Examining Organizational Success or Dysfunction - McKinsey's 7-S Model

One of the best frameworks that I learned in business school for strategy was McKinsey's 7-S Model.


This model is used for an internal analysis of strategic characteristics of an organization to see what's going well and what isn't.  It can help with organizational alignment and assess the impact of change on the organization. 

the Model looks at what are considered hard, factual elements that are easy to identify in strategy statements, organizational charts, etc.:

Strategy- Actions a company plans in response to or in anticipation of changes in the external environment

Structure- Basis for specialization and coordination influenced mainly by strategy and organizational size and diversity

Systems- Formal and informal procedures that support the strategy and structure
Note:  Much of the dysfunction I see in organizations is a result of systemic barriers.


The soft elements of the model are hard to describe since they are evolving and changing constantly, they are:

Style and Culture - Organizational culture- the dominant values, beliefs and norms that develop over time and become relatively enduring features and Management style- what managers do rather than what they say, such as where they spend their time and what they reward.

Staff- The people and how they are managed - how management values are shaped and managers are developed, employee onboarding and development, assimilation

Skills- Distinctive Competencies, what the organization does best and ways of developing or shifting competencies

Shared Values and Subordinate Goals - Guiding principles, fundamental ideas around which a business is built

Evaluate your organization on each one of these elements to see where you stand.

For more detail on the model, please see:

http://www.tompeters.com/docs/7SHistory.pdf

http://www.tompeters.com/docs/Structure_Is_Not_Organization.pdf

Benchmark for Organizational Success-Putting People First

       

Practices for Organizational Success--  How well does your company do the following?


Employment Security- job security promotes innovation since people aren't using productive energy worrying about if they'll continue to be employed

Selective Hiring - Attract the largest applicant pool, identify critical knowledge, skills and abilities; screen applicants based on hard to learn skills

Teams and Decentralized Decision-Making -  Organize people and tasks around teams (but give your people--especially your introverts (see previous post)-- some solitude to innovate)

High Compensation Contingent on Performance - Pay employees above industry averages if possible and link pay to company success; use individual and team incentives.  Remember though that pay isn't the only motivator (provide autonomy, mastery and sense of purpose)

Extensive Training -- Provide extensive formal training, but also just in time, on the job, and mentoring and shadowing; note the open source on-line training possibilities and use widely.  Create an environment where people can be current experts in their field.

Reduce Status Differences - Reduce barriers between top management and lower level employees-- give your new hires access to senior leadership.  Reduce or eliminate senior parking spots ;-) or other differentiators -- do senior badges look different?  How about office space?

Sharing Information - Share performance, strategy, and operational information with all employees.  Provide them with opportunities to share their knowledge with you.


For more, see Pfeffer and Veiga, Putting People First for Organizational Success

http://www.psych.uncc.edu/alblanch/ODII/PfefferandVeiga1999.pdf

Is an Executive Coach for you?

Executive coaching is a process by which a coach and executive leader form a relationship to achieve specific goals related to personal or professional development or related to business objectives and performance.  The field of executive coaching has developed rapidly over the past decade considering how much pressure executive leaders are under to produce short-term results under the microscope of shareholders and analysts.  At the same time, they are expected to be inspirational, transformational leaders who possess a high level of interpersonal skills.

Executive coaching offers a number of benefits:

• unbiased feedback
• increased self-esteem
• improved interpersonal communcation
• more effective leadership
• better business results

Problems do exist for coaching though, such as an absence of standards for qualifying coaches and the ability to measure results. The burden is on the client to identify appropriately trained coaches that match their organizational needs.  The executive should also not over rely on the coach for assistance on business decisions.  Executive coaching is also not a subsitution for a psychologist -- when there are underlying psychological problems.

