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  • The Anniversary Post: 20 Years, 20 Lessons

    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

    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.

  • Courageous Communications, Part 5: Do you relish healthy conflict?

    Courageous Communications, Part 5: Do you relish healthy conflict? Conflict is all around us. People have different perspectives on how to solve a problem, or even what the problem is. They have different perspectives on goals and objectives and the best way to accomplish them. Leaders and their teams have different perspectives on performance and how well people are supported in their efforts to perform well. Few people see eye-to-eye with their managers or peers all the time. Creating an environment for healthy conflict is critical to creating organizations where everyone can perform their best. How leaders resolve conflicts is one of the key indicators of their overall effectiveness as leaders. Organizations that relish healthy conflict and deal with it in positive ways tend to outperform those that shun conflict or believe that conflict and disagreement are bad. Conflict is imperative within any organization for growth, and can be managed in healthy and helpful ways. In Part 2 of this series we outlined the cast of an organization in which the outward appearance was that everything was okay, maybe even great. The organization was performing well. Yet, as we uncovered the challenges the division leaders had in dealing with conflict, it was clear that they were leaving far more opportunities on the table. They had the ability to perform so much better if only they were more skilled at dealing with the underlying conflict. Healthy Conflict in your Organization: How healthy is it? So, I’ll pose these questions. I’d love your thoughts and feedback: How effectively are you managing conflict in your organization? How willing are people to hold the Courageous Communications that are necessary? Is everyone in your organization having the conversations they need to be having with others? For that matter, are you holding the conversations you need to hold with others in your organization? What forces enable your organization to deal with the healthy conflict? What forces are blocking courageous communications from happening? Do people have the skills and abilities to handle those emotionally charged situations in which they feel their careers may be put at risk? Do you have mechanisms in place to ensure that if there is an issue with communications, people have an outlet to by-pass the blockage? I will much look forward to your thoughts and comments as we “dialogue about dialogue!” 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 and Feedback

    Courageous Communications and Feedback “Feedback is the Breakfast of Champions.” – Ken Blanchard “Feedback is the Breakfast of Champions…as long as you’re willing to eat it.” – Sean Ryan Over the last few weeks, we’ve shared a series of posts discussing “courageous communications.” One topic we’ve not touched on directly: the cost of NOT holding the tough conversation, especially when it involves not providing people – your direct reports, peers or even bosses – with the kind of tough feedback that really does “feed” champions. By “cost” I don’t mean the financial cost. That may not even be calculable, but I’ll bet the mortgage that it is massive. The real question is, what’s the human cost of not providing people the feedback they need to grow? The short answer: it’s staggering. Feedback doesn’t Feed if It’s Not on the Menu Let me share one story – of hundreds — that emerged from our work. We were working with the senior leadership group in a unit of a multi-national firm. The group included one leader, let’s call him Frank, who had been identified by his manager, the VP in charge of the Divsion, as having the potential to be promoted. Several of the manager’s peers had concerns about Frank’s potential but were generally not close enough to the situation to have a definitive point-of-view. Over the course of our discussion with the leadership group that day, I began to understand why people were hesitant about Frank’s potential. It was clear that Frank was a good person – he had a good value set, he truly cared about the organization and his team and he was technically competent. But, it was also clear, from both what he said and what others in the room said, that he had difficulty with follow-up/follow-through and creating accountability with both his team and others he worked with. To his credit, at the end of our session, Frank very pointedly asked me for my feedback about him. I said I had some thoughts and offered to discuss it with him in private. He insisted, though, on hearing it in front of the group. While I thought that was risky – maybe more for me than Frank – I felt compelled to share my observations. So, I told him: From our conversation today, your colleagues believe you don’t hold your team members accountable. And, you seem to do a fine job of identifying issues, but you don’t follow through to make sure they get corrected. Fortunately, Frank took the feedback well and agreed with the assessment. He was willing to eat the tough feedback. But, here’s the punchline. After our session, we had the opportunity to tour the unit’s operations. Three times in that one-hour tour, Frank pulled me aside to thank me for the direct, honest feedback I provided him. He said, “No one – including my boss – has ever provided me with that kind of feedback.” To emphasize the point: His manager, who wanted him to succeed and was actively campaigning for Frank to be promoted, had never given him the very feedback he needed to succeed. Frank was willing to eat the breakfast of champions, but no one who worked with him and could truly help him, was willing to feed him what he needed to grow to his fullest potential. What’s the Cost of Not Providing the Feedback People Need? So, what’s the cost? To Frank — The sad result was that it likely had prevented him from being promoted for several years – all because his boss had avoided having the courageous conversation. The boss was withholding valuable information from him – information that might have cost him an opportunity to advance in the company. To Frank’s team – What growth opportunities had they missed out on because of Frank not holding the tough conversations with them and holding them accountable for being their best? To Frank’s business unit – How much could performance have improved if Frank had been more effective with Follow-up/Follow-through and holding people accountable? To the larger organization – Like many, Frank’s company had a need for a steady pipeline of talent to fuel its growth and continuing success. What was the cost of Frank not growing to the extent of his capability and potential to enable him to move up in the organization? And, again, this is just one of hundreds of similar situations we’ve seen where people aren’t being fed the feedback they need in spite of being willing eat it. What’s the cumulative cost of that to them, their organizations and the people around them? Questions to Consider As Ken Blanchard said, “Feedback is the Breakfast of Champions.” My questions to you: Are you willing to feed people the tough feedback they need to be their best? Are you willing to “eat the breakfast” that others are trying to feed you? Who on your team, or peer or manager, needs the feedback you could provide them? What’s holding you back from providing the feedback they need? Please feel free to leave your thoughts below. I’ll look forward to continuing the dialogue. 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.

  • Strategy Execution Falling Short? Check Your Follow-up/Follow-through

    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

    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

    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!

    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

    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

    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

    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!

    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!

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