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.

60-Day SET Goals Challenge: Now it’s Time To DO Something! We’re two weeks into the 60-Day SET Goals Challenge. How are you doing so far? Me, personally? I have a confession to make. I went backwards during the first few days of the Challenge. My SET Goal was to: Reduce my weight from 180.5 to 175 pounds by December 31. That seemed like a pretty achievable goal. Unfortunately, in the first few days on the Challenge, my weight went UP…to over 183 pounds. Some of you are thinking, maybe even saying, “That’s Karma, Holmes! Mr. Goal-setting Guy set a goal and then went backwards…that’s exactly why I don’t set goals!” So, you may have had a good laugh at my expense. Now, let’s talk about “Why” my weight went up. Simple…achieving your goals requires that you identify and then execute on the “Performance Drivers” – the critical decisions, actions and behaviors – that enable you to hit the goals. They are what you actually DO to hit your goals. Understanding and executing the Performance Drivers are the key to hitting the goals you set. Further, we’ve found time and again that tracking those behaviors helps ensure you diligently execute them. For my goal to lose weight, the Performance Drivers are pretty well known: Manage what I eat (as represented by consuming less than 30 points per day from a popular weight-loss program) Exercise at least 30 minutes per day, 5 days per week Now, I’ve got all the excuses in the world for my failure to either execute or track my performance drivers those first few days: I was traveling, busy, having big dinners with family and at a charity event. But, those are just excuses. My weight went up because I didn’t execute on the “Manage what I eat” performance driver. The reality: like many of us, I just didn’t take the time – maybe 5 minutes a day to track what I was doing. Tracking it on a daily basis would have allowed me to take appropriate action in time to keep my weight moving in the right direction. Once I started tracking, my weight began to fall even though it’s taken 10 days to make up for those first 4 days headed in the wrong direction. See the graphic below: IDENTIFY THE PERFORMANCE DRIVERS So, let’s get to your Performance Drivers. Here’s an exercise we use in our Strategy-Execution-Results programs to help the participants identify the Performance Drivers that will allow them to hit their goals: For each goal, brainstorm as many actions or tasks as possible that you could do to achieve that goal. Try to get as many ideas out on paper as you possibly can. Identify someone you know, or other experts, who are really good at the goal you are trying to accomplish (whether that’s Increase Sales, Lose Weight, Produce better quality, etc.). Talk to them about what they do, or even observe them. Write down what you learn from them. Now, take your lists and pick the two or three decisions, actions or behaviors that would seem most likely to lead to success. Write those down in the form, “I will….” Mine are: I will consume less than 30 food points per day. I will exercise at least 30 minutes per day, 5 days per week. A salesperson who wants to boost sales might write: I will identify and contact three additional target customers per week who we have opportunity to grow sales. I will identify and contact three customers per week who have reduced their business with to understand why and what we can do to earn their business back. TRACK THE PERFORMANCE DRIVERS Once you’ve identified the Performance Drivers, you need to figure out how to track execution of them. Tracking is important because it helps build a discipline for execution. And, it allows you to change the outcomes of the game while it’s still being played. In my case, tracking food points at each meal or snack allows me to make adjustments in what I eat later in the day to ensure I stay on track for the day. Tracking needs to be as simple as possible. Tracking exercise could be as easy as putting tic marks on piece of paper for every day in the week you work out. A simple system like that might also work for tracking the number of sales calls per week to target or lost customers. Of course, you can also track much more than that…exercises performed, weight lifted, number of sets, number of reps, minutes of cardio, etc., if that’s helpful to you. In a lot of cases, apps on your phone can help you easily and quickly track the execution of your performance drivers. There are dozens of exercise and food management apps available. Just do what is necessary to track the execution of your Performance Drivers as simply as possible while giving you the information you need to stay on track with your goals. LEARN FROM YOUR RESULTS Finally, spend time at the end of each day or week reviewing both what you’ve tracked and your performance versus your goals. If you’re staying on track with the goals you set in the 60-day challenge, keep doing what you’re doing. It’s working! If you’re falling off track – like I was in those first few days – it’s time to change something. Check the execution of your Performance Drivers using your tracking system. Have you been as diligent as you need to be in the execution of your Performance Drivers? Are distractions getting in the way? If so, improving your results is a matter of avoiding the distractions. Re-visit the Performance Drivers…maybe you’ve picked the wrong ones. If you’ve been diligently executing and tracking your Performance Drivers, but not getting the results you want, it’s a pretty good guess that you’ve identified the wrong activities and behaviors. If you didn’t do it before, now might be the time to find people who are really good at what you’re trying to accomplish to see what you can learn from them. Finally, check your tracking system. Is it giving you the timely information you need to change your behavior while you can still alter the outcomes? Chime in below. We’d love to hear how you’re doing versus the goals you SET in the 60-day Goal Challenge. 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.

