6 essential steps to help you reach your next level

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A lot of my one-on-one coaching work is focused on helping leaders and professionals take themselves, their environment, performance, and results to the next level.

Whether you are a beginner or veteran at your game, there are clear, powerful and practical principles that if you understand and follow will help you reach your next desired level:

  1. Get clear on your desired end state. Project yourself into your future – at least a year or two from now – and envision that you have achieved your desired end state. Then, describe what your success looks like. Write it down as clear and vivid as you can.
  1. Visualize how you are behaving and performing in your new future state. When you visualize your future, take notice of how you are behaving and acting in that reality. Pay special attention to areas where you are doing things differently from today. Record a few practices and behaviors that you can start applying today in order to start driving and drawing your desired state to you.
  1. Start behaving consistently with your future state now. Start applying the practices and behaviors that you outlined in the previous step in your day-to-day routines. Every time you find yourself regressing to old habits, stop, acknowledge it and correct yourself back to behaving consistently with your list of future reality practices.
  1. Get people around you to support you. Just like a world class athlete wouldn’t dream of reaching the Olympics without a support structure, don’t try to go the next level alone. Don’t keep your commitment and project a secret. On the contrary, share it with the people you trust and ask them to be your committed ‘partners in crime’; to look out for you and support you to stay the course, especially when the going gets tough and old habits kick in. The fact that you include them in the first place, will cement your commitment and put you in a more determined mindset. Especially, when they actually start holding you to account, even if it may be uncomfortable, it will make a significant difference.
  1. Start recording accomplishments and wins that are consistent with your future state. At the end of each day or week reflect on what you have done and list all the specific areas where you have had wins and made progress consistent with your desired practices and future. Don’t be concerned with the size of the wins/progress or if others would recognize or appreciate them too. Any win that has meaning to you, no matter how small or big, counts and should be included in your list. In fact, the more accomplishments and wins you record (or “collect”) the better.
  1. Own and represent your progress. Always speak about your journey to the next level in a powerful, positive and empowering manner. People tend not to take responsibility for their growth and greatness. They tend to always keep one foot in the back door, just in case they’ll fail. They say things like: “Things are going well… BUT… I am not there yet!” They emphasize the “I am not there yet” more than “Things are going great.” Don’t do that! In fact, do the opposite. Acknowledge and share your progress with the people you trust. Keep reminding yourself that progress promotes and invites more progress and the opposite is also true.

These last two steps are often most underestimated, ignored and/or avoided. In order to drive and materialize your new future state most effectively, you need to have the right mindset and behavior. Listing and acknowledging accomplishments and wins will empower you to overcome any skepticism and/or doubts and replace them with genuine enthusiasm and confidence about what you are creating. The more you believe in the viability of your aspiration the more you are likely to stay the course to its fulfillment.

While these steps may not come naturally at first, they will over time.  Make them your new normal, for they are essential when it comes to taking your game to the next level.

How to drive strong ownership, commitment, accountability and passion in your team

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As a leader – here are five practical things you can do to deepen the level of ownership, commitment, accountability and passion in your team:

  1. Make sure people are engaged in setting the goals early on. This practice would most likely be applied differently depending on the size of your team, and how dispersed it is. In a small team, it is easy to engage people in the strategy or goal-setting exercise. In a large organization, this principle will have to be implemented in steps. Step one – would be to get your senior team engaged and aligned. Step two – bring the middle managers on board. And step three – update and include the rest of the team. The application may be different, but the principle of engaging everyone in the goals early on is always relevant. This is because the more people feel listened to and engaged in setting the goals the more they will feel a sense of personal ownership and accountability toward them.
  1. Promote a culture of open, honest, authentic and courageous communication. The more your people feel they can speak their mind, especially addressing what is not working the more they will naturally gravitate toward feeling and behaving like loyal owners of the business. Regardless of what senior leaders often think, people will only speak up if they believe their leaders genuinely want them to. If you want to deepen ownership and accountability throughout your organization, you have to start with yourself and your senior leaders. You and your leaders need to show that you are open to honest dialogue, including feedback and criticism about yourselves.
  1. Instil the language of accountability as the norm. The language of accountability sounds and feels very different than the typical language of compliance that permeates throughout most organizations. In an environment of compliance, people tend to tolerate and indulge in excuses, justifications, blame and reasons why things can’t be done, why they didn’t get done or why they aren’t done with excellence. In contrast, the language of accountability is all about clarity and action. People make clear requests and promises. And these get responded to with clear and authentic acceptances, declines or counter-offers. People always know where things stand and they value integrity and honesty over appearances and political gain.
  1. Deal with failures, mistakes and shortfalls in an empowering way. In most organizations when people underperform or fail, senior leadership tends to look for someone or something to blame. The problem is that when people feel there is a witch-hunt going on to find a scape-goat they react by hiding, protecting their behinds, even lying. As a result, teams often don’t get to the source and root-cause of the failure in the first place, so they find themselves repeating the same failures in one way or another over and over again. If you want to create an environment of authentic accountability deal with all failures, mistakes and shortfalls only in an empowering way – don’t entertain the ‘blame game’. In fact, don’t be concerned with ‘whose fault it is’. Instead, be obsessed with learning from past failures and correcting the issues. Ask your team questions like: “What was missing?”, “What was in the way?” and “What can we change, correct and improve?”. You’ll see that your people will be excited to contribute to the investigation and as a result, you’ll come up with new ideas and solutions that will take you to new heights. In addition, you will strengthen your people’s sense of ownership and accountability to your vision.
  1. Highlight, recognize and celebrate displays of accountability. Most leaders don’t do a great job of acknowledging and recognizing their team members for a job well done on any day. I am not referring to the formal corporate human resources recognition programs that occur at best once a quarter or a couple of times a year. I am talking about creating an environment of day-to-day verbal recognition. People respond extremely well to genuine recognition. It makes them feel noticed, appreciated and valued and that causes them to want to do and contribute even more. If you want to create a powerful culture of ownership, commitment, accountability and passion, go out of your way to recognize small, medium or large displays of ownership and accountability. Make it a daily routine and practice. It’s so simple!

While I have directed this list to “leaders” and “managers”, these topics are so universal and basic that anyone in the team, no matter what level or position, could suggest them, promote them and bring about positive change with them…. especially if they are eager to make a difference and are willing to be courageous.

Don’t confuse communicating with generating commitment

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Town halls, road shows, all-hands meetings, and webinars are all popular vehicles for spreading the word and gaining buy-in once the strategic plan has been crafted. Most senior executives will tout these communication efforts as a critical step in helping the organization understand what the strategy means, and what role each person plays in bringing it to fruition.

But while these types of events can generate a significant amount of energy and excitement, they also contain pitfalls that can lead to cynicism rather than commitment.

One of these pitfalls is the mistaken belief that staff are empty vessels, just waiting for the word from above about where the company is headed and what they should be doing to help it get there.

Far from being empty, people are already full. Full with frustrations and disappointments about what executives have said they were going to do in the past and what they actually did. Full from promises made and not kept, and full from accepting requests to get involved in a company strategy and then being ignored when times got tough.

Employees who have been around have little time— or tolerance — for fanfare and hype. What employees want to know is that their bosses understand, and are committed to addressing, the challenges they face in putting a strategy in place.

Take three real examples:

  • In one of the organizations I supported, employees complained that a certain supervisor was a tyrant. However, management didn’t listen. Nothing was done and no one held that person accountable for not demonstrating the values that the senior team were promoting.
  • In another organization, employees expressed frustration that the systems that they had to work with were broken and inadequate, but management seem to ignore the impact that this had on the team, and they didn’t manage the situation or make the proper investment to set things right.
  • I have seen many instances in which employees were caught in the crossfire of feuding bosses, and yet the senior leaders of the company left them to their warring factions instead of intervening and letting everyone know that political gamesmanship won’t be tolerated.

Only by listening to what the employees are saying, with both their words and behaviors, will leaders become aware of and able to address the issues that are preventing them from embracing the strategic objectives management is asking them to pursue. When this type of listening happens, and action is taken, commitment to the strategic plan follows suit.

Like strategy – town halls, road shows, all-hands meetings, and webinars will only be as effective as the environment and atmosphere inside of which they are conducted. If senior management has a reputation for being credible, competent, courageous – specifically open to hearing the truth and dealing with the tough things heads-on and caring, people will wholeheartedly get on board. But if not, then no amount of fanfare and hype will suffice.

 

Are you making a difference in meetings and conversations?

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Two of the biggest complaints I often hear in organizations are:

  • “Our meetings are not productive”
  • “We have too many meetings”

The irony is that in many – perhaps in most – cases the biggest complainers are also the ones who are the biggest creators and perpetrators of this problem.

