• Take a moment to observe how your department functions. What are all the annoyances and frustrations that you put up with instead of fixing?
• What do you think is holding you back from being more proactive at fixing the systems that cause you the most grief?
• If you tend to respond defensively to changes, reflect on why that is and set a personal goal to be a creator of change.

By being a leader of change you can take your career off the endangered species list and not only survive but thrive.

—
 
Dr. Peter DeShane and I are scheduling another workshop: The Psychology of Persuasion and Influence on June 9th in London, Ontario.
 
Now is the time of year when companies plan leadership retreats – see how we can make these meetings more positive and productive.
  
Have a great week!

The Missing Ingredient
 
Most process improvement initiatives involve a tool kit of problem solving tools, methodology and intensive training. Some, like Six Sigma come with fancy names like Black Belt and Green Belt and business books and consultants trumpet the extraordinary payback, with a sizable investment!
 
Some cynics might think that greedy consultants are really just repackaging concepts such as value stream mapping and continuous improvement into fancier systems and there is some truth there.
 
Management can be forgiven for being seduced into paying big bucks for training and consulting. The promised payback is extraordinary, especially in the early stages when the low hanging fruit is picked. Once the initiative moves from the most enthusiastic managers involved in pilot projects to the broader organization, many initiatives begin to fade.
 
The missing ingredient is Leadership.
 
In fact, for most businesses, the exhaustive tool kits are overkill and can overwhelm the organization.
 
Without leadership, all of these initiatives fail to connect the people to the process. For managers without effective people skills the technical tools appear to do away with the need to engage and motivate. It’s not that the tools are ineffective – they just don’t create the full benefit without leadership.
 
It could be argued that an effective manager with good leadership skills could achieve similar results with the basic premise of reducing wasted effort, getting employees to engage in finding better ways of doing their work and measuring key aspects of the process.
 
Before embarking on a large process improvement, consider how your leadership team will keep the process alive and ensure benefits are sustained.

Reflection Questions

• Is the proposed process improvement overkill for your type of organization? 
• Is the leadership team (from executives to the front line) capable and consistent in managing people and process? 
• How would consistent and capable leadership help run the business better, perhaps without lots of additional training/consulting?

Action Items

• Continue to invest in the leadership capabilities of your team from the executive suites to the front line leaders.
• Make continuous improvement and lean part of the culture instead of being a special project.
• Ensure sustainability by having consistent management attention over a long period of time.

• Examine your existing leadership practices. Now is the time to create the kind of leaders great employees want to work for. 
• Help teams of employees make meaningful changes to eliminate unnecessary steps, introduce time saving technology and improve output.
• Whereever possible redeploy affected employees to growing parts of your business to avoid them resisting improvements because of job loss.
• If downsizing is a likely result of your efforts, consider making those adjustments earlier, then help remaining employees devise better ways of doing the workload under the new conditions.

Feet: At the Feet level, we want to make the path as easy as possible for people to change. If we remove obstacles and make the path towards change easier, the change will happen quicker, with less resistance.
 
Engage the Feet: Create tools, checklists, systems, etc that support the change. You also want to make the existing habits harder to continue. A good example of this is freezing your credit card in a block of ice to avoid over spending or not having tempting junk food in the house when you are dieting.
 
The best change strategy is to combine all three elements in a powerful trifecta.
 
Reflection Question
 
Are you providing people with the logical, emotional and logistical means to accomplish your desired change?
 
Action Items

• Select a current or future change initiative.
• List the logical reasons for the change and specifically what you want people to do differently.
• Make people stronger by showing them they are already on the way and that what you are asking from them isn’t really that overwhelming.
• Remove any systemic obstacles and create support tools that help them move in the direction you desire.
• Watch how much faster, easier and less stressful your next change initiative will be.

Curiosity is what will create the next EBay or Google or Microsoft and curiosity will lead your organization to a breakthough opportunity.  
 
Reflection Questions
 
How curious a person are you? Is curiosity encouraged in your organization? How many things are taken at face value without being more open minded to seeing new opportunities?
 
Action Items

• Be curious about long standing problems in your workplace.
• Ask questions that inspire curiosity in others, “How could we serve our customers better and generate better results?”
• Avoid crushing other people’s curiosity when comments like, “We’ve always done it that way, ” or “That will never work.”

A lot of money is made in the “self-help” industry from promising people “quick and easy” ways to achieve success. In fact I challenge you to pick up a business book or “how to” book that doesn’t have the words quick and easy on it. They wouldn’t sell as well with the words “difficult and challenging.”
 
In a radio interview on AM800 on January 2nd, host Kara Ro asked me to share tips on setting and achieving goals. This was around the topic of New Year’s Resolutions. It got me thinking about leadership and that the best leaders take action with a long term view.
 
Be sure and check out the links at the bottom of this email for upcoming courses or to have a discussion about what your team needs to achieve success in 2010.

Delayed Gratification
 
Take an inventory of the people in your life who you consider to be “successful”. Were they an overnight success? Likely not. I can’t think of one person who has achieved success who hasn’t had to work very hard to achieve it. They might make it look easy but behind the scenes they worked their butt off to get where they are. And likely they are still working their butt off to get to the next level or simply maintain what they have.

• Listen for signs that your organization is blaming the customer for its woes.
• Ask questions that move your organization forward, “How can we win the business and maintain profitability?”
• Stop complaining about customers and start finding ways to make them happy at a profit.
• Remember that the ultimate antidote to having difficult customers is having no customers at all…

1. Get a Recovery and Growth Mindset

Now is the time for you and your team to shift thinking from defense to offense. As the recession begins to fade there are tremendous opportunities to grow your business. The challenge is to recognize the opportunities and then take action to exploit the potential.