Adaptive Leadership in a world of COVID-19 Momma said there would be days like this. She never said that every day would be like this! Talk about leading in a world of perpetual whitewater…even before the appearance of the Coronavirus, leaders everywhere had to deal with a constantly changing world. Then, KABOOM…all that change got changed by the change of a lifetime. Now, many leaders are dealing with the existential crisis of keeping their businesses afloat while they do the best that they can to lead their teams through the anxiety of the coronavirus itself. We are faced with layoffs or furloughs or even just dramatic shifts in how work gets done shifting from working on-site to working “in place.”  (#WFH). To effectively navigate through the treacherous whitewater rapids tossed their way by COVID-19, leaders must amp up their ability to lead their organizations through adaptive change, a concept introduced by Ron Heifetz in his book, Leadership Without Easy Answers . Adaptive Change is different than the technical or routine change many of us are familiar with. In routine change, the problem is clear, a leader or expert can provide the solution and can be relatively easy to resolve. Adaptive change is radically different. The problem is often not clear. No one knows THE answer. Defining, solving and implementing a solution all require new learning. Yeah, pretty much sounds like what leaders face dealing with the coronavirus. As leaders, how do you most effectively lead your teams through sudden, disruptive change layered on top of the adaptive change many were already experiencing? Here are a few thoughts: 1) Answer the question, “What’s happening to me?” In this time of extreme disruption, people who probably felt pretty secure a week ago are now wondering if they can pay rent or their mortgage and keep food on the table. Leaders need to communicate early and often about what’s going on while recognizing that anything we think today may change dramatically by tomorrow. It’s hard to hear or understand anything else until people know what the impact will be on them…as painful as that might be. Do not let the fact that many things you think, say or do today will change tomorrow. Be open and honest with people and be clear that some decisions will continue to change over time. 2) Recognize and Lead through the Emotional Reaction to Change. Even in the best of circumstances, many people are uncomfortable with change and experience a range of emotional reactions, including: A strong desire to “go back to the way it was.” A feeling of not having the capabilities to adapt to the change. A feeling of being alone in coping with the change – even though millions of people are going through the same change – which is likely to be hugely magnified because so many people are now physically isolated at home. Those emotions will be magnified as you deal with COVID-19. Leaders need to recognize those emotions and meet people where they are before they can engage in constructive conversations about how to move forward. Take extra time to connect with your teams, listen to and empathize with their concerns and emotions. Only then can you get to resolution on how to move forward. 3) Get on the Balcony… There are thousands of issues grabbing for your attention. Getting “on the balcony” means that you must maintain perspective on the big picture – keeping your organization afloat, dealing with the daunting impacts on your team, preparing for the next “normal” whatever that is – even as you sort out, or delegate, many of those items grabbing for your attention. 4) …while you also stay focused on the critical goals. You have to recognize and deal with the tough issues. People will want to go back to their comfort zone. Leaders have to keep them moving forward in the effort to refocus on work or even providing help in sorting out their team members’ challenges. In this environment, the goal may be simply to preserve the existence of your organization. Given the dynamic nature of the challenges posed by COVID-19 the methods may change daily or even hourly. You’ll be constantly challenged by how to maintain relationships with your team, your customers and your suppliers as we work through the crisis. For many, this will be in the context of dramatic impacts on the financial viability of your organization. 5) Engage others in helping to find solutions. In adaptive change, literally no one knows the solution. This creates a great opportunity to engage everyone in finding solutions. 6) More than ever…smash the “Marshmallow layers…” …in the organization that prevent the voices from all over the organization from speaking up. It’s especially important to engage and protect the creative deviants against those who want to slam dunk solutions. Adaptive change occurs through experimentation. More now than ever, you want people who view things differently to be able to speak up. You’ll have to be prepared for failure – not all of the experiments or decisions will work — but learn from them and then quickly move on as you continuously adapt to the constantly changing landscape. 7) Stay optimistic… …that you and your organization can make your way through the crisis. This isn’t a naïve, “whistle past the graveyard kind of optimism,” but the resolute optimism that you and your organization can adapt to whatever gets thrown your way as the crisis continues to evolve. People need hope…that hope and optimism needs to be founded in a true belief that you have the capability to work your way through the challenges. 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.

