Horizontal Best Practice - The Supportive Peer Group
March 29, 2007
In a recent post, I wrote about The Horizontal Organizational Chart and how leaders who find themselves in new roles should pay special attention to their peers - their horizontal org chart. A few days later, I heard a story from a client that brought this to life.
This talented leader has recently left one company to take a significant leadership role at another. His new company is in a different industry and has a headquarters in a different city. Most people would quickly lose touch with their peer groups in that sort of circumstance.
But this guy isn‘t like most leaders. More importantly, his peer group at his former company isn’t like most peer groups. It seems that a few years back, they started a group habit of holding an informal Friday afternoon conference call. Its purpose was as simple as it was unstructured - to stay connected and to help each other with any challenges facing them in their roles as leaders. Importantly, this standing call was created by and hosted by the peer group, not a boss (though, perhaps not coincidentally, their boss is one of the most progressive and developmentally minded leaders I know). It was their own initiative, not a corporate program.
That’s cool enough, but get this. After my client switched companies (complete with the farewell parties and so on), he got a phone call from one of his former peers. “It’s just not the same without you. I wish you were still on our Friday calls,” he said.
Then the bright idea struck them - why not have this valued member of the peer group continue to attend even if he’s no longer in the company? And that’s just what he does now.
The point isn‘t that everyone should start peer group calls (it’s not always practical and wouldn’t be natural for all). Nor am I arguing that you should keep this level of open communication with every person who leaves your organization (sometimes people have the gall to go to competitors, and we rightly have to be careful with our own organization’s information).
The point IS that, when done thoughtfully, peers can create relationships that add real business and personal value both now and into the future.
What horizontal best practices do you see in your world?
Talent: Build or buy?
March 26, 2007
Build or buy? It’s one of the big philosophical decisions organizational leaders face whenever they realize that their strategy requires bringing in new leadership talent. Do we promote hunger and loyalty by promoting our own people into key leadership roles, or do we send the message that the best talent wins regardless of tenure?
It’s a tricky one. And of course it’s not an either-or decision. An organization can take it one opportunity at a time and say to its staff, “We make the best decision for the organization depending on the situation.”
But don’t kid yourself. People do look at trends and draw conclusions. And your brightest talent will make their career decisions accordingly.
David Maister recently argued that going outside to bring in lateral hires for senior roles in professional services firms can dilute a firm’s culture. I think he leans toward promoting from within in those situations.
Regardless of your organization’s philosophical stance, most end up doing a combination of both. The next question to answer is, How does the person’s prior employment affect where we invest time and energy during a new leader’s first 90 days?
In our experience, it’s simply a matter of emphasis. Leaders joining an organization from the outside need to spend a lot more time learning what makes that particular organization run. Even more, they have to spend a lot of energy cracking the code of the organization’s culture - the unwritten rules that govern behavior. Perhaps most difficult, they have to figure out how to work productively in that culture while still staying true to their own core beliefs.
Internal promotions have different challenges. They know the overall organization’s business and unwritten rules, but they have to see it now from a new perspective. They sometimes have to overcome perceptions about them based on their past roles and behavior - and that can be daunting. Because either way - internal or external - our research and experience says that the early days are all about building productive work relationships.
How about you? What are the challenges and benefits to starting as an outsider or an insider in a new leadership role?
Dirty Word #5 - Self-control
March 20, 2007
I’m lucky enough to work with very accomplished leaders in very successful organizations. My work gives me a front-row seat into the everyday work lives of these leaders and their key teams. I get to see them at their best and when they’re doing less than their best.
Here’s what I notice: one of the most precious commodities in leadership behavior is good, old-fashioned self-control. For all of the legitimate focus these days on passion and fire, self-control can often carry the day where those other attributes - uncontrolled - may actually get in the way. Self-control is simply being able to restrain your typical impulses so that you can get what you really want in the long run.
Here’s an example. One of my executive clients recently had a very difficult interaction with a key business team. They had been assigned what seemed to him a simple task and had failed to accomplish it.
“I mentally composed and was repeatedly tempted to send a flaming email to them, but I thought better of it.”
Good thing! Flaming emails, though full of “passion” and momentarily therapeutic, rarely get us what we want in the long term. They don’t get us improved performance, sharper focus, and highly motivated team members. They just dump a mess on the floor - a mess leaders invariably wind up mopping up themselves!
