be effective – e.g., “Lose weight,” “Save money,” or “Sell more.” We call those “goal categories” not goals. Defined as activities to be completed – “Work-out” not goals to be accomplished, e.g., “improve my maximum bench-press from 150 to 200 pounds.” So, they go through the motions and feel like they are working hard, but generating limited results. In just the last two weeks: The senior leader in a 250-person company said he felt like a pinball. Just bouncing from one activity to the next and accomplishing nothing. I asked him the question at the top of this post: What are your goals? What are the top 2 or 3 things you want to accomplish? His response: “Oh, yeah. That would definitely stop the pin-balling.” A bright, young manager commented on a Coaching Top Talent program I facilitated in his organization a few months ago. He said that one of the most valuable aspects was the process of setting goals with each of his teammates. “The game was an excellent way to kick-off an ongoing conversation around goals with each of my teammates. There is now complete clarity and alignment between us in regards to goals.” Without clear, result-oriented goals you’re busy all the time, wearing yourself out, yet you feel like you’re getting nowhere. S-E-T GOALS And, it’s so easy to have more effective goals. We advocate that you S-E-T Result-oriented Goals: S is for Start…what is your starting point (your current weight, or the weight you can bench-press, or the costs in your business, or the sales in your territory)? E is for the Ending Point…where do you want to get to (weight, strength, costs, sales, etc.)? T is for Time frame – when do you want to get to the Ending Point? S-E-T creates energy and focus. Many of the activities you undertake will be the same – yes, to lose weight you still need to manage calorie intake and exercise – but, now they will have intent. And, if you’re making appropriate progress toward your goals, you’ll know you’ve picked the right activities (what we call performance drivers). If you’re not making progress, you need to either re-focus the discipline in executing your performance drivers, or find better ones that actually lead to the results you want. THE 60-DAY S-E-T GOALS CHALLENGE Since most of us are pretty bad at setting goals, over the last two months of 2018, let’s practice. In early December, we’ll walk through the process of setting goals for 2019. Practice with a goal, any goal, that you can accomplish in two months. S-E-T the Goal: Start – what is your current weight? How much is in your savings account for that house, vacation or retirement fund? What were the sales last month in your region? End – where do you want to be by December 31…it’s only 2 months away, so be realistic…for weight, maybe you want to be 5 or 10 pounds less than you are today. For savings, maybe it’s realistic to save only $25 or 50 or $100 per month through the holiday season. For sales, maybe that goal would only be to sell 5 or 10% more units, or generate 5 or 10% more revenue in November and December than you did in October. Timeframe – I gave you this one…the time frame is “By December 31.” Once you have those items in your head, write the goal down in this form: I’m going to {Drop Weight, Grow Savings, Increase Sales in my territory} from {Start} to {End} by December 31. Put your note someplace prominent where you will see it earlier every day: next to your toothbrush, on your refrigerator, as the background on your phone, or, heck, post it below in the comment section. Every time you look at it, think: what do I need to do right now (or today) to hit my goal. The next step: hitting your goals requires that you DO some specific things to hit the goal. Remember the Harvard study suggesting that only 3% of the people made a plan to hit their goals? They ultimately out-earned the other 97% of the people in the study. We call these plans “Performance Drivers,” the critical actions, behaviors or decisions that will enable you to hit your goal. We’ll discuss Performance Drivers in our next post.