Lead Where You Are - Setting the Foundation
Our new ebook, Lead Where You Are, is ready to launch January 2020. A book that has been in the making for over 6 years. Inspired by the evolution currently under way in organizational and individual performance, Lead Where You Are is both a catalyst and guidebook to assist individuals and teams navigate and thrive in this rapidly evolving, highly disruptive and often unforgiving performance environment.
Our new ebook, Lead Where You Are, is ready to launch January 2020. A book that has been in the making for over 6 years. Inspired by the evolution currently under way in organizational and individual performance, Lead Where You Are is both a catalyst and guidebook to assist individuals and teams navigate and thrive in this rapidly evolving, highly disruptive and often unforgiving performance environment.
We have seen this evolution taking place firsthand as we work with hundreds of organizations and thousands of people in nearly every industry imaginable. To grow and thrive in this new environment each of us must step up and step in to lead where we are, no matter where reside in the organization, be it at the very top or in the most entry level position.
Organizations are rapidly learning that the old performance management models and theories that have existed for over forty years never truly moved the mark on performance, at least not in the way we hoped it would. To make this point, let me ask you this question. Do you like your current performance review process?Performance reviews have become “check the box” activities, conducted to cover the bases in case of legal action, not really set up to meaningfully drive better performance and individual growth.
Lead Where You Are establishes the foundation to drive better organizational, team, and individual performance in this rapidly evolving and very demanding performance environment. Over the next couple months we will be sharing excerpts from the ebook to prepare you and your team for the launch.
If you want better engagement, personally and organizationally, Lead Where You Are is your resource to assist you in getting there. We are very excited to share this work with you in the coming weeks and years.
Come back next week for our first excerpt!
For free engagement and performance resources head over to our Resource Vault!
Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in enabling success by developing a dynamic and customized pathway to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.
Lessons From The Best: Leading Performance - Adobe
Adobe has continually led the way in reinventing traditional HR and HR practices. They took a look at how inefficient and ineffective the traditional performance review process was and changed it.
As we prepare for the release of our new eBook Lead Where You Are which will be coming out right after the first of the year, we will be exploring how organizations rated as a Best Place to Work create dynamic, highly engaged workforces delivering sustained results by leveraging many of the concepts we highlight in the book.
Week 1 (Oct. 10) - Leading with Purpose
Week 2 (Oct. 17) - Leading Change
Week 3 (Oct. 24) - Leading Accountability
Week 4 (Oct. 31) - Leading Performance
Leading Performance - Adobe
Over that last three weeks we have highlighted lessons we can learn from some the best organizations in the world. We culminate our Lessons from the Best series with Adobe Corporation - The future of performance management, now.
Adobe has continually led the way in reinventing traditional HR and HR practices. Guided by the vision and leadership of Donna Morris, Chief Human Resources Officer and Executive Vice President of Employee Experience, Adobe took a look at how inefficient and ineffective the traditional performance review process was and changed it.
Adobe managers were spending an average of 17 hours per employee completing annual performance reviews. Today, with their Check-in performance model, the company has saved an estimated 100,000+ on their performance process. With that type of transformation Adobe has positioned itself as a top leader in continuous performance feedback and development. As Donna once stated, “Ratings and rankings are a buzzkill for productivity and performance.” Adobe quickly realized that driving high performance and engagement requires an ongoing dialogue between managers and employees: if something’s not going to work out, people want to know what’s going on right away, not just once a year.
With Check-in, managers and employees have frequent conversations (check-ins) about expectations tied to corporate priorities, ongoing feedback and career and personal development. Employees are empowered to actively participate in their own success and drive the performance discussion.
By enabling every employee to own their success, performance shifts from being managed and reviewed to being developed and pursued. Adobe has shown us the future and serves as a proof source for performance success. It’s time to evolve traditional performance management. Stop wasting precious time and resources on ineffective and outdated performance review processes.
Take Adobe’s lead and transform your organizations performance.
Need help? We can show you the way.
For free engagement and performance resources head over to our Resource Vault!
Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in enabling success by developing a dynamic and customized pathway to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.
Lessons From The Best: Leading Accountability - FedEx
We can learn a lot from FedEx. Their Purple Promise of making every FedEx experience outstanding is shared by over 400,000 employees worldwide, each accountable to each other and their customers.
Many organizations talk about accountability, FedEx is an organization that exemplifies accountability.
As we prepare for the release of our new eBook Lead Where You Are which will be coming out right after the first of the year, we will be exploring how organizations rated as a Best Place to Work create dynamic, highly engaged workforces delivering sustained results by leveraging many of the concepts we highlight in the book.
