Introduction to The Leader's Digest: Practical Application Planner

Implementation Options and Guidelines

A department, region, division, or entire organization's performance ripples out from the management team leading it. Research clearly shows the 30 – 50 percent of the time that organization change and improvement efforts succeed, they are led by management teams who realize that to change "them," we also need to change "us." Failing to develop the management team in conjunction with organization change efforts is like hiring a contractor to renovate the kitchen, but refusing to move anything in the cupboards and insisting that the work not disrupt any meals or family gatherings.

The 50 – 70 percent of the time that organizational revitalization, turnarounds, leadership development, culture change, implementing new processes or technologies, restructuring, and the like fail, one of the root causes is a dysfunctional or weak management team. The top manager of one team we worked with showed up at a team retreat with folders printed showing the company logo and the words "Change Kit: Change Begins Here." Inside, each manager found a large mirror.

This Practical Application Planner is designed to move management teams from being inspired by The Leader's Digest to applying its Timeless Leadership Principles. This can dramatically accelerate the management team's effectiveness and their leadership of their organization. Through this process, team members are guided to discover and define the Timeless Leadership Principles for their management team. Each section provides an opportunity to move the leadership principles from knowing (understanding) to doing (action). To maximize effectiveness, this needs to be an ongoing process, not just a "sheep dip" type of event. Successful team development and organizational leadership comes from many small steps over a long period of time.

Strategic Implementation Decisions

Recommended Option: On-line Assessment

In conjunction with The Leader's Digest: Practical Application Planner, The CLEMMER Group offers the option of team members completing each assessment on our web site. This allows each participant to confidentially log on to the surveys and complete them in private. Each participant can anonymously add relevant comments, observations, and suggestions. Survey results are tabulated and comments compiled and then sent to the team leader or facilitator.

The benefits of this option are:

A confidential third party assessment channel providing a very candid and highly accurate representation of each team member's views.
Group-think, overpowering personalities, or the views of the most vocal participants are neutralized. Everyone's voice and vote has equal weight.
The management team can stand back together and look at the range of answers to each question as well as team averages.
Much more time is saved for discussion, application, and action planning. The tedious and time consuming process of tallying up and aggregating individual responses to each of the many different assessment exercises in the Practical Application Planner is drastically reduced.
Anonymous "write in" comments for each assessment exercise enrich and deepen team discussions, ensuring that all points of view are considered.
The quantitative ratings counterbalance individual comments with "the big picture" view of the team's high, low, and average scores of each rating scale.

Who Will be Involved in This Process?

Ideally the Practical Application Planner starts at the very top of the organization. But lower level management teams aren't showing leadership if they point upward and feel like there's no point in doing anything until "they get their act together." If this is the management team's response, they should start with the "Responsibility for Choices" principle. As stressed throughout The Leader's Digest, leadership is an action, not a position.

Intact Management Team
The process described in the Practical Application Planner works best with an intact management team that works together to lead part of an organization. Ideally, the process is aligned with the team's strategic and operational planning. Application exercises and planning should integrate with existing programs, processes, and people. Few teams need more work to be added to their overloaded schedules. The Practical Application Planner uses an action learning process. This helps management teams to reduce, consolidate, or implement many of the plans and processes already in progress before the team started using the Practical Application Planner.

Multiple Teams/Large Group Option
A number of intact teams can be brought together in a large group. Each intact team would be seated at a round table together. Throughout the process, the teams work together at their table focused on their own organization. Occasionally they would report their findings, application exercises, implementation ideas, observations/learning, and/or action plans to the larger group.

This approach requires a highly skilled and experienced facilitator who knows this process very well and is quite familiar with the Timeless Leadership Principles. The facilitator should also be a strong presenter who can bring the concepts and approaches alive and inspire teams to action.

Another option with this type of session is for intact teams to apply the process at their own tables (as described above) while identifying larger organization-wide issues to be addressed by the bigger group and/or the management team that everyone in the room reports to. Again, the facilitator's skill and experience is critical to making this approach successful. Following-through and "closing the loop" around what the management team did with the input of the teams from this session is crucial.

Personal Leadership Training
The process in the Practical Application Planner can be adapted to work with a large group consisting of individuals that come from different parts of the organization (or even other organizations). The success of this training approach depends heavily upon a strong presenter who can carry this material very effectively.

Who Should Facilitate the Sessions?

There are basically two choices for facilitation of these sessions. One is the team leader. The other choice is an experienced facilitator from outside the team.

Team Leader as Facilitator

Advantages:

This clearly shows the team leader's commitment to this process.
He or she strongly owns the process and is even more likely to follow-through, follow-up, and make the approaches discussed and plans generated part of the daily operations of the team and organization.