If you think you'd benefit from a coaching relationship:

Find the right coach -- outline criteria such as required degrees or credentials and interview multiple candidates for the right fit

Measure progress- companies should evaluate coaching at the individual, team and/or organizational level

Make sure you get coachee and management buy-in.  Educate the organization on coaching's value and align the executive's development with the organization's strategic goals. 

Create accountability for the behaviors learned through coaching.

Coaching can be especially helpful in periods of transition or preparation when an executive is taking on a new role.  It can expedite readiness for a high-potential leader to diversify or deal with derailers or maybe just get out of a rut.  For executive teams, coaching can build trust and accountability, deepen relationships and allow learning from each other.

Know the connectors in your workforce

Traditional hierarchies are being overtaken by networks of people.  Look at how work gets done in your organization and identify those people who naturally connect to others and use them to communicate and champion change.



See Malcolm Gladwell's explanation of Connectors in The Tipping Point:


http://www.gladwell.com/tippingpoint/tp_excerpt2.html

Time Management - Get that monkey off your back!

I learned a while back from a classic Harvard Business Review article that our time as a manager can be categorized in the following ways:

What you have little control over

• boss-imposed time-  responding to what your boss wants
• system-imposed time- responding to what your peers need

What you have control over:

• self-imposed time
• subordinate-imposed time

If you ever wonder why you as a manager hardly have a chance to have lunch or take a bathroom break in the course of the day, perhaps you need to assess whether your subordinates are leaving you with too many of their problems.  This is referred to as subordinate-imposed time.

The scenario is such that the subordinate approaches you with a problem that you don't know enough about to make an immediate decision so you take it on to work and plan to get back to them -- you have now subordinated yourself to them and taken the proverbial monkey onto your back.  Now it's your problem.  If this is how you operate, pretty soon you'll have a whole tribe of monkeys wreaking havoc on your time.

Don't let your subordinates leave their monkeys with you.  You can give advice about their issues, but they leave your office with them and a course of action.

You need to ensure that your subordinates take initiative -- they shouldn't wait until they're told or ask what they should do without providing recommendations.  They need to make recommendations and then act or act and then keep you posted.

With this time back, you can provide the oversight and guidance for them to move forward and find solutions.

For the full article that has benefitted many a manager:

https://www.cusys.edu/eld-catalog/docs/cop/WhosGotMonkeyHBR.pdf

The Power of Introverts- maximizing talent and creativity

Are most managers extroverts?  Introverts are often passed over for leadership.  We need to understand and value introversion and the role introverts play in creativity and innovation.  Solitude can be an important incubator for creativity.  One third to one half of the population is introverted.  Some of the best leaders are introverts.  Let's look at the workplace and understand the importance of nurturing our introverts and let's not scold them for going off away from the crowd.

Susan Cain, author of the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking recommends:

Stop the madness for constant groupwork-  we need freedom, privacy and autonomy in addition to working in teams

Go to the wilderness -- unplug and get inside our own heads every so often

See what's in your suitcase and why you put it there -- take it out and share occasionally



See Susan Cain's great talk on TED, and learn from her storytelling:

http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts.html

Offsetting Bad Habits

In a previous blog I talked about bad habits or derailers.  Sometimes strengths that are taken to an extreme can actually be weaknesses.

You might have looked at the list of derailers and even recognized traits of some of your company's most successful leaders.  So how is it that these leaders can be successful while still having shortcomings?

According to George Hallenbeck, Korn/Ferry International Consultant,  there are seven redeeming features that can make up for other negative characteristics.  These are:

• Listening
• Approachability
• Boss relationships
• Integrity and trust
• Humor
• Interpersonal savvy
• Understanding others

To read more, see the article "The Seven Saving Graces for Managers":
http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2008-02-14/the-seven-saving-graces-for-managersbusinessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice

Fake it 'til you become it- the confident leader

Many senior leaders report feeling not worthy of the position -- like they're an imposter and eventually it'll be found out that they are not competent and shouldn't have the job title.  I once had a senior exec tell me that her motto was "fake it 'til you make it!"  How many people fake their way to the top?   If you pretend to be powerful long enough, do you then start acting that way?  It's likely that the feeling of inadequacy is due to a lack of confidence.  In the research about male-female pay differentials, confidence--or lack of it on the part of women-- is a big factor in the outcome.  So how do we become more confident as leaders?  If we practice these behaviors we can change our own.