Week 1 (Oct. 10) - Leading with Purpose
Week 2 (Oct. 17) - Leading Change
Week 3 (Oct. 24) - Leading Accountability
Week 4 (Oct. 30) - Leading Performance
Leading Accountability - FedEx
FedEx, founded in 1971 as Federal Express and based in Memphis, TN, has been named a Fortune Magazine Best Companies to Work For thirteen times with its most recent award in 2018.
We can learn a lot from this outstanding organization, one that I have personal experience with having worked there for over 10 years. Their Purple Promise of making every FedEx experience outstanding is shared by over 400,000 employees worldwide, each accountable to each other and their customers.
Many organizations talk about accountability, FedEx is an organization that exemplifies accountability. One afternoon, a PM courier headed to Denton, TX from the Irving FedEx facility, an hour drive one-way to complete their afternoon pickup route. When he reached his first drop box for pickup, he realized he left the drop box key back at the Irving station. Depending on the location, each drop box could contain between 40-50 packages. That would amount to a massive number of delivery failures the next day. Faced with a difficult situation, this courier showed a “no matter what” level of accountability. No matter what, he was going to ensure those packages made it to the aircraft that night and their destination the next day. Despite a number of not so great options such as leaving the packages for the next day and chalking it up to human error, having a team member meet him halfway with the key, which risks other routes being negatively impacted, or driving back and forth to the station himself, which was not an option due to the cut time required to make the aircraft, this FedEx courier, accepting responsibility to do something to keep that Purple Promise, found the nearest hardware store and purchased a very large wrench. With his large wrench he disconnected the drop box from its foundation, loaded it into his van and drove the drop box and the packages it contained back to Irving. The packages were unloaded from the drop box, sorted and loaded onto the plane that night and out for delivery the next morning in their destination cities.
That is a prime example of someone accepting responsibility and showing accountability no matter what the circumstance might be. That level of accountability shared by each FedEx employee is a major contributing factor in earning FedEx the designation of Best Company to Work For thirteen year and counting. So how accountable is your organization and the people that work in it? Is It conditional and selective accountability or does the culture create and reinforce a performance environment of no matter what accountability?
How do you build that type of a no matter what performance environment?
Focus on defining accountability throughout your organization. Reward and recognize those that embody the definition of accountability and intervene where accountability might be lacking and where blame, justifying and making excuses rule the interactions. Step up and lead with your personal commitment to being accountable no matter what.
Learn from the best, contribute to a culture of ‘no matter what’ accountability. It works for FedEx.
For free engagement and performance resources head over to our Resource Vault!
Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in enabling success by developing a dynamic and customized pathway to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.
Lessons From The Best: Leading Change - W.L. Gore
Assembling a self-motivated and self-directed team gives ownership to people who want to contribute. A project won’t go anywhere if people aren’t motivated to take it on. The story of W.L. Gore and Associates.
As we prepare for the release of our new eBook Lead Where You Are which will be coming out right after the first of the year, we will be exploring how organizations rated as a Best Place to Work create dynamic, highly engaged workforces delivering sustained results by leveraging many of the concepts we highlight in the book.
Week 1 (Oct. 10) - Leading with Purpose
Week 2 (Oct. 17) - Leading Change
Week 3 (Oct. 24) - Leading Accountability
Week 4 (Oct. 30) - Leading Performance
Leading Change - W.L. Gore
W.L. Gore was founded in 1958 by Wilbert (“Bill”) Gore, a former chemical engineer at Dupont. Bill Gore challenged all traditional management practices and created a company that would enable human imagination and employee freedom and engagement. W.L. Gore has been on the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list consecutively over the last 20 years.
In 1969, Bob Gore discovered that rapidly stretching PTFE (Teflon) did not break the material but made it strong, highly porous and extremely versatile. This new polymer was the first step towards Gore-Tex, the waterproof and breathable fabric that made the company famous. W.L. Gore now holds more than 2000 patents worldwide ranging from fabrics, electronics, medical devices, consumer products, pharmaceutical and polymer processing.
Obviously, Gore is very successful both commercially and culturally. One lesson we all can learn from Gore is their passion and commitment to leading with and cultivating innovation and change in everyone.
Anyone Can Be an Innovator
All associates throughout Gore are encouraged to spent 10% of their work pursuing change and innovation, it is called “dabble” time. Associates compete for discretionary time with other talented individuals who are passionate about working on something new and exciting and want to be part of a promising project. Assembling a self-motivated / self-directed team gives ownership to people who want to contribute. A project won’t go anywhere if people aren’t motivated to take it on. At any given time, Gore has hundreds of projects at various stages of development. All are focused projects that are employee-led, purpose driven and rooted in Gore’s knowledge and competitive leadership in ePTFE. Ideas die if associates don’t sign up to be part of the project. Product champions give the gift of opportunity, and in return, other associates donate their talent, experience and commitment. You can see why the organization is so successful and continually on the leading edge of change and innovation.
