 |
|
Jim Clemmer's Leader Letter
Practical Leadership: Inspiring Action, Achieving Results
Permission to Reprint: You may reprint any items from the Leader Letter in your own printed publication or e-newsletter as long as you include this paragraph:
|
"Reprinted with permission from the Leader Letter,
Jim Clemmer's free e-newsletter. For over 25 years Jim Clemmer's
practical leadership approaches have been inspiring action and
achieving results. His 2,000+ presentations and workshops/retreats,
five bestselling books, columns, and newsletters are helping hundreds
of thousands of managers worldwide because they are inspiring,
instructive, and refreshingly fun. And best of all, they work! His web
site is www.clemmer.net."
|
If you are reading a copy of this newsletter that was passed along to you, ensure you don't miss future issues by subscribing here: http://www.clemmer.net/subscribe.shtml.
|
|
I
once asked a manager "how many people work here?" He replied, "About
half." Our subsequent consulting assessment work within his
organization showed that he was wrong. He was too optimistic. They had
a major commitment crisis. People were disengaged and morale was
sinking to new lows.
This month's issue is
focused on this huge leadership problem. I have compiled excerpts, an
assessment, and practical application ideas from the Passion and Commitment chapter of The Leader's Digest and its Practical Application Planner.
Digestible Bites on Passion and Commitment
This exercise from The Leader's Digest: Practical Application Planner is designed for each individual member of a management team to complete and then use for discussion (click here to see the full Practical Application Planner Online Assessment Tool.
1.
Distribute 15 points across the following factors that you feel will
have the greatest impact on increasing passion and commitment in our
organization.
|
Number of
Points
|
|
|
| |
a)
|
More involvement in planning processes
|
| |
b)
|
Improved meeting effectiveness
|
| |
c)
|
Increased openness and information sharing
|
| |
d)
|
More recognition, appreciation and celebration
|
| |
e)
|
Higher training and development
|
| |
f)
|
Better coaching and developing
|
| |
g)
|
Greater job enrichment
|
| |
h)
|
Higher laughter index
|
| |
i)
|
Aligning work to individual strengths
|
| |
j)
|
Changing our expectations/beliefs about frontline staff
|
| |
k)
|
Less rules/bureaucracy and more trust
|
| |
l)
|
Enhanced collaboration and partnerships
|
| |
m)
|
Less position power and more persuasion power
|
| |
n)
|
Profit-sharing
|
| |
o)
|
Improved frequency and quality of communications
|
| |
p)
|
More listening to frontline concerns and issues
|
| |
q)
|
Seeking input and ideas for improvement
|
| |
r)
|
Better processes for frontline servers to pass along customer feedback
|
| |
s)
|
Increasing frontline autonomy and local decision-making
|
| |
t)
|
Improving the physical work environment
|
| |
u)
|
Enhancing work-life balance
|
| |
v)
|
Stronger emotional connection to our vision, values, and purpose
|
| |
w)
|
Decreasing conflict and increasing teamwork
|
| |
x)
|
Nurturing champions who have high passion for their ideas
|
| |
y)
|
Spending more time hiring the right people
|
| |
z)
|
Only promoting strong role model leaders
|
2. Add up the points each factor was given within our team to identify our team's top five or six.
3. Discuss why these factors were chosen and what needs to change/improve.
4.
How will we get input from others in our organization on which factors
would have the greatest impact on increasing everyone's passion and
commitment?
Practical Application Ideas to Increase Commitment
- Work
with your staff/frontline people to develop an annual
Listen-Feedback-Action process. This generally starts with a survey or
third party interviews or focus groups. The outside company then
prepares a summary report. This is taken back to everyone in the
organization for feedback, clarification, priority-setting, and action
planning. Once these sessions are completed, broader organizational
issues are identified and actions set for implementing those changes.
This is reported back to everyone.
- Engage
frontline service providers in a systematic process of identifying
changing customer expectations against your organization's performance.
Get their help in analyzing trends and planning for meeting those
shifting needs.
- Hold
regular breakfasts ("muffins with management"), lunches, and
celebration dinners with frontline teams. Take this time to ask for
feedback, concerns, and suggestions. A simple question such as: "What's
the dumbest thing management asks you to do?" can produce powerful
insights and engage people in resolving the issues raised.