Virtual is the New Reality Zoom, Skype and Microsoft Teams usage up by huge percentages 98% of Goldman Sachs employees working from home Zoom and Skype cocktail parties and wine tastings The COVID-19 pandemic has had a dramatic impact on how we all work and interact with each other. To maintain safety and health, millions of people are working virtually. (And, unfortunately, it’s had an even more dramatic impact on the millions of people who can’t work virtually.) In just the last two weeks, clients have asked us to: Convert their Strategy Creation efforts from in-person meetings involving groups from across North America into virtual processes. Translate traditional classroom-based training programs into a blended learning approach combining elearning, webinars and virtual coaching. Develop custom leadership development programs that can be delivered virtually. Shift a series of “culture assessment” interviews to be completed virtually. While we’ve worked virtually with clients for much of the last two decades, this is a sea change in the level of interest in moving work to a virtual environment. The Next Normal Once we get past the immediate crisis, the pendulum will certainly swing back at least somewhat. We are social beings. We want to see each other face to face, hang-out, enjoy each other’s company, drink a beer together rather than on a Zoom call! We’ll go back to the offices we’ve abandoned over the last few weeks. We’ll go back to meeting face-to-face at least some of the time. But we’re also learning that we can be as productive, or even more productive, working virtually than we can meeting in real life. (Ignoring, of course, the truly inexplicable fascination with compelling TV like Tiger King!) Traveling for meetings or learning events is expensive and time consuming. Much information transfer can be handled as effectively and more efficiently in a virtual environment. Traditional training and develop can often be delivered far more effectively remotely/virtually than in a traditional training/classroom session. From a broad economic and societal perspective, the costs of physical space and the personal and environmental costs of commuting to and from offices to do work that can be done from home, is enormous. So, the “next normal’ almost certainly includes a much greater level of virtual work and collaboration than the pre-COVID19 “old normal.” Making Virtual Work Work Being productive and working in a virtual environment will cause us to RETHINK… 1)… how work gets done Working virtually allows us to organize work more effectively. We facilitated a virtual strategy session for a client with 15 people in six different locations. The session was built around traditional thinking of a physical meeting for a full day session. The virtual session went great, far better than anyone expected. But it was clear…two hours into the 8-hour session…that holding 2 or 3 shorter sessions might have generated better analysis and conversation about the organization’s strategy than one 8-hour session. If you assume that people need to physically meet, the “full-day” design makes sense. You’re not going to put 15 people from 6 different locations on planes for a 2-hour meeting, then do it again the next week, and then, again, a third week. But, if you rethink how the work gets done, meeting virtually allows you to break the work into more logical chunks and generate better outcomes without the waste of time and energy spent traveling. 2) …the “logistics” of work Check your technology – I was talking to a leader of her company’s information technology team last week. Her organization had re-deployed their team to work from home. They first hurdle they had to jump: many of the organization’s IT people didn’t have adequate cameras, microphones and/or speakers on their computers! If the IT folks don’t have the right technology, what are the odds that everyone else does? Evolve your tools – In a virtual world, we can’t lose sight (pun intended) of the need to maintain human contact. Skype calls, Zoom or MS Teams conferences with the video turned on are far more engaging and build better connections than relying solely on emails, texts or even voice-only calls. Tools like Slack and MS Teams can help you better organize group work, make information available to the people who need them and allow instantaneous conversations that actually keep people better connected than they might be in a physical environment. Maintain focus and minimize distractions – Yeah, we love the videos of your cats, dogs, kids, etc. wandering through during video conferences. Those are incredibly human and endearing moments but keeping them to a minimum is probably a pretty good idea! And, please, whatever else you take away from this post, remember to turn off your camera and MUTE YOUR PHONES when taking bio breaks! 3) …our thinking about people Managers against #WFH arrangements often argue that they believe that people working from home will be “less productive.” That sounds like code for the Theory X assumptions about people outlined by Douglas McGregor in The Human Side of Enterprise (McGraw Hill, 1960)! Theory X leaders believe people are lazy, don’t like work and have to be coerced, controlled and directed to get anything done. In the manager’s view, people will only be productive if I can see them work! Most people like work and want to make a contribution (McGregor’s Theory Y). But they often perform far below what’s possible, even when working in the same location with their leaders because we don’t effectively align people to the most critical outcomes. When working virtually, it’s even more important to focus attention on what we call the “Performance Gears” in our forthcoming book, Get in Gear: The 7 Gears that Drive Strategy-to-Results . Leaders must proactively work to set Result-oriented Goals, Build Visible Scorecards, Identify the Performance Drivers (critical tasks and behaviors) and Establish a consistent Follow-up/Follow-through process. We will get through the COVID crisis hopefully with everyone safe and healthy. On the other side of the crisis will be a next normal in which we will work differently, and almost certainly more virtually than we did before. Get ready for “Virtual” being our new “Reality.” 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.