I was facilitating a strategy creation meeting for a global technology company with 30 of the top leaders and managers of a service department that was going through significant change.

People had traveled from all corners of the world to attend this four-day meeting. Needless to say, this was a critical meeting at a critical juncture for the department as they defined their long-term vision and strategy, as well as their short-term priorities and initiatives.

As with most strategy creation sessions, the debate was dynamic and lively. We moved from breakout discussions to collective debates, illustrating ideas and positions on white boards, and overall people felt passionate about the topics.

There were, however, around 5-6 leaders/managers who didn’t engage very much. They sat at their tables, computers open, heads down attending to email. From time-to-time, they lifted their heads to listen to the debate only to return to their busy work soon after.

When asked numerous times to close laptops and put away their mobile phones their response was either denial, stating that they were “fully engaged in the debate” or they would close their screens for a few minutes only to open them and continue their delinquent activities soon after.

I facilitate and attend a lot of meetings and unfortunately, I see this behavior pervasively.

What a waste of time and money! To have traveled all that way and then instead of completely immersing themselves in the conversation, making a difference and collaborating with colleagues to shape the future and destiny of the organization, to spend most of the time doing the same mundane things that they could have stayed home to do. What a rip-off and missed opportunity for them, their teammates and the company!

And, even if you didn’t travel at all; even if you just walked a few paces from another office, it is still unacceptable to sit in such an important meeting, that requires everyone’s undivided attention and not contribute in the way you can.

Let’s be honest – you can’t make a difference if you are not fully engaged in the conversation. Especially in a strategy creation type of a meeting.

So, to all those who claim that they can fully engage in, and contribute to meetings while doing email, or scheduling other parallel calls and meetings and then going in-and-out of the meeting to attend to these, I say

“Stop kidding yourselves!”

It’s not that everyone in the meeting has to talk. In fact, in the meeting described above, like in many meetings, probably 50-60% of the participants actually talked. However, at least 80% of the people were fully present and engaged. They were listening actively and attentively, nodding their heads, raising their hands when we were asking for alignment and moving around the room with the debate, to and from the breakout sessions and whiteboards without missing a beat. It was clear to everyone that their attendance and presence at the meeting, no matter how quiet, was powerful and made a difference.

I am confident that these people will leave the meeting clear about the outcomes and how the team derived them, and fully aligned and on board to own and drive the next steps. I am not so sure about those who were not all there.

The punch line for me is: Multitasking is a myth! If you want your meetings to be productive make sure that everyone (and I mean everyone) in the meeting is off their computers and phones and fully engaged in the conversation the entire time.

And, if you make sure that all your meetings are productive, I promise you that people won’t feel like there are too many meetings. In fact, they will start looking forward to productive meetings that move things forward and make a difference!

Stop trying to predict the future!

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Every year, executives around the world go through the customary tradition known as ‘strategic planning’. They emerge from days or weeks of meetings with a sacred document that — if adhered to — will increase their sales, make their services shine, engage their staff and secure their future. Well, that’s the story they tell us in business school anyway.

But unfortunately – as Professor Robert Kaplan of the Harvard Business School and his associate, David Norton of the Balanced Scorecard Collaborative tell us – as much as 90 percent of all corporate strategies fall short of their stated objectives.

From my many years of global experience, helping executive teams generate a clear and compelling direction for their organizations, I have observed several key misunderstandings and myths that lead to wishful, wasteful, or less-than-worthwhile strategic planning efforts and outcomes.

One of the biggest myths is that in order to create an effective and relevant strategy you have to be able to accurately predict the future in terms of market, technology and/or consumer trends. Many executives seem to believe this.

But, nothing could be further from the truth. In today’s rapidly changing technological, consumption, and economic environments, no one has a crystal ball, and no one knows what the future will bring.

In the last few years, we have probably seen more examples than ever before of the predictable not materializing, and the unpredictable becoming reality.

In today’s world, it’s often the new, unknown, small players that burst into the market unexpectedly and overnight they dictate new consumption and business trends, and how we live our lives. Take as an example the likes of Uber, Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Paypal and many other ‘use-to-be startups’.

So, any attempts to predict the future could easily be misleading and lead to misjudgment and failure.

Unfortunately, many executives still believe that there is a “right” strategy for their organization and their job is to identify and capture it. They believe that if you get the content of your strategy right, the success of that strategy is a foregone conclusion. They assume that the substance of the strategy must be composed of realistic objectives based on the most accurate and valid data and information. In many organizations, this belief leads to “analysis paralysis”.