2. Upgrade Your Mental Software

When was the last time you invested in growing the knowledge, skills and capabilities of yourself and the team around you? Is your team trying to achieve success in 2010 with a 2004 mindset? If your organization isn’t changing as rapidly as the environment around it then you might want to upgrade capabilities with training, coaching or consulting aimed at the areas of greatest need.

3. Lead

The root cause of both success and failure is leadership. If your team isn’t up to the challenge it may be them or it may be the leader. Develop a clear idea in your mind on what you want to achieve and then ask the team how they can make it happen. Challenge is a top motivator so get your team reenergized by focusing on a big goal that they can sink their teeth into.

If we can help your organization reenergize and refocus, please connect with us for a complimentary consultation.

As the recovery takes hold your organization will start to do better simply because customers will start buying again. While this provides a much needed break from the angst of recession, it will hardly provide the motivation to excel. Instead challenge your organization to achieve its true potential and watch performance soar.

Think in terms of watching runners about to compete at a track meet. Is your organization in the starting blocks, ready to launch when the starter’s pistol fires? Or will you be a spectator in the stands watching your competitors win the race?

Setting Your Organization’s Thermostat

Your organization has a thermostat. The thermostat defines the performance expectations of the business and everyone who works in it. If performance drops below the threshold, heads will roll, bonuses will be reduced or eliminated and generally everyone will work harder to get performance back on track. On the other hand, if performance exceeds expectations, the organization will tend to slack off and take it easy which will prevent the business unit from achieving its full potential. Who sets the thermostat? The CEO/president/business owner, and in turn, the senior management team defines what is possible and drives the expectations of the rest of the organization.

Stop Being Satisfied with Incrementalism

Most organizations need to rethink the incremental way they manage expectations year over year. Managers are often satisfied with a 5-10% improvement because that might be the threshold that triggers bonuses and yet leaves a little something in the tank for next year. If a target is set too high, the manager might be punished for not achieving the target even though performance improved. The result? The organization leaves money on the table because it was capable of achieving more but did not do so.

Achieving What Seems Impossible is a Powerful Motivator

A sense of challenge and growth is the most powerful motivator for employees. When goals are set too low complacency sets in. Top performers leave the organization and you are left with mediocre performers who are primarily interested in maintaining the status quo. By raising expectations employees will be more engaged and results will improve; a true win/win situation.

Enabling Questions to Help Achieve True Potential

Enabling questions are those that help you achieve greater performance and get you closer to your true potential.

How can we dominate the market?
How can we turn customers into fans who rave about us?
What other needs do our customers have and how can we meet those needs?
How can we maximize profit and cash flow in good times and bad?
How can we have employees who love working here?

Raise the performance of your organization, your department and for yourself personally by defining your true potential, resetting your thermostat to increase results and challenging yourself and others to grow.

Innovative companies can lose their edge, especially after successfully commercializing their technology. Perhaps the owners and those involved in the start-up have lost the energy and enthusiasm they had in the exciting start-up phase.

It is time to break out of your complacency and regain the mojo that made your organization successful. To help you out, we have created a brand new training program that can be delivered first to your management team and then rolled out to other departments in your company to get the whole organization thinking about innovation.

In this session, your managers will be able to:

• Identify high probability growth areas in the business based on new and existing technologies;
• Identify and eliminate the barriers that prevent the organization from being more innovative;
• Develop a new vision that can carry the organization forward towards a higher level of success;
• Develop a skill set to tap into the creativity and possibility that exists within the company;
• Communicate the new direction clearly and repetitively to create buy in;
• Set up a system to green-light new ideas and maintain momentum.

Key Workshop Elements

1. Innovation inventory: A look back at what made the company successful in its earlier innovative days. How innovation was fostered so that the company grew.
2. Innovation roadblocks: Identifying some of the obstacles and barriers that have prevented further innovation in the company; including organizational systems, silos, negative thinking, and more. Strategize to eliminate or minimize the obstacles to let ideas and opportunities flow.
3. Innovation opportunities: Where the greatest opportunities exist to grow the business based on extensions of existing opportunities or the application of basic technology.
4. Customer consultation: How to identify customer problems that need to be solved and have a high value perception to the customer.
5. Employee involvement: How to cultivate ideas and opportunities from the staff who service customers.
6. Competitive activity: Analyzing competitor behaviour to uncover opportunities for growth.
7. Reinvigorating the Innovation Culture: Ensuring that the company systems and processes support the generation and implementation of business growth:
   - Employee development – Succession Planning
   - Reward and recognition
   - Recruitment and selection
   - Communication
   - Leadership
8. Setting the Action Plan: Creating a plan of action to implement the innovation process within the organization.

Potential for 100% Government Funding up to $50,000

The Province of Ontario, Canada has created a new program to help companies regain their innovative edge. The Yves Landry Foundation in conjunction with the Province of Ontario will pay up to $50,000 to cover the direct and indirect costs of training to give your company a competitive edge. Like most government programs, this is a first come, first served – when the money is all gone you are out of luck. Up to 100% of direct costs (trainer fees, workbooks, meeting room) and 50% of indirect costs (wages of attendees) can be covered. Get more information at http://www.yveslandryfoundation.com/ Chances are a similar program may exist in your state or province.

We invite you to call or email about how to get your organization’s innovation mojo back. We can help you tap into potential government funding.