A PATH TO GREAT LEADERSHIP EFFECTIVENESS (as seen in our April 2021 newsletter) WE’VE BEEN FORTUNATE TO BE ALONGSIDE... many organizations this past year as they navigate their way through tumultuous change – whether it be transforming into a remote workforce virtually overnight, dealing with their responsibilities as employers in an age of incredible social change, or divining how to perpetuate a corporate culture that speaks to who they want to be today. We understand the tremendous challenges leaders face today on so many fronts, including how to engage their people in a highly disrupted workplace to deliver the very best they can every day. Our core leadership program, Just Lead, Dammit! is one way we help leaders generate results in a highly competitive, quickly changing environment. We teach them how to dramatically improve their effectiveness by engaging their organization and their teams. We were working with a large U.S. manufacturing client on bolstering the effectiveness of their corporate strategy and uncovered some leadership gaps. That led us to delivering Just Lead, Dammit! to 80 leaders across the company – virtually, of course. Top executives were so impressed with the results, they engaged us to deliver the program to a group of supervisors in the company. Rather than just relying on virtual delivery, we’re retooling to make it a hybrid – delivering the training live by video feed but with our facilitators in the room to guide discussions, lead practice sessions and deliver feedback. In addition, we’re building a library of all the reference materials and developing short videos as refreshers for participants to refer to. We’re doing all this because our clients aren’t standing still, so why should we? We’re in the whitewater of change with you.

Take a look, it’s in a book! Happy World Book Day! (Guest post by Morgan) In these days of consuming information at lightening speed, there is no substitution for a good book. No matter what you are looking for, whether it be knowledge, growth or simple escapism, reading can get you ther e. Walking into the bookstore has l ong been one of my favorite pastimes. Sometimes it is with clear intent, on a mission to grab the latest best seller or on the hunt for a specific topic that I am curious about. Other times it is to simply peruse the shelves of all the different categories looking for something to jump out and say, “Here I am!” Nothing is better then sitting down when you get home and cracking the spine of a new book. Now with all the different delivery methods, it has become even easier to devour whatever topic you want. Lately I have found myself listening intently to more audiobooks. I find that being able to combine a walk or relaxing bath while listening to someone read my latest pick is so therapeutic. Being able to escape into and alternate reality of fiction for just a little while. Embedding myself into the story, imagining the faces and places described by my favourite author. Really taking in any form of publication keeps your mind healthy, sharp and young. Knowledge is power, so take the time to research topics that interest you and people who inspire you. We often challenge people to challenge their own thinking…books are magical at opening our minds to different points of view. They enable us to grow both personally and professionally by seeing the world through the viewpoints of others. I asked some of the team here at WhiteWater International Consulting Inc. to recommend what is on their reading list. While, of course, Get In Gear: The Seven Gears that Drive Strategy to Results by our own CEO Sean Ryan was on the top of all of their lists – Yeah, guess we all like keeping our jobs  -- here are a few more picks from each of them: Tracey’s Picks · Don Quixote , Miguel de Cervantes · How to Win Friends and Influence People , Dale Carnegie · Breakfast of Champions , Kurt Vonnegut Tenice’s Picks · The 5AM Cl ub, Robin Sharma · Likeonomics , Rohit Bhargava · Fly Into the Wind , by Lt. Colonel Dan Rooney Morgan’s Picks · Shaken: Discovering Your True Identity in the Midst of Life’s Storms , Tim Tebow · Redefining Realistic , Heather Moyse · Absolute Power , David Baldacci Sean’s Picks · Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind , Yuval Noah Harris · The Dilbert Principle , Scott Adams So go ahead grab your favorite book, scroll through your e-reader, or press play on your choice of audiobooks and enjoy World Book Day!