Disadvantages:

The team leader may feel that he or she can't participate as fully in the discussions because of the need to keep an eye on the process.
He or she may not be skilled at facilitation approaches and techniques that build consensus and fully involves everyone in discussing differing points of view from the team leader.
The team leader may not have enough time to prepare for sessions. He or she might be much better to invest time in follow-up activities.
The team leader may have an autocratic or overpowering style that leaves team members reluctant to express different points of view and challenge the status quo.

Experienced Facilitator

Advantages:

A trained and skilled facilitator is likely to be familiar with this type of team development process or have more time to learn it.
He or she is more likely to be skilled at facilitating group discussions through active listening, asking probing questions, and stimulating open discussions.
A neutral facilitator who is not a member of the team is more likely to be impartial and more concerned with surfacing, prioritizing, and resolving issues than championing their own cause.
The team leader can be a more active participant while having his or her position power counterbalanced by the objective assessment process and skilled facilitator.
Using an experienced facilitator reduces the chances that these sessions will turn into an operational or traditional team meeting full of firefighting and short-term decisions.
The facilitator can be more objective about key technical or operational issues.

Disadvantages:

Increases the chances that this is seen as an externally driven training program rather than a team owned and ongoing change/improvement/planning process.
The team leader's commitment may be less visible.
The facilitator may not be as knowledgeable about technical or operational discussions.

How Will We Schedule Our Session(s)?

Thoroughly going through each of the seven Timeless Leadership Principles can take from half a day to one full day depending upon just how much assessment discussion, brainstorming, debate, and action planning is done. Of course, each module can be condensed/shortened or even skipped over to meet a tighter timeframe and/or allow more time on those principles that the team feels are most critical to meeting their objectives.

Offsite Retreat Options: All at One Time

Three- or Four-Day Retreat – This provides up to seven half days with an extra day for travel and/or wrap up. This timeframe allows a healthy amount of discussion and planning time for each principle. Using the on-line assessment option before the offsite retreat helps to save time for deeper discussions, application exercises, and action planning.

Two-Day Retreat – An experienced facilitator makes a big difference in prioritizing and customizing a two-day session. With strong facilitation skills, he or she will also keep the session moving briskly along, using many of the points outlined in the "Meeting Process" shown on page 72. The participant pre-work and on-line assessment option dramatically improves prioritizing and customizing the two-day session and boosts its success.

One-Day Retreat – This session is an overview of the principles with one or two selected for somewhat deeper discussion and application – although not covered thoroughly. This option can be a useful introduction to the Timeless Leadership Principles. Ideally, it would be a starting point to ongoing work such as is outlined in the One Principle at a Time or Short Increments option below. Unless the team leader is an exceptionally skilled facilitator, using an experienced facilitator is critical to the success of the One-Day Retreat, along with the participant pre-work and the on-line assessment option.

One Principle at a Time

This approach can go a long way toward ensuring that the Timeless Leadership Principles are more likely to become a built-in way the management team leads its organization and not just a bolt-on program. This approach is also the most conducive to the team leader leading the sessions. But an experienced facilitator may be most effective, depending upon the team and leader choices around the points outlined above under Who Should Facilitate the Sessions?

In using the One Principle at a Time approach, ideally the team allocates a half-day of non-operational, uninterrupted time per principle. If each session is two to four weeks apart, the beginning of the next session should be devoted to progress reports on the actions flowing from the last session.

Using the on-line assessment option and pre-work means that each session can much more quickly zero in on the key issues identified by the group. That way, the session rapidly becomes customized and most relevant.

Short Increments

Each of the seven Timeless Leadership Principles in the Practical Application Planner has 2 – 5 subsections in it. Using the Short Increments approach, the team can devote an hour or two per subsection.

Like the One Principle at a Time method, the team leader can more easily lead the Short Increments approach. However, an experienced facilitator may still be the best option for the team and team leader.

Once again, the on-line assessment and pre-work can help tailor the session, save assessment time, deepen conversations, and get everyone better prepared ahead of time.

Getting Started: Tactical Steps in the Process

Terminology

Throughout the Practical Application Planner, the words "team" and "organization" are used. Before beginning, it's very important that all participants in this process agree on who you are referring to when using these terms.

