Reimagining the Performance Model pt. 4
What Does Your Organization and Culture Enable?
Organizational culture and norms become key enablers to performance (both positive and negative).
Look no further than past and current headlines from any news source and see how culture drives performance. Wells Fargo, ENRON, AIG, sports teams and associations like Penn State, Baylor, FIFA and unfortunately thousands of other organizations like these can claim they have cultures of value and can even point to well-worded values and vision statements. But somewhere along the path to success each organization veered and took a different direction that enabled lies, deceit and ultimately failure in so many ways to occur. (More on this in upcoming blogs)
But no legal, well-intentioned organization starts with a culture like these. Most evolve slowly over time, letting certain actions and behaviors that don’t seem too bad in the beginning to become the norm, permeating the entire organization and ending up with people saying “How did this ever happen?”.
In our work with clients we see organizations every day with consistently low to mediocre organizational performance and asking for help to improve it. We then look at the collective past performance reviews of individuals at all levels of the organization we often find that over 90% of the reviews reflect outstanding to exceptional performance. So how can that be? As one client put it, “We don’t pull weeds around here we just replant them!”.
If you have an organization that is often defined by blame, justification and excuses, then look no further than a few well placed, influential individuals in the organization that often lead by fear and intimidation and go looking for blame instead of solutions. You know it only takes one or two individuals with the right influence behaving in the wrong way to poison an entire organization.
However, if an organization truly C.A.R.E’s about delivering the right results in the right way and focuses daily on doing so, the once unimaginable and impossible becomes reality. Organizations need to C.A.R.E more! Providing more Clarity, Alignment, Resources and Enablement are how successful cultures that do it the right way achieve long term, sustainable success.
Look to the U.S Space Agency, N.A.S.A, in the 1960’s. Given a clear vision and mission to reach the moon, with an entire organization and country aligned to achieving that success, and provided with the best and brightest people, resources and technology available to accomplish the unthinkable, John F. Kennedy enabled the impossible to become possible when Neil Armstrong took those first steps on the moon, July 21, 1969.
So we challenge you to look at your culture and the norms that you and the organization are cultivating. Does your organization have the courage to C.A.R.E enough to not just replant weeds but enable success by expecting and developing the leader in everyone, and shifting your leadership model from planning, directly, controlling and managing to inspiring, energizing, facilitating and developing? Culture by design, not default!
To enable employee-led, leader supported performance, an organization must C.A.R.E. Achieve the right results in the right way.
Start today!
Lead Where You Are #leadership #leadershipatalllevels #wisdomwednesday
Lead where you are.
If you think about the power of those four words combined, they can completely change a person and an organization.
It is imperative in today’s highly competitive world that everyone, no matter what level you are, or what title you have, or if you have people reporting to you or not, the ability to exhibit the actions and behaviors of role model leadership can change you, your team and entire organizational cultures for the positive. Leading up to the release of the Lead Where You Are online training program we will highlight areas and individuals that show the true power of change in Leading Where You Are.
To get started in that effort, we will discuss the setting of goals next week...I know everyone dreads that activity, but let me share a quick story of the power of focus. As a new leader at one the top training organizations in the world, I had inherited an individual who had been the top sales person in the organization for over 16 years. Same role, same geographic territory, and was extremely well respected and looked up to by all. While she was very comfortable and successful by all measures, she was not challenged. I saw tremendous leadership potential beyond just the sales expertise she exhibited.
We sat down for the first time in her career and set professional career goals beyond just the monthly sales targets. That single one hour act of setting goals to move her from a comfort zone to stretching her talents into more formal leadership roles led this individual to not only take over my position as VP of Sales when I left to start our company, she is now the President of the largest management training organization in the world today with tremendous industry influence and respect beyond all comprehension 20 years ago.
She will be the first to tell you it all started with a one hour investment to set goals.
So what does your future look like? Do you have goals to get you there? If not, begin dreaming and next week we can offer tips to get you there.
A Main Thing Focus #WisdomWednesday #MainThing #Leadership
Do you know what the “main thing” is? Equally important, do your people know what your main thing is? Crystal clear clarity is important to ensure alignment and focus on the main thing. This focus in turn allows your people to know what is important, not just what is urgent.
For example, ask any FedEx employee what their main thing is and this is what they will say, “People-Service-Profit, all we do aligns to and enhances those three things."
At Harley Davidson, every employee goes into work with a goal to “fulfill dreams of personal freedom”. So what they do has a greater sense of purpose to make that happen.
Those working at Facebook are focused on giving people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. Doesn’t matter the department, that is what they do.
Successful organizations have a keen awareness of their competitive advantages and ensure a nearly myopic focus on clarifying and connecting the main thing to everyone no matter where they reside in the organization.
So this week find out the following:
- What is your organization’s main thing and how clear is it?
- Ask your team at your next team meeting, “What is the main thing”? List their answers and discuss with the group what can we do to better clarify and align to our main thing?
- What is your managers main thing?
The key to this exercise is to fully understand if and where any disconnects might exist. Is there clarity and alignment in the message and do our goals, actions, and behaviors support the main thing. If not, you know what next week’s priority is…..identify and keep “the main thing the main thing”!