How to Embrace the ‘Next Normal’ It’s been nearly a year-and-a-half since what might be called the old normal and many of us have spent much of it scrambling and struggling. As vaccination rates rise, restrictions ease, and all aspects of life and work start to open up again, the end of pandemic survival mode is in sight. our collective cortisol levels recede, and we can start to settle down after the incredible turbulence of the pandemic, it’s time to take stock. For me, as for many of you, September, not January, has always felt like the actual new year. So, this fall, if you’re one of the lucky ones whose business has survived (or thrived), you can begin to think seriously about what comes next. Post-pandemic, it’s essential to be intentional about this “next normal.” I’ve always contended there’s no “new normal,” that change is a constant in life and business. That’s why, 20 years ago, I named my consulting company WhiteWater because of the perpetual movement and churn in our world. And yet, even I can admit that the level of disruption caused by the pandemic is singular. It’s the Niagara Falls of change. And that requires a fresh lens and some extra effort at the leadership level to set a course for your team as we head into new, hopefully calmer, waters. There’s No Going Back One thing is clear: the state of the world and your business in March 2020 is history. From the acceleration of digital transformation to the emergence of nearly universal remote work to shifting consumer expectations and new regulations, things have changed. You need to revisit your strategy, refocus on what's critical to the success of your business and rethink how you create unique value for your customers. How will you position yourself in the marketplace? How has your competitive advantage evolved or eroded? What new expectations do your customers have? What new opportunities exist? The best place to start is talking to your customers to understand what choice factors matter most to them now. Of course, market research and customer communication is always important, but it’s one of those functions that often falls by the wayside. The next normal presents an opportunity to get back to basics. Don’t skip this foundational step in informing your strategy framework. Not only will these conversations help you see where you shine and where your competitors have you beat, but you may discover new unmet needs and emerging opportunities. Putting It Into Action Now that you’ve got a handle on where your customers and industry are at, it’s time to consider how you’ll execute on that strategy and position yourself in the marketplace. What new scorecards or performance indicators will you need to tell you you’re on track? What top actions will be essential to get there? How might you need to pivot or shift? How do you communicate now? Don’t assume that what worked in 2020 will still apply. The greatest leaders I’ve worked with in 20 years of consulting are those who are willing to challenge their assumptions and question their beliefs. Be open. Of course, as your goals shift and strategy evolves, the people in your organization will likely need to change, too. What new skills, tasks or performance drivers will advance your strategy? How do you cascade the big plan down to your team? And how do you make sure they have the capabilities to be successful in this new environment, especially after the exhausting, distracting, sometimes devastating class-5 rapids of the last 18 months? Prioritize Your People If you feel like your team has gotten away from you a bit over this wild ride, that’s OK. You are far from alone. The literal distance of remote work and the drift from focused strategy execution to survival mode have pulled us all away. The first step to getting the band back together is simple but essential: you have to spend some time connecting with your people. While many things have changed, the principles of engagement, of building trust and creating an environment where people can be successful, have not changed at all. In fact, they’re more important than ever as you must rally them around a refreshed vision and inspire them to contribute to it. Make time for one-on-ones. Reach out to everyone for a catch-up. Many people have experienced great pain and loss this year, both personally and professionally. We know anecdotally and from the headlines that people are feeling burnt out after a year of survival mode. After months of remote or hybrid work and all of the stress of the great COVID balancing act, empathy is essential. Lead by listening. Not sure where to start? Ask them things like: What are you looking forward to? What are you afraid of? What gets you excited about coming to work every day? What’s changed for you? What do you need from me? These conversations are just the beginning, but they set the tone for a productive path forward, and leading your team through new terrain into the next normal. One of the most significant changes this year was the shift to remote work, and an ongoing hybrid work model for many organizations and that’s going to pose some challenges for team cohesion moving forward (I’ll dig into that in a future post). But for now, whatever your model, refocusing and re-engaging is the first step.