Of course, not all of our organizations will commit to this level of innovation and change. And if this is indeed the case in your organization, a lesson learned that we all can take away is for us to be a leader of change no matter what the environment is around us. All we have to do is step up and lead change, seeing possibilities for change where others around you see obstacles and barriers. Think differently and disruptively, this type of thinking at Gore has led to commercial product successes like Glide dental floss and developing the leading selling brand of acoustic guitar strings (Elixir) in the United States. Once we think differently, we create options and recommendations and then act with urgency, don’t let the status quo rule the day any longer. And lastly, don’t stop, be the catalyst for leading change in your organization. You never know, you might be the start of something really special. Look at what that type of thinking has done for W.L. Gore, a Fortune Best 100 Company to Work For, now for over two decades running.
For free engagement and performance resources head over to our Resource Vault!
Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in enabling success by developing a dynamic and customized pathway to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.
Lessons From The Best: What's Your Purpose?
Organizations that are deemed ‘Best Place to Work’, ‘Most Admired’, ‘Best Companies to Work For’, and so on, invariably have a very defined and compelling purpose beyond just making a profit or completing tasks. Purpose provides a pathway to success and ensures alignment between the organization and the actions and behaviors of every employee.
As we prepare for the release of our new eBook Lead Where You Are which will be coming out right after the first of the year, we will be exploring how organizations rated as a Best Place to Work create dynamic, highly engaged workforces delivering sustained results by leveraging many of the concepts we highlight in the book.
Week 1 (Oct. 10) - Leading with Purpose
Week 2 (Oct. 17) - Leading Change
Week 3 (Oct. 24) - Leading Accountability
Week 4 (Oct. 30) - Leading Performance
What’s your purpose?
Organizations that are deemed ‘Best Place to Work’, ‘Most Admired’, ‘Best Companies to Work For’, and so on, invariably have a very defined and compelling purpose beyond just making a profit or completing tasks. Purpose provides a pathway to success and ensures alignment between the organization and the actions and behaviors of every employee. It cultivates commitment, not compliance. The purpose drives everything from recruiting, selection, advancement and “dehiring”, if necessary. Let’s see how some of the best are purpose-driven and purpose-led.
Netflix
Our core philosophy is people over process. More specifically, we have great people working together as a dream team. With this approach, we are a more flexible, fun, stimulating, creative, collaborative and successful organization.
What is special about Netflix, though, is how they:
1. Encourage independent decision-making by employees
2. Share information openly, broadly, and deliberately
3. Are extraordinarily candid with each other
4. Keep only our highly effective people
5. Avoid rules
HubSpot
“There’s this notion that to grow a business, you have to be ruthless. But we know there’s a better way to grow. One where what’s good for the bottom line is also good for customers. We believe businesses can grow with a conscience and succeed with a soul. Success is making those who believed in you look brilliant.”
Just a few statements from HubSpot’s Culture Code:
Culture is to recruiting as product is to marketing.
Solve For The Customer -- not just their happiness, but also their success.
Power is now gained by sharing knowledge, not hoarding it.
HubSpot has a no-door policy, where everyone has access to anyone in the company.
You shouldn’t penalize the many for the mistakes of the few.
Results should matter more than when or where they are produced.
Influence should be independent of hierarchy.
Great people want direction on where they’re going -- not directions on how to get there.
“Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.”
We’d rather be failing frequently than never trying.
As you can see from these two examples, purpose guides and everyone contributes. It is about unleashing talent and potential, taking personal and team accountability and seeing the possibly for change everywhere. Culture is a powerful competitive advantage, if cultivated and invested in.
Join us next week as we will explore some lessons from the best in cultivating an environment of change.
For free engagement and performance resources head over to our Resource Vault!
Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in enabling success by developing a dynamic and customized pathway to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.
Teaming Up: Where is the Support?
Listen to the Destination: Success Podcast.
An engagement team’s level of success and the ultimate impact of that success is often determined by the level of organizational support it receives throughout the team engagement.
Does the overall organization embrace and enable employee engagement by sponsoring and supporting individual and team engagement training? Are senior organizational leaders actively participating by allocating time for engagement activities, and by showing interest in and implementing many of the various engagement team and individual recommendations? Lastly, do our front-line leaders encourage greater engagement by inspiring and enabling people and teams, not directing or controlling their activities?
A team can have a clearly defined and communicated purpose, exhibit all the positive team behaviors during the teaming process and all members be completely committed, but if they do not have organizational support to listen and act then it marginalizes, if not destroys, all future employee engagement activities.
Our experience enabling employee engagement points to a simple, but effective success model for team and individual engagement. Purpose, behavior, commitment and support. If you and or your organization would like to know more about enhancing employee engagement, please contact us here.
For more information on how to more actively engage in your organization join our DESTINATION: SUCCESS page, or contact us!
Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in enabling success by developing a dynamic and customized pathway to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.