Dare to Disagree- Power of A Good Fight

I once had a senior boss who arrived on the job and handed out the Harvard Business Review Article,  "How Management Teams Can Have a Good Fight" and then he proceeded to marginalize anyone who disagreed with him, even if it was in a one-on-one discussion.  Learning from Lencioni's The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, there was definitely an absence of trust.

Conflict is so important to an organization, yet it is viewed as a negative.  Differences create rich discussions and produce better outcomes.  Having conflict requires patience and energy but a good, clean debate or discussion leaves you with confidence in the outcomes and as a manager, you get the best out of your people.

How do we develop the skills:

Don't fear conflict, fear silence
Practice standing up to authority
Assume others have the same doubts
Voice concerns
Teach this early and often

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

Focus on WHY your organization does what it does and people will follow you wholeheartedly

What  you do, how do you do, and why does your organization exist?

Focus on the WHY and you will be able to inspire your workforce to do great things and your customers to purchase your products and/or services.

This is Simon Sinek's premise in his  TED talk , which is also a book

You want to do business with the people who believe what you believe.   They won't buy WHAT you do, they'll buy WHY you do it.

He links this to biology and the brain.  The limbic brain is responsible for feelings and decisionmaking and has no capacity for language.  Facts and figures don't drive behavior, people decide with their gut.  In order to do this they need to know WHY you do what you do.
Apple has been most successful with this model.

Hire people who believe in the WHY and they will work for you with all their heart.

Turning around a dysfunctional team

I reread Patrick Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team to refresh my knowledge for a challenge I have been facing at work.

Written in story format, the book tells the tale of a new boss coming into an organization that works in stovepipes.  Her goal is to get them to work as a team to ultimately succeed as a business.

Lencioni frames the dysfunction in the form of a pyramid:

First you need trust, then a dose of healthy conflict since people shouldn't be afraid to voice their opinions and concerns. This is followed by commitment to the team over individual loyalties, holding one another accountable, and ultimately focusing on achieving results for the organization.

 

In addition to addressing these parts of the pyramid, the boss also refers to exercises in teambuilding that take place such as the Myers Briggs Type Indicator .  You could also use other personality or value assessments such as the  DiSC or Four Lenses.

 

These tools help one another understand why we act the way we do and provide a framework for discussion. 

 

For an interesting perspective on personality tests and their limitations (are you a dog person or a cat person?), See Malcolm Gladwell's New Yorker article  "Personality Plus"

 

 

 

 

Top 10 Summer Reading List for Business Leaders 2013

Looking for a good read this summer?

From the Robert H. Smith School of Business

http://www.rhsmith.umd.edu/news/books/

Nice people finish last? Give honest feedback to nice people!

Do people describe you as a nice person?  Are you at the point in your career where you want to be?  Being nice may be holding you back, but perhaps not in the way you're thinking.  You don't have to claw your way to the top, but you need to be aware of how your "niceness" may be quietly hurting you.  Throughout my career,  I have supervised many people I would describe as being nice -- people who are great listeners, care about those with whom they work, and who may take on additional responsibilities and cover for co-workers for a variety of reasons.  These people might be so nice that you wouldn't even want to think of hurting their feelings.  How might you do that?  By giving them honest feedback on any not-so-stellar aspects of their performance.  Over the years, nice people may not benefit from the learning that comes with constructive critiques and get to a point in their careers where they can't go further without addressing the deficiencies.  Meanwhile, those whose feelings we're less sensitive to get more honest feedback and are able to address their weaaknesses.


Beware using the negative feedback sandwich approach with nice people -- the compliments may block out the criticism!







See "Tell Me What I Did Wrong?"

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.1086/661934?uid=3739704&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102272989381

Inspirational Graduation Speeches

Graduation time is almost upon us and two of my favorites are at the links below.

Amy Poehler at Harvard (Senior Class Day)

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7N_L_pu74k

Text:

http://harvardmagazine.com/2011/05/you-cant-do-it-alone

Steve Jobs at Stanford 2005

Video:
http://www.bing.com/videos/searchq=steve+jobs+stanford+commencement+speech&mid=6109E1A65267C4C6A1EF6109E1A65267C4C6A1EF&view=detail&FORM=VIRE2

Text:
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html


If you have others, please share!

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