Stretch Goals Make the Impossible Happen In January, many of us set goals for ourselves in the form of New Year’s resolutions. Most are relatively safe and predictable: eat better, lose 10 pounds, call mom more often, grab a book instead of binging Netflix. While not necessarily easy, they aren’t exactly audacious or bold. Even so, by now, many of us have already fallen off the proverbial wagon and gone back to our old ways. I’ve been wondering lately if playing it small in our resolutions is part of the problem. What if, instead of going for timid shifts, we went bigger? What if we set stretch goals instead of safe goals? Dare to Dream Stretch goals are precisely what they sound like: aims so high that it is a real, well, stretch to hit them. Stretch goals are scary because they are tough to achieve. The likelihood of not reaching them is high. Stretch goals take you beyond your comfort zone, your usual ways of thinking and acting. They can push your body and mind to uncomfortable places. But the benefits of setting stretch goals–even if your reach proves to exceed your grasp–are also outsized. Stretch goals are both aspirational and potentially attainable, and the possibility, even if it’s slim, of achieving them, changes something in us. It lifts our gaze, makes us believe that new levels of success and achievement are possible. Stretch goals can make overcoming even the most intractable challenge or deep-rooted problem seem possible. Personal Stretch Goals Build Purpose While stretch goals are a perennial subject of interest in business, they aren’t relegated to the boardroom or the c-suite. Leaders who set stretch goals outside of the office have much to gain, both in their personal and professional lives. That’s because goals give us purpose. And it follows that, the bigger and bolder the goal, the more purpose it can impart. Going after stretch goals also builds resilience and persistence, and this ability to face and overcome adversity is a superpower in all areas of life. Stretch goals can unlock new levels of motivation, energy and enthusiasm. They also release us from the hum-drum expectations of mediocrity. When you dream big and shoot for the moon, you are forcing yourself to get out of your comfort zone, sparking new levels of creativity and innovation. So, What's Your Impossible? It’s hard to break our mental conditioning, to imagine what seems impossible may, in fact, be attainable. It can be easy to set limits on ourselves and think or say “that could never happen” or “I could never do that” or “only in my dreams.” Speaking of dreams, as yourself: What things do I keep telling myself could never happen? In a perfect world where everything is possible, what would I want to happen in my life or business? What have I always dreamed of doing? If I had $10 million and no strings attached, what would I do with it? If I could have any job, do anything, go anywhere, what would I do? Notice anything about this list? Stretch goals are about working towards your dreams. You have to care about your stretch goal, and deeply, otherwise, you’ll never have the motivation to try. It has to matter to you. So grab a pen and paper, and think about then write down the “impossible” that you want. Think about your work, family, career, business, health and friendships. Write as many down as come to mind. Don’t edit yourself, don’t rationalize, just free-write for now. Here are a few other questions to think about: What area of life would you like to grow in? What one thing, if you did it, would have the greatest impact on your life? On your career? Family? Business? What would you do if there were no barriers and if nothing was impossible? What one thing have you always dreamed of doing but always told yourself that you couldn’t or that it was impossible? Look back on what you wrote. What’s your personal moonshot? If you have multiple potential goals, pick one. Ask yourself, “if everything remained the same, what one idea/goal/desire would have the greatest impact on my life if completed?” A Note on Impossibility If you’re thinking, “yeah, but…” then consider this: we live in a world of impossibility, surrounded by the achievements and advancements of those who were told their dreams and ideas could never be achieved. Those who set goals that they believed possible, even if others didn’t. Stretch goals aren’t just for exceptionally gifted people or geniuses. Everyone with the guts to set radical expectations for themselves can have them. "The great danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark." –Michelangelo Build Your Stretch Success In the beginning, if you have a low level of belief, it’s OK to start small. Once you start to get some wins, dial things up. Increase the “impossibility” of your goals. For example, if your goal is to run a marathon, break it down into sub-goals: Run a 5k in 2 months Run my first 7 miles in 4 months. Run 4 times a week. Or if your goal is to pay off your mortgage in five years, maybe your sub-goals are to: Review your household expenses Create a household budget Eliminate frill expenditures Set a monthly contribution Remember, the dogged, focused pursuit of your goals, not just their attainment, is what really matters. Even if you don’t quite make your mark, you will learn so much about yourself. You will grow. You will become more resilient, more brave, more creative. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll actually do the impossible.