Those who try and get the future right typically do so by analyzing the past. They create their strategic plans by looking at their rearview mirror. They determine their future goals by benchmarking and analyzing their own, as well as others’, historical performance and trends. That often leads to merely repeating past cycles and trends.

In addition, what goes unrecognized and unaddressed is that no strategy can ever be right or reasonable enough to account for all the events that might emerge on the road to its fulfillment. Therefore, perfect content, as a path to success, is an illusion and leads to increased investment of resources in the pursuit of the one true strategy that will win the day.

In reality, any strategy is only as good as people’s ownership and commitment to its fulfillment.

Even the most accurate and well-crafted plan will fail if people don’t own it and take accountability for delivering it. Therefore, you are better off having 100% ownership for a strategy that is 80% accurate, then have less than 80% ownership for a strategy that is 100% accurate.

Of course, you need a healthy understanding and respect for past and present trends. I  believe there is plenty of experience, expertise and smarts in most organizations. However, as Alan Kay, ex-Apple Fellow, said,

“The only way to predict the future is to create it“.

The most powerful strategies are informed by the past, but influenced and driven by future thinking. This means a team envisions the future, takes a stand, and commits to a direction and destination as a responsible, plausible, and a calculated risk. Then everyone commits to that destination – not because it is perfectly accurate, but because they believe it is the right future to pursue.

The process of creating a powerful and effective strategic plan should not be an accounting and forecasting exercise that is informed by some leadership, but rather the opposite – a leadership exercise that is informed by some accounting and forecasting. It requires not a calculator, but the courage and conviction to inspire everyone to be their best and get on the same page.

As Academy Award-winning director Francis Ford Coppola famously said:

 “The first step in making a great movie is getting everyone involved to be making the same movie.”

When It Comes To Failure, Choose Your Point Of View

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Life is a conversation. Things happen, and we have interpretations about them. That’s the way it works.

For example, two people going through the same challenging circumstance or event can have completely different takes on the situation. One might be very upset and have the following reaction to a particular “failure”:

  • That was horrible.
  • I told you so.
  • We shouldn’t have done that.

However, another person, when faced with the same situation, might just smile and say:

  • That could have been worse!
  • That was tough, but what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
  • We stayed in this together and became closer because of it.

Both reactions – negative and positive – are valid, but they have different outcomes and consequences. One is empowering; the other is disempowering.

As part of my business, I coach, guide and support people. Some people never seem to be happy or satisfied, even when good things happen to them. They always see the “half empty” part of the glass. They just won’t count their blessings. Others are always oriented around the “half full” part. They look for the good, the blessings, and the lessons and opportunities in every situation, no matter how bad it may be.

We don’t believe what we see. We see what we believe. People always find evidence and validation for their points of view. If they predict that an upcoming event will be “hard or un-enjoyable,” guess what? It probably will be. And if they view a future challenge as an “opportunity,” they’ll prove that right as well. Whatever our points of view, we will always prove them right. So why not choose to focus on empowering perspectives?

Winston Churchill said, “Success is going from failure to failure without any loss of enthusiasm.” I find that inspiring. There is great power in realizing that we always have a say about our mindset, point of view and attitude – no matter what circumstances we are facing.

The more we learn to think like that, the more empowered we will be. We can always justify why we will play smaller. Or we can create exciting justifications for why we’ll play even bigger than before.

Ultimately, we either live in empowering conversations or disempowering ones. The beauty is that it’s our choice to make.

We’re Halfway Through 2013—But Did You Ever Really Complete 2012?

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There’s a distinct difference between ending something and completing it. Events in the physical world have a beginning, middle and end to them – whether we like it or not. We get older. Another year passes. And our lives keep moving forward, towards an eventual ending point.

Similarly, there is a physical rhythm to our professional year that is beyond our control. In a way, we’re passengers in time. The year ends, a new year begins, and the sand in the hourglass keeps trickling down.

Completion is different. Completion is a mindset, a paradigm, and a way of viewing our efforts, achievements, successes and failures in the most empowering way.

We have no control over the fact that 2012 is now over and that we’re already halfway through 2013, but we do have full say about our relationship to what happened in the previous year, including what we delivered and what was accomplished We also have control over the conclusions and lessons we will take with us from the previous year into the next.

So here we are in June of 2013. But many of us have never really taken the time to complete 2012.