- Keep
highly visible scoreboards, big thermometers (like a fundraising
campaign), bulletin boards, Intranet sites, voice-mail messages,
newsletters, and the like to update everyone on your progress toward
key goals or change and improvement targets. Make goals/targets and
progress as visible as possible.
- To
get partnering behavior, treat everyone like partners. Share financial
and other "confidential" information openly so everyone can see how his
or her efforts contribute.
- Use
focus groups (a cross-section of frontline staff) to test new
management directions before making grand announcements to everyone.
Even if you press on against the advice of the focus groups, you'll
have deeper insight on how to face the issues the new direction may
raise.
Thoughts That Make You Go Hmmmm...on Engaging Commitment
"Of
the over fifty pride-builders we have studied during the last two
years, all deliver superior performance results for their enterprise,
and all attribute their success to an ability to instill pride among
their people... People who are emotionally committed to something -- be
it a person, a group, an enterprise, a cause, or an aspiration --
behave in ways that defy logic and often produce results that are well
beyond expectations. They pursue impossible dreams, work ridiculous
hours, and resolve unsolvable problems."
- Jon R. Katzenbach, Why Pride Matters More Than Money: The Power of the World's Greatest Motivational Force
"It
is actually more important today for organizations to pay close
attention to the health and well-being of all their workers than it was
50 years ago. A knowledge-based workforce is qualitatively different
from a less-skilled one... The challenge, to repeat an old saying, is
'to make ordinary people do extraordinary things.'"
- Peter F. Drucker, "They're Not Employees, They're People," Harvard Business Review
"In
a study of workers like teachers, clerks, insurance reps, and police
officers, the key to how much effort they put into their work was how
emotionally attached they felt to their organization - how proud to
work there, how large their job figures in their sense of identity, how
much they feel 'part of the family'... High levels of commitment allow
employees to thrive under challenges and pressures that those who feel
no particular loyalty to the organization find only stressful and
onerous."
- Daniel Goleman, Working with Emotional Intelligence
"An
army's effectiveness depends on its size, training, experience and
morale... and morale is worth more than all the other factors combined."
- Napoleon
"The
majority of employees are not engaged at work. More than forty-two
independent Gallup studies indicate that approximately 75 percent of
employees in most companies are not engaged at work... Disengaged
employees cost companies hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
Employees who are disengaged from their current roles cost companies
fortunes in lost revenue, higher turnover, lost workdays, and lower
productivity."
- Curt Coffman and Gabriel Gonzalez-Molina, Follow This Path: How the World's Greatest Organizations Drive Growth by Unleashing Human Potential
"A leader will only command the level of loyalty he/she is willing to give to others."
- Winston Churchill
The Deadly Search for the Right Path to Process Management
After last month's focus on process management,
I received an e-mail from a reader who was recently promoted into a
process improvement coordinator role working with their management
team. He asked me for the right path to begin.
The
root of this kind of question is what has caused so much of the fad
surfing and rigid off-the-shelf programs that have messed up so many
organizations. The search for "THE right path" leaves management teams
wide open to gurus, consultants, and software vendors selling canned
solutions. They are main contributors to the 50 – 70% failure rate in
organization improvement efforts like process management.
Prescribing
without diagnosis is malpractice in medicine. So is it in the world of
consulting. There are core approaches to process management. But run
very fast from anyone looking to fit your process problem into their
process solution without a very thorough diagnosis that includes a
broad and strategic look at the organization. That vital work must be
focused upon and driven by the management team leading the department,
division, or corporation. "Delegating" (which more often means
abdicating) this leadership role to staff support people, consultants,
vendors, or other process specialists is a sure-fire route to being
part of the 1/2 to 2/3 failure rate.
Over the years, we have evolved an approach to "Transformation Pathways" (outlined at www.clemmer.net/oassess/tranpath.shtml)
to help management teams establish the top pathways they need to begin
with and then use to put together an implementation plan. In my
previous company (The Achieve Group), we followed a two-day executive
retreat with a five-day "service/quality academy" (today this would be
called a "boot camp" or "black belt training") for support people like
this new coordinator. Today, The CLEMMER Group, follows a two-day
retreat with a few weeks of consulting and co-operative work with
internal coordinators. One of our pathways (Improvement
Infrastructure/Process) outlines some of this approach at www.clemmer.net/oassess/tr_improvement.shtml
I
am sure I frustrated this reader by not giving a clear response to his
question. But asking "what's the best way to get there" demands:
- An accurate assessment of where you are now;
- Management team agreement on just where "there" is;
- True
management team commitment to moving the improvement effort beyond
"bolt on" to "built in" (go to January 2004 newsletter at www.clemmer.net/newsl/jan2004.html and scroll down to "Assessing Management Commitment"); and
- A strong implementation plan.
