A Lead Where You Are Mindset: Get Engaged in Learning
Like organizational and individual performance, learning continues to evolve. Today, even more so than in the past, it is crucial to continue developing our individual skills and talents both inside and outside the workplace.
Related Fun Fact of the Week:
According to a 2009 study that was conducted in Paris, the participants’ brains actually worked at half capacity when they were asked to multitask. When multitasking, it typically takes the brain twice as long to complete an assignment or task, and your error rate goes up by about 50%.
As we close out our series on the Lead Where You Are mindset, we focus on creating a pathway to engaged success. Like organizational and individual performance, learning continues to evolve. Today, even more so than in the past, it is crucial to continue developing our individual skills and talents both inside and outside the workplace. In the past, organizations would spend thousands of dollars to send employees to multi-day training seminars with little to no follow up so retention was limited. As we move toward leading where we are, we want to change past ineffective processes and move toward sustainable engaged learning. The following three step learning process is a proven model for learning engagement and retention.
Step 1 - Immerse
This step is the foundation of effective learning and retention. Building our knowledge with content, concept awareness and a vision for what success looks like moving forward.
Step 2 - Engage
Engaging in your learning is taking what we learn in the immersion step and moving it to the next level, turning information into insights and action. Examples of this could be meeting with your manager to discuss key takeaways in order to create accountability, teaching what you learn to others, and scheduling time each month to meet with your mentor or manager about how you are using the information gained.
Step 3 - Reinforcement
This final step is about finding additional ways to expand on the knowledge gained and develop measures of progress for yourself. Find ways to gain feedback or create daily reminders about your new learnings that trigger related thinking and activities.
Set your learning investment apart and take your growth and impact to a whole new level. Get immersed, actively engage and continually reinforce.
Want to learn more about leading your own performance? Contact us or take a look at our Lead Where You Are online training package. Now with a free Lead Where You Are Trait Assessment!
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.
Relics of Bygone Eras - Change Management
Over the last 25-30 years change management has emerged and grown from concepts and studies about the impact of change, to thousands of books, articles and seminars created to help people and organizations manage change. But change is, well, changing, and people and organizations must evolve from managing change to leading change.
Related Fun Fact of the Week: The most costume change illusions in one minute is 24, and was achieved by Avery Chin and Sylvia Lim aka Avery & Sylvia (both Malaysia) in George Town, Penang, Malaysia, on 2 September 2017.
If that’s not being agile with change, then I don’t know what is!
Over the last 25-30 years change management has emerged and grown from concepts and studies about the impact of change, to thousands of books, articles and seminars created to help people and organizations manage change. But change is, well, changing, and people and organizations must evolve from managing change to leading change.
In fact, a study by McKinsey found that 70% of change programs fail to achieve their goals largely due to employee resistance and lack of leader support. The study also concluded that when people are truly invested in change it is 30% more likely to stick. So with all the focus on change management over the last quarter century, why are we not managing change more effectively?
Traditional change models view change as originating from the top of the organization with top leaders fully invested in the initiative, creating a burning platform to instill a sense of urgency, then mobilizing mid-management around that burning platform to drive the change through the organization. The goal? To ensure all employees grasp their role in implementing the change and are on board in hopes of minimizing the resistance to the change.
If 70% of changes initiatives fail, something needs to change! Change should not be managed, it should be led, and led by everyone, not just senior leaders or designated change agents. Possibilities for change can and should be identified and initiated at every level of the organization. Waiting for change to happen misses the opportunity to enable and engage the entire workforce to see possibilities for change everywhere and become nimble and agile in a dynamic performance environment. If every employee becomes a change agent the need to gain buy-in and the resistance to change dramatically decreases.
Many organizations are simply not set up for agile change, they are built for stability and try to limit and manage the impact of change. Remember, 70% of change fails because of trying to manage it. Unleash the change potential in your organization and enable every employee to lead change!