Team – This is generally the intact group of managers who are working together to lead your part of the organization. It is usually 6 – 12 people led by one person (we refer generically to him or her as "team leader"). Groups larger than 10 or 12 managers are usually a mixture of more than one management level and not an intact or single management team – although you may use the word "team" to give everyone a feeling of inclusion in this bigger group.
Organization – This is what the management team participating in this process leads. It could be a single department, branch, division, region, plant, etc. within a much larger organization. If yours is the very top management team, you lead the whole organization with a team leader called CEO, Executive Director, President, and the like.

Who are you referring to when you use the word "team" or "organization?" Ensure all participants have the same definitions in mind before anyone completes an on-line assessment or the Practical Application Planner session(s) get underway.

Objectives in Using the Practical Application Planner Process

As the oft quoted Yogi Berra once quipped, "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there." A fundamental key to the success of this process is agreement among participants on what we hope to accomplish together using this Practical Application Planner.

Here are typical objectives:

Review or reassess our team/organizational training needs, developmental processes, and leadership effectiveness
Work together to strengthen our team's leadership
Clarify/redefine our leadership roles and responsibilities
Change our culture toward one that is...
Improve our organization's customer service levels or focus
Check our team and organization's progress against high performance best practices within each of the Timeless Leadership Principles
Bond our management teams much closer together with common leadership beliefs and approaches
Bolster our individual and collective emotional intelligence
Pinpoint leadership and organizational performance gaps and priorities to be addressed
Refocus and pull together our change/improvement programs and initiatives
Strengthen our management team dynamics and processes
Assess personal and team leadership strengths and improvement opportunities
Establish or realign team/organization action plans
Reframe and refocus negative changes and challenges
Recharge, re-energize, and inspire us so we can do the same for the people in our organization
Learn how we can build strong teams and foster individual commitment in our organization
Gain insights on coaching and developing people throughout our organization
Strengthen our team/organizational capabilities to carry out our strategies and plans

Either as pre-work before the session or before starting the Practical Application Planner, have participants go to page 1 and write down what they consider to be the top 2 – 3 objectives for this process. Compare and discuss responses. Establish a consensus on the 3 – 5 key objectives for this process. Post these on a flipchart and leave it hanging prominently during the session(s). As your team works through the process, periodically do a progress check on whether you're on track to meet your Practical Application Planner objectives.

Ground Rules

Effective teams operate with an explicit set of ground rules on how they will work together. It's vital that participants agree on the meeting process ground rules you'll use to guide behavior as you go through this process.

Turn to page 71 and review the 3Cs under "Deciding How to Decide." The Practical Application Planner process is designed to facilitate consensus as much as possible. However, there may be times (such as during action planning activities) when the team leader or someone else will need to make a consultative decision. Do we agree?
Turn to pages 72 and 73 and review "Meeting Behavior" points #14 – 27. Make up a "Ground Rules" flipchart summarizing the top 8 – 10 behaviors the team feels everyone needs to be especially aware of. Post it on a wall where everyone can see and refer to it during every session. Following point #15, decide how you'll hold each other accountable to these behaviors throughout the process.

Parking Lots

Action ideas and issues that need to be addressed can often come up in discussion or occur to participants at a time that's not appropriate to pursue just then. You need a "parking lot" flipchart to post these ideas for later. This could be done by writing these ideas/issues directly on the flipchart with a marker or by using large Post-It Notes (a 3M trademarked product).

Post-It Notes

The use of Post-It Notes throughout this process can be very effective. Each participant is given a large 3" x 5" Post-It Note pad and heavy black felt pen ("Sharpies" work well). During brainstorming, discussions, ideas generation, priority setting, action planning, etc., each person can capture their ideas/issues on their Post-It Note (with the black pen because it's easier to read and forces larger writing/printing) and hand them in to the facilitator or get up and put them on the relevant flipchart. At the conclusion of the discussion or session, the notes can then be clustered together for easy organization, prioritization, action assignment/follow-through, etc.

Covering the Key Concepts in The Leader's Digest

Ideally all participants have thoroughly read The Leader's Digest and made notes in it before this Practical Application Planner process begins. But it's very rare that every single participant has done that. Some will have done this, others may have skimmed the pages, and some may not have cracked the book open yet.

Options:

During the session, have each participant on their own, read the chapter for the principle you're about to discuss before you begin. You should allow about 15 – 20 minutes for per chapter.
Before the session, assign individuals or have volunteers present the key points of a chapter and/or section before beginning that part of the Practical Application Planner.
One Client required that each participant hand in a short worksheet summarizing their key insights on each chapter of The Leader's Digest and review it with the team leader before the session began.

The Practical Application Planner Process

In the full implementation of the Practical Application Planner (half to one day per principle) the planner is designed to be followed in the order shown for each principle. Every principle has 2 – 5 subsections. So steps #1 – 4 should be repeated 2 – 5 times before moving on to step #5.