There
is no one pathway to successful process management. The management team
needs to assess, chart the way, and drive the implementation.
Top Improvement Points from July
Of the short quotes with links to full articles that were e-mailed out as complimentary Improvement Points last month, the most popular with subscribers were:
"The
old adage teaches that "it's hard to see the picture when you're inside
the frame." It's hard for many team members to get excited about the
work they are doing if they don't see how it fits together or if they
don't feel like what they're doing matters all that much. We've seen
many teams dramatically notch up their performance once a strong leader
has shown them just how what they do plays an important part in a much
bigger effort."
- from Leaders Transform Groups Into Teams
www.clemmer.net/excerpts/leaders_transform.shtml
"Navigators
choose to make things happen. Survivors watch things happen. Victims
complain bitterly that 'this crap is always happening to me.'"
- from Leaders Inspire Their Teams With Optimism
www.clemmer.net/excerpts/leaders_inspire.shtml
"Too
often, clients and customers have their expectations raised by shiny
and expensive facilities, only to be treated like intruders once they
step inside. Companies can make huge investments in technologies yet
have indifferent frontline staff who demonstrate about as much
enthusiasm for customers and their needs as a teenager for more rules
and supervision."
- from Team Spirit Built from the Top
www.clemmer.net/excerpts/team_spirit.shtml
Subscribe or view the archives by topic area here:
www.clemmer.net/improvement.shtml.
Communications and Leading Change
"I
am working on a presentation for Grad school on Communication and its
importance in Leading Change. I would really like to quote/source some
your work if possible. Have you done much study on this specific topic?"
Most
of my books have included communications as a key element in leadership
of change and improvement efforts. You can read some book excerpts and
articles on this at www.clemmer.net/excerpts/communication.shtml. I hope that helps.
All the best in your presentation!
Jim
The Emerging Science of Believing
A
reader read one of my articles on how Claude Bristol's work influenced
me as I was starting my career 30 years ago. Here's the e-mail he then
sent me and my response:
"I also read The Magic of Believing by Claude Bristol. I didn't know he had a second book, I'll have to look for that one too... I'm also looking for TNT: It Rocks the Earth.
Have you read that? Also, do you think this science would work for an
atheist? I have everything I need to "get started", except faith in a
god that doesn't exist (for me). But I do believe in science. What do
you think? Thanks..."
I actually started with Claude Bristol's second book. It is called, TNT: The Power Within You. In my third book, Pathways to Performance: A Guide to Transforming Yourself, Your Team, and Your Organization, I wrote about the major impact TNT had on my life. You can read the excerpt on this at www.clemmer.net/excerpts/how_visioning.shtml.
Quantum
physics is a rapidly growing scientific movement uncovering the nature
and power of the forces Claude Bristol wrote about so many decades ago.
Deepak Chopra is the most widely read modern author writing about these
forces and some of the research showing their powerful impact on our
physical and emotional well being. Another insight to this field is the
movie, "What the Bleep Do We Know." It is a fascinating blend of
documentary film with about a dozen highly credentialed scientists
discussing quantum physics and a story unfolding between interviews.
Learn about the movie and explore links from this work at www.whatthebleep.com.
Hope that's helpful!
Jim
Feedback and Follow-Up
I am always delighted to hear from readers of the Leader Letter with feedback, reflections, suggestions, or differing points of view. Nobody is ever identified in the Leader Letter without their permission.
I
am also happy to explore customized, in-house adaptations of any of my
material for your team or organization. Drop me an e-mail at [email protected].
Keep learning, laughing, loving, and leading -- living life just for the L of it!
Jim
Please
post or forward this newsletter to colleagues, clients, or associates
you think might be interested. If you received this newsletter from
someone else, and would like to subscribe, click here: www.clemmer.net/subscribe.shtml
The CLEMMER Group
10 Pioneer Drive, Suite 105, Kitchener, ON N2P 2A4
Phone: (519) 748-1044 ~ Fax: (519) 748-5813
E-mail: [email protected]
http://www.clemmer.net
Copyright © 2005 Jim Clemmer and The CLEMMER Group
|
|
|