To bring closure to last year and fully prepare yourself and your team for the rest of 2013, consider the following questions–starting with some basic facts. In 2012:

  1. What results did you promise or want to deliver?
  2. What results did you actually achieve?
  3. What objectives did you deliver, and what promises did you keep?
  4. What objectives and promises did you not deliver/keep? Where did you and/or your team fall short?

Once you have embraced the hard facts, take a look at some of the bigger-picture aspects of 2012:

  1. What did you accomplish in 2012 beyond your targeted results? It’s important to honor and even celebrate what got accomplished, even if it seems small or “not enough.”
  2. How did you forward your bigger vision and purpose (whether you made all your numbers or not)?
  3. In what areas and in what ways did you get stronger? What “muscles” If you post the piece about building your warrior muscle before this blog, then you could link to it here.and new competencies did you develop? What did you learn to do – by choice or by necessity – that will make you stronger and better in the future?
  4. What valuable lessons did you learn from your successes and/or failures? This is particularly relevant and important in tough years – which can make us stronger and better prepared for future chapters.
  5. How did your successes and/or failures in 2012 better prepare you for greater success in 2013?
  6. What can you commit to in 2013 and beyond, given all that occurred and all that you learned in 2012?

The beauty of completion is that it enables and empowers us to draw out the opportunities, learning and gold from everything that happened in the past. By viewing our past deeds and achievements through the lens of “completion,” we can foster a continuous path of personal development, growth and fulfillment.

When we end a year without completion, we often feel somewhat “stuck” and not quite ready and excited to move forward. However, when we take the time to complete each year, we experience a powerful sense of harmony, confidence and calmness. We feel empowered, ready and excited about moving on to the next chapter.

So go ahead and complete 2012, and keep what you have learned in mind, because 2014 will be here before you know it.

Is Your Company Strategy Bold and Compelling?

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Often senior executives define strategy in a limited and narrow way. They focus on a vision or a direction, or sometimes even clear, measurable objectives. But to be effective, a strategy needs to encompass all of these.

A solid strategy has to answer the questions:

  • Where are we headed?
  • What are we building?
  • How will we know when we get there?
  • What are we going to focus on to drive our success?
  • What are the key steps to take to address those areas of focus?

Many of the strategies we see in our consulting practice are vague rather than clear.  For example:

‘We want to be world-class’ vs. ‘We want to be leaders in our industry as measured by X’.

The other common flaw we encounter is that many strategic plans exist in a binder on a shelf, but fail to be lived out in the everyday way people work. Is your strategy alive in your leaders’, management’s and staff’s day-to-day actions? Most aren’t.

A truly bold and compelling strategy is ultimately one where staff can see the part they play in its accomplishment and participate daily in its fulfillment.

Is your strategy vague or bold and compelling? I would love to hear your comments.


4 Steps To Creating Total Strategic Alignment

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Most leaders believe that it takes between six and 12 months, or longer, to develop a strategy. They mistakenly think that the criteria for a meaningful strategy are the amount of research and market analysis that goes into it, and the time spent vetting it with experts.

But our observation is that how well communicated a strategy is, is far more important than how logical or well researched it is. The effectiveness of any strategy is directly proportional to the level of ownership, commitment and accountability among the executive team. A strategy is only as good as the levels of commitment the people who are accountable to fulfilling it, possess.

Here are the essential fours steps necessary to create total strategic commitment and alignment.

Step one: Do a commitment audit and tell the truth about the current levels of ownership, commitment and accountability within the organization. Ask people to be blunt about the degree to which they understand – and believe in – your current strategic plan.

Step two: Craft a bold and compelling future. Help your leadership team roll the clock forward two to three years from now. What is a clear, concise and well-articulated 15- to 20-word statement that describes what you are committed to building as an organization?

Step three: Define your specific success criteria. What are the three, four or five key measurable outcomes that will let you know you have reached that future state?

Step four: Get everyone on board with these. This means cascading the process through the ranks of management, sharing the content of the strategy with all levels of staff and listening to and addressing issues of competence, sincerity and courage.

Remember, the issue is not, “What is the right solution?” but, “What will people buy into, take ownership for, believe in and commit to?” When staff buy into a strategy, it’s because they trust their leaders are telling the truth about the need for it, they believe that their leaders have the courage and resolve to address the real issues, and they have faith their leaders are competent to do what needs to be done in order to implement the strategy.

On top of this, when staff feel cared for, concerned about and respected, they will naturally support and contribute to the strategy being realized.