Leader as Organizational Architect, Part 2 In our last post on aligning an organization’s systems, structures, processes and culture, we discussed some of the ways misalignment creates friction that drags down performance. But when an organization makes the necessary changes to reach align the organizational architecture, something amazing can happen. We call it “organizational gravity” – the often unseen forces that pull performance toward the strategy. The more well-aligned the systems, structures, processes and culture are, the stronger the gravitational pull toward the purpose and strategy. As one leader told us, “Then everything just flows, like the tides.” It’s the responsibility of leaders to create organizational gravity. But leaders often don’t see themselves as architects of their organization’s systems, structures, processes and culture. It’s hard to manage a force you don’t recognize. So when they fall out of alignment, leaders see only the symptoms, not the underlying problem. What’s it Take to get a Cup of Coffee? Re-structure the Organization We worked with a resort that had a vast array of properties, including a restaurant attached to its golf shop. The restaurant opened at 8 a.m. Early bird golfers would arrive at 6:30 and find they couldn’t get a cup of coffee before starting their round. Why? Because the resort was organized by function. The food and beverage people were responsible for the coffee in the restaurant, and they had no interest in opening the restaurant before 8. That would just stretch their personnel, drive up their costs and make their internal reports look worse. The resort suffered multiple problems because of this structure. In another example, the golf shop’s carpets were dirty many mornings, because another functional group, housekeeping, kept a schedule that brought them to the shop in the afternoon. The team members in the golf shop realized the negative impact this was having on their customers, who grumbled that they couldn’t get a simple cup of coffee for an early tee time or were put off by a messy golf shop if they happened to stop by in the morning. But no one felt they could fix the problems – until they realigned the structure. They blew up the organization. Jobs were no longer organized by function. Instead, they created dozens of small business units throughout the resort, including a golf shop “business unit.” Once the workers in the golf shop became responsible for the shop’s performance as a mini-business, they made sure golfers could get coffee at early hours and the carpets were clean throughout the day. Once they re-organized, the transformation was quick and thorough. All it took was the leap of faith to allow the shattering of the resort’s organizational structure with the purpose of recreating it in a more logical way. Want Teamwork? Change How you Hire and Who Gets Promoted Another organization we worked with wanted to make a significant shift away from purely individual contribution, to a more team-oriented approach. They found themselves struggling to make the shift. Ultimately though they changed their compensation system to reflect the new strategic priorities. They also changed their recruitment and selection processes to find people who were more team-oriented (without sacrificing the critical technical/functional capabilities they needed to be successful). Finally, they also aligned their talent management and succession planning systems to promote leaders more aligned with the company’s strategy. As those systems and processes came into alignment, the “unseen” forces began to pull the organization in the direction they wanted to go. Most academics and change consultants suggest that making a broad-based change in an organization takes five to seven years. It doesn’t have to be that way. We’ve found time and again that when we align the organization’s systems, structures, processes and culture, the time frame for change can be cut dramatically. Efforts to align the architecture are not always easy. They certainly are not as easy as making idle proclamations like, “People just need to take ownership” or “Everyone just needs to work together.” While both might be true statements, merely saying them doesn’t change the “nature” of the organization. So, behavior is unlikely to change just because someone says them. Aligning the organizational architecture is harder, but ultimately far more effective at changing behavior. And, as John Kruk , the former baseball player once said, “It’s not rocket surgery.” Aligning the architecture does take a little effort and then some patience as those “unseen forces” begin to exert their influence. Then, like the leader said, everything begins “to flow like the tides.” 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. Leader as Organizational Architect.