Team Assessment Exercise
Analysis and Consensus on Current Situation
Application Exercises/Discussions
Implementation Brainstorming
Team Action Planning (Review/clustering/parking lot/Post-it Notes and other ideas generated in earlier steps.)

To build the reflective learning habit, it is recommended that at the end of each session (or end of each day of a multi-day retreat) each participant has a few minutes to give the team his or her reflections on a key personal learning/observation from this session and his or her personal action plan.

This approach needs to be modified if sessions are being shortened or prioritized and some principles condensed or skipped. This is where an experienced facilitator can be very helpful adapting the material to the time and needs or preferences of the team.

Follow-Through and Follow-Up

This is critical to whether the Practical Application Planner process will ultimately be worth the time invested by the team. One of the biggest reasons that 50 – 70 percent of organizational revitalization, turnarounds, culture change, implementing new processes or technologies, leadership development, restructuring, and the like fail, is weak follow-through and follow-up. Most managers are so busy asking, "what's new" that they seldom really look at what works. Team members need to hold each other accountable, learn what did or didn't work and why, and reset plans for the next stages.

Strong follow-through and follow-up is a reason the One Principle at Time or Short Increments approach can be very effective. If an offsite retreat approach is used, then the team's follow-through and follow-up will determine whether it was just a one time event with limited sticking power, or the start of a leadership and team transformation process.

Strong follow-through and follow-up processes have these elements:

3 – 5 overall key objectives/goals (we often use the term "strategic imperatives"). This is not 3 – 5 strategic imperatives per principle. It is 3 – 5 strategic imperatives for the whole process. The action plans from each principle need to fit within these broader strategic imperatives.
Each strategic imperative has a champion or executive owner within the team who is responsible for clarifying, detailing, pulling a team together, delegating, or whatever it takes to ensure the imperative will get the attention and management team support it needs.
Strong documentation of any data gathering, analysis, process mapping, decisions, etc., and a rigorous follow-through process for all the people involved in implementing the imperative. That usually cascades right through other management to frontline staff.

Cascading Workshops – Based on the management team's action plans flowing from the Practical Application Planner process, a key element of following-through and following-up is to repeat all or part of this process throughout the rest of the organization:

Each member of the management team originally participating in this process should begin cascading it by taking their own team through the Practical Application Planner process. If applicable, each member of that team would then do the same with their team members, down through the whole organization.
Frontline staff then go through the entire process or modified exercises that are especially relevant to the management team improvement plans that are unfolding and/or provide input back to management.

These selected exercises might include:

Vision/Values/Purpose (pages 11, 13, 15 and 16)
Disempowering Ourselves (page 20)
Busting Barriers (pages 21 – 25)
We/They Gaps (page 29)
Moose-on-the-Table (page 32)
Engaging Commitment (page 40)
Spirit Killers (page 47)
Hierarchy of Spirit and Meaning (pages 49 – 50)
The Fish Tank Factor (pages 56 – 57)
The Coach's Playbook (pages 58)
Removing Energy Drains (page 67)
Building a High Performance Team (page 69)
Recharging with Recognition, Celebration, and Appreciation (pages 74 – 75)
Information Versus Communication (page 76)
Assessing our Team (page 82)

Integration and Alignment – The Practical Application Planner process should bring together and focus what management teams are currently doing, not add more work.

Wherever possible, integrate with existing programs, projects, process improvements, values, strategies, and plans.
Bring in whatever current survey or focus group data the organization has available (e.g. customer or organizational surveys, 360 degree feedback, etc.).

CLEMMER Group Professionals Are Available to Support Your Implementation

Each year, Jim Clemmer conducts nearly one hundred highly customized retreats, workshops, training programs, keynote presentations, and the like around the material found in The Leader's Digest, the Practical Application Planner, and his other books and workshops.

The CLEMMER Group also has highly experienced consultants, trainers, and facilitators available to:

Customize The Leader's Digest: Practical Application Planner for your organization. This can be focused on customer service/focus, improving health and safety, defining and changing/reinforcing organizational culture, supervisory/management development, and other specific applications.
Develop a customized Facilitator's Guide.
Train trainers/facilitators to facilitate retreats/workshops.
Customize our on-line Leader's Digest surveys with additional questions, modification of existing questions to make more organization-specific, select specific questions for frontline staff or those reporting to the management team to complete, etc.
Provide consulting support for implementing action plans flowing from this process. This could include further diagnosis/assessment, designing an accountability and follow-up process, customized training programs, executive coaching, process mapping and management, and the like.