• Reduce Stress
• Be prepared-  learn as much about your work and related topics as you possibly can
• Kill negative thoughts/think positively
• Sit at the conference table (when you are a main player)
• Be a great listener
• Speak up with intelligence
• Treat others with respect
• Keep learning

Exhibit Gravitas (have a presence):

• Dress nicely
• Speak clearly
• Use proper grammar
• Stand or sit tall (take up more space, don't shrink)
• Be fit/Take care of yourself
• Smile, but be careful about when you're smiling and how often

See how power poses can boost your confidence:

Social psychologist Amy Cuddy says "our bodies can change our minds, our minds can change our behavior and our behavior can change the outcomes."

She also says "Little tweaks can lead to big changes"  See her awesome lecture at TED:

http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are.html

Sample Power Poses

What's Your EQ? Smart Skills for Leaders

I once had a boss whose IQ must have been off the charts-- he was brilliant technically-- yet he didn't have a single relationship that he hadn't shredded.  I felt like my job was to prevent others from having contact with him or to clean up afterwards.  It was in this job that I truly began to appreciate what is known as emotional intelligence (EI).

Although the idea of emotional intelligence goes back to Charles Darwin, I first remember hearing the term in 1995 when Daniel Goleman authored the internationally best-selling book, Emotional Intelligence.

Daniel Goleman's model focuses on EI as a wide range of competencies and skills that drive leadership performance. Goleman's model outlines five main EI constructs:

1. Self-awareness – the ability to know one's emotions, strengths, weaknesses, drives, values and goals and recognize their impact on others while using intuition to guide decisions.
2. Self-regulation – involves controlling or redirecting one's disruptive emotions and impulses and adapting to changing circumstances.
3. Social skill – managing relationships to move people in the desired direction
4. Empathy - considering other people's feelings especially when making decisions and
5. Motivation - being driven to achieve for the sake of achievement.

Goleman asserts that people are born with a general emotional intelligence that determines their potential for learning emotional competencies to manage anger, fear and grief, for example.   Although Goleman's model of EI has been criticized as "pop psychology," it's hard to deny these skills are important in relationships and as a leader. Many of the components appear in OPM's leadership competency model under Flexibility, Resilience, Integrity, Service Motivation, Cultural Awareness, Team Building, Conflict Management, Influencing/Negotiating, Political Savvy, Interpersonal Skills, and Accountability.

Goleman also developed the argument that non-cognitive skills can matter as much as I.Q. for workplace success in Working with Emotional Intelligence (1998, Bantam Books), and for leadership effectiveness in Primal Leadership (2001, Harvard Business School Press). Goleman's most recent best-seller is Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships (2006, Bantam Books).

Also see "What Makes A Leader" by Daniel Goleman, best of Harvard Business Review 1998.

Free On-line Leadership and Management Training

If you're looking for great courseware on line from some of the best schools, you can start with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Open Courseware.  There are a multitude of topics under business and management with reading lists and active links to interesting articles, example papers and much more!

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/find-by-topic/

Six Personal Leadership Qualities

Leadership Guru Warren Bennis' 6 personal leadership qualities:

Integrity
Dedication
Magnanimity
Humility
Openness
Creativity

How do these map to OPM's competencies?  Not exact, but close!

Integrity -- Integrity
Dedication -- Service Motivation
Magnanimity -- Accountability
Humility
Openness -- Flexibility
Creativity-- Creativity/Innovation/Entrepreneurship


http://changingminds.org/disciplines/leadership/articles/bennis_qualities.htm


Is humility an important characteristic of great leaders?