Want to know more on the future of organizations? Contact us or take a look at our Organization Performance Reimagined whitepaper.
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.
Relics of Bygone Eras - The 3-5-10 Year Business Plans
There was a day and age when business cycles were predictable. You could plan for a certain annualized growth, keep expenses in line, and while competition existed, you could plan for it and global disruption was never a factor. Now business cycles and windows of opportunity are often hours and weeks, not years.
Related Fun Fact of the Week: Did you know that approximately 250,000 people participated in the 1963 civil rights march in DC, where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous "I have a Dream" speech?
There was a day and age when business cycles were predictable. You could plan for a certain annualized growth, keep expenses in line, and while competition existed, you could plan for it and global disruption was never a factor. Now business cycles and windows of opportunity are often hours and weeks, not years.
Now don’t get us wrong, planning is important or chaos can ensue….but rigid financial, operational and sales plans that don’t allow for ever-changing dynamics in our business world today can be the death of an organization. The corporate landscape is littered with organizations unwilling or too slow to change direction and their long range business plans. Blockbuster, Sony Betamax, Blackberry, Compaq Computer, and the list goes on. All had very solid 3-5 year business plans…at least until the world changed around them.
Dr. Martin Luther King was one of the greatest leaders of our time. But did he deliver a “I Have a Plan” speech? No, he delivered a “I Have a Dream” speech. While plans were created along the way, people were motivated and mobilized by Dr. King’s dream and clear vision for something better in the future, not by a financial or logistics plan.
So, as you look to your organization or departments future, rather than spending massive amounts of very valuable resources in developing 30-40 page strategic business planning documents that get circulated to a few, create a compelling and mobilizing vision where people will gladly step up and plan with you on how to achieve that vision and will be committed and engaged to creating and sustaining a long range purpose, versus a long range plan.
Does your organization have a dream for the future that everyone can connect to and rally around? Or does it have 3-5-10 year business plan documents and PowerPoint’s that sit on desktops or in binders on shelves? Create the dream and the plans will follow suit.
Want to know more on the future of organizations? Contact us or take a look at our Organization Performance Reimagined whitepaper.
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.
Relics of Bygone Eras - The "Because I Told You So"
As a child, how many of us heard the response “Because I told you so!” when you asked why you had to do something? Nearly all of us have, at one time or another, heard those dreaded words growing up. That response has its origins from a bygone era when performance either at home or in the workplace was administered through command and control.
Related Fun Fact of the Week: In the Vietnam War, the majority of soldiers couldn’t make a move, shoot their gun, or do much of anything unless several rungs about them on the “command and control” ladder told them they could do so. Many statements from former veterans play out something like this: We knew where the enemy was, but we couldn’t pursue him. And when we fought him, we couldn’t kill him.”
In today’s business environment of rapid change, we can certainly see how this lack agility from a command and control environment would be a major hindrance within companies!
As a child, how many of us heard the response “Because I told you so!” when you asked why you had to do something? Nearly all of us have, at one time or another, heard those dreaded words growing up. That response has its origins from a bygone era when performance either at home or in the workplace was administered through command and control.
Certainly success can be achieved with a command and control performance model, but the actions and activities to achieve that success comes from complying with the demand rather than from a place of commitment and engagement to achieve a purpose.
Command and control was the prevalent style of management modeled and practiced after WWII, but has been on the decline since the 80’s. Still, some organizations and certain leaders manage in the past. The next generation leader doesn’t use command and control to manage their people. They inspire, enable, facilitate and develop their people and prevailing performance environments.
So now when someone asks you the “why” question, the answer is not, “Because I told you so!”. It is now an opportunity to connect with understanding, knowledge and a dialogue the engages, not demands.
Leadership is evolving and shifting, are you?
Want to know more on the shift in leadership? Contact us or take a look at our LeaderShift book or online course, complete with a guidebook that gives you a path for the evolving leader in today’s world.