Courageous Communications, Part 1 “Precision of communication is important, more important than ever, in our era of hair trigger balances, when a false or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as a sudden thoughtless act.” Who said that, and when? Answer below. (No skipping ahead!) “The ability to get along with others is always an asset, right?” writes Chris Argyris in “Skilled Incompetence” (Harvard Business Review, September 1986). “Wrong! By adeptly avoiding conflict with co-workers, some executives eventually wreak organizational havoc. And it’s their very adeptness that’s the problem.” It should almost go without saying that communications are at the core of organizations that most effectively translate Strategy-to-Execution. Yet, you don’t have to look far to find organizations (intact work teams, project team, departments, whole organizations) that fall short of effective execution because their communications fall short in one or more ways. This series of posts will address one common cause of communication problems: fear of conflict. We’ll talk about the need for courageous communications, how to conduct them and the damage an organization can sustain by avoiding them. “What we have here is a failure to communicate” In any number of organizations we go into, “Communications” is one of the lowest rated items on their Employee Engagement Surveys or Culture Surveys. As The Captain said in Cool Hand Luke, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” And, that failure is literally never about the number of newsletters your organization publishes. So, you can’t solve this by merely sending out more broadcast communications, or tweeting more or cleaning up the company web-site. While there are a lot of reasons that cause communications gaps, they often boil down to this: “We got stuff we need to talk about that we’re not talking about. And, frankly, if you’re a senior leader in this organization, you often don’t even know we’re not talking about it.” As a result, “Communicate, Communicate, Communicate” is one of the critical foundation elements of our Strategy-to-Execution (S2X™) framework. (See our full Whitepaper on the topic.)  Leaning into healthy conflict and not avoiding it is critical. As the Argyris quote points out, our underlying “thinking” is often that the ability to avoid conflict is a good thing. Yet, nothing could be further from the truth. And, what he wrote in 1986 is at least as true today as it was then. We have literally 100’s of examples where organizations were avoiding healthy conflict to a debilitating effect. We’ll tell one of them in the next post. By the way, while we think the need for dramatically better communications, and the ability to deal with conflict, is critical today, that quote at beginning of this post, was from author James Thurber… …in 1916. 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.

Courageous Communications, Part 2 “I’m Only Telling you this because I’m leaving the company” What Happens When Leaders Forgo Courageous Communications In our last post, we talked about the difficulty many people have telling their colleagues the hard truths. This post will tell a story of the debilitating effect of stifling these conversations. The conversation we started to have… I was working with several levels of leadership – about 35 people in total – in a division of manufacturing company. It was a Strategy-to-Execution S2X™ session designed to identify and eliminate roadblocks to more effective execution. We did a series of break-out sessions to get everyone engaged in the conversation. After one round of break-outs, the groups were asked to share what they had come up with. A frontline supervisor in one of the groups, Bob (not his real name), brought up an issue that the organization typically resolved very adeptly. It was truly not a big deal and in about five minutes of conversation with the group of 35 leaders, the issue was resolved. As we were wrapping up the conversation, another person in Bob’s break-out group said, “I’d just point out that Bob would not have brought that up if he wasn’t leaving the company on Friday.” The conversation we needed to have… WHAT? Hold the phone. “Let me re-phrase … Bob would not have brought up a relatively minor issue, that this group just resolved in five minutes, except for the fact that he’s leaving the company in a couple of days? I have to know…why?” The question was followed by … dead silence. Much uncomfortable shifting in seats. Quite a few people looking down at their shoes I guess to check them to see if they were well shined. And they sure as hell were not going to look up to engage in what had quickly become a very uncomfortable conversation. After much digging and prodding, we ended up having an excellent conversation. (We took a two-hour side trip into this issue, but it was far more critical than the discussion we started out to have). Most of the group admitted that they didn’t feel comfortable addressing issues with their peers or their leaders because they felt the level of trust within the organization was not high enough to support it. It was also obvious that some of them lacked the personal courage or the skills to address the conflicts they needed to address. Finally, it became clear that senior leaders in the organization were unaware that people weren’t addressing issues that needed to be addressed. What about the rest of the participants? Well, they were adamant that “they didn’t have any issues that they had not addressed with others.” More on that below. The Follow-up… I was back in that company about a month later as a follow-up to our initial conversation. A couple fascinating facts emerged: First, it turned out that Bob’s issue with communicating with his manager (let’s call him Alex) went back more than 20 years to when he and Alex had been peers in another organization. One had turned down an invitation to the other’s house for dinner. That was it. The two never talked it out, and the resentment followed them over the years to their new employer. Their conflict had, to some extent, infected communication among the entire management team. All because two people had avoided talking about a conflict from more than 20 years earlier. Second, remember all those people who said in the initial workshop that “they didn’t have any issues they hadn’t addressed with anyone else?” All of them pulled me aside at some point during my visit and copped to the fact that they, too, had issues that they’d had to sort out with one or more of their peers. And, they all also talked about how liberating it had been to finally hold those courageous communications, and get issues out on the table that they had been avoiding talking about. It also became clear that since they couldn’t talk about routine issues that the organization typically ate for breakfast, they surely were not talking about far more tricky issues around quality, performance, hand-offs between work-groups, etc. By learning how to hold more courageous communications, they quickly evolved to a much more productive culture and performance. In our next two posts, we will discuss how to assess your organization’s ability to manage conflict and provide a simple road map to help you conduct those courageous communications constructively. 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.