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.
Relics of Bygone Eras - The "Rank and Yank"
Related Fun Fact of the Week: Real Vaudeville shows would “Drop the Cow” on bad or overly long acts with "the hook", a shepherd's crook extended from offstage to pull away the performer. Oftentimes by the neck. Though he didn't originate it, the hook is forever associated with Howard "Sandman" Sims, a tap dancer who would use the hook on bad acts at the Apollo Theatre.
Talk about getting yanked! Ouch!
The pace of change is rapid. In fact, everywhere you turn the landscape of organizational performance is littered with relics of bygone eras. Last week we talked about our first organizational relic from the past…”climbing the corporate ladder”. As we discussed, climbing the corporate ladder is now being replaced by leveraging agile, individual and team performance networks that match unique talent to unique organization opportunity.
Our next left over symbol of a past performance bygone era is the use of “forced” or “bell curve” performance ranking systems, commonly referred to by the employees as “rank and yank”. This rating practice was championed by Jack Welch, CEO of GE and gained popularity with management throughout the 80’s. (Trust us, It was never popular in the employee population).
The practice of using a bell curve or a forced distribution to rank employees invariably kills morale, pits employees against each other creating unnecessary and unhealthy competition, and wastes thousands of hours with managers and HR professionals sitting in “collaboration meetings” fighting for their people. Even though GE and many other high profile organizations have stop using this method, many organizations still subscribe to what, hopefully soon, will be a long forgotten, ineffective, organizational practice.
With the evolution going on in organizational performance and the every increasing need to attract, develop, and cultivate specialized talent and skills, it important to replace “rank and yank” with continuous performance pursuit conversations and a “lead where you are” performance environment. The onus of performance accountability shifts from a leader reviewing and force ranking performance, to both the leader and employee pursuing performance with the employee continually owning and proactively reviewing their ongoing performance activities and results each month.
Organizations that have replaced this performance management relic in favor of continuous performance pursuit have seen tremendous improvements in both employee engagement and performance results.
It is time to make “rank and yank” a historical footnote in our organizations and business schools.
Want to know more on leading where you are? Contact us or take a look at our Lead Where You Are online training package, complete with online courses, guidebooks and other resources.
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.
Relics of Bygone Eras - The Corporate Ladder
Related Fun Fact of the Week: The longest wooden ladder in the world measures 135 ft long. It was made by the Handwerks Museum, St. Leonhard, Austria and completed in April 2005. The ladder has 120 rungs.
What a ladder to climb!
For over 50 years, the term “climbing the corporate ladder” was often a definition of success. The idea of starting at the very bottom and working your way to President or CEO seemed to be the the ultimate working dream.
But, “climbing the corporate ladder” is no longer seen as a path to success, just a symbol of past, ineffective, highly political performance models that often would define the most “qualified” as having the most organizational tenure or time in a position. Or even who you know that might assist you in skipping a few rungs on that ladder.
Thankfully, organizations are rapidly evolving from archaic “corporate ladders” to agile “performance networks” that identify and leverage unique talents and experiences and matches that talent to unique current and future performance opportunities.
Positioning yourself for this evolution of performance requires knowing, cultivating and leveraging your unique talents. Developing the capability and capacity to lead where you are, no matter where you are. This means leading your personal performance, not waiting to have your performance managed or reviewed. Leading change, not waiting for change to happen or letting the status quo consume your performance environment. Being accountable, even when others aren’t. Creating and sustaining authentic relationships, moving past just the communicating and truly connecting with others. And working with purpose and conviction, coming into work each day with a plan and attitude to help others be the best they can be by being the best you can be.
By leading where you are and intentionally developing the unique leader and talents within yourself, you define and cultivate your own future and you don’t let symbols from the past define your path to success.
Want to know more on leading where you are? Contact us or take a look at our Lead Where You Are online training package, complete with online courses, guidebooks and other resources.
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.