Winston Churchill, a notable leader with quite a temper, saved himself many messes by simply having his wife review memos before he sent them out. More than once, he buried a memo and in hindsight thanked Clementine for her wisdom.
How about you? What situations make self-control a challenge for you? What do you do to control yourself in those situations?
What Makes Leaders Fly Fast - New Survey Results Released
March 15, 2007
Our Noonday team recently identified three key focus areas for leaders stepping into critical roles. While statistics predict many newly-appointed leaders will struggle, some defy the odds and get off to a flying start. We conducted a survey that provides advice to organizations bringing leaders into vital roles.
The recent study (click here to view the research summary) captured opinions of leaders from a wide variety of organizations about critical areas of focus for incoming leaders. Respondents rated and commented on the importance of ten actions leaders can take over their first 90 days.
Of all the possible actions, three stood above the rest as most useful for starting fast. More than 90% of respondents advised focusing on building productive working relationships with key colleagues. More than 85% said that creating a clear plan for the ensuing year was one of the most important outcomes from the first three months. Nearly 80% recommended staying focused on a few important business projects to build credibility and momentum toward those full-year plans.
What most struck us in the study results? The emphasis on slowing down. Many executives feel incredible pressure to hurry up and get something done when they step into a new role. The clear feedback from this peer group argues for something different: going slow to go fast.
This input lines up well with what we hear from executives whose leadership roles didn’t work out as they had hoped. They often jumped right into tasks – fixing broken projects, creating new strategies, in essence trying to look like they’re doing big things – and realized in hindsight that they should have focused on taking big steps with people and smaller steps with tasks during their first days in the new position.
We’re always looking for more input into this study. If you want to share your experience, click here to take the short survey. All participants will receive a complementary copy of the study results.
How do you know if you’re making an impact?
March 13, 2007
Do you ever wonder how your coaching work is going? I certainly do. Coaching colleagues is a little harder to track than, say, building widgets. People just don’t behave like widgets. They make progress. They fall back. They show promising signs and they exasperate us - sometimes all in the same conversation.
And the minute I feel a little superior to the person I’m coaching, I look in the mirror. I’m the same way. And I both delighted and exasperated more than a few coaches over the years. (If you ask my current set of coaches and advisors, they would probably say I’m still pretty good at that - at least the exasperating part!)
This fuzziness inherent in working with these wonderful creatures called humans does not mean that you are completely without indicators. I’ve talked often about the importance of formal and informal feedback. Check-in conversations and formal feedback should be a staple of any coaching relationship.
But here’s another informal barometer I use: the phone. If my phone occasionally (or regularly) rings and I find my colleague on the other end, soliciting help or wanting to bounce an idea off me, I know that I have started to achieve trusted advisor status with that person. If my phone (or email, or blackberry, or whatever) is generally quiet, I have to ask myself what’s going on. Have I not clarified what we’re working on and how I can help? Are we working on things that they don’t really care about? Do they care about the issue but question my motives? Have I just failed to prime the pump by sending them input, becoming a useful source of help and information? Do I listen enough when we speak together or do they walking away thinking “that guy’s a know-it-all and I just feel worse when we talk”?
It’s not scientific - but then again, human relationships defy scientific measurement so often!
How about you? What are your informal indicators of progress when you’re providing value to colleagues?
Isn’t that… lovely?!?
March 8, 2007
Not too long ago, I met an executive who shared an interesting story about getting started in his current company many years ago. He was a fresh-faced graduate, mixing it up for the first time with leaders at a venerable old industrial company.
In the middle of a conversation with one of his colleagues, someone asked him about his weekend. Without missing a beat, he replied, “Oh, it was lovely.” The awkward silence quickly alerted him that he had said something wrong, or at least unusual.
It didn’t take long for this executive to figure out what it was. In this old-school company, people didn’t use words like “lovely.” Weekends were “good,” “productive,” even “excellent.” But lovely? Not so much…
What this executive had stumbled into was the reality that every organization has unwritten rules on how things work, what language to use, and how relationships should be managed. One of the first and most daunting challenges for any leader entering a new organization is to discover and understand those unwritten rules. As my recent article, Solving the Culture Puzzle (click here to download it free) points out, you can discover those rules by watching for a few key clues.
How about your organization? What are the unwritten rules that you’ve discovered? What helped you figure them out?
The Horizontal Organization Chart
March 5, 2007
In an earlier post, Peripheral Vision, I talked about the importance of focusing on peer relationships, especially during the first several months in a leadership position. I argued that, while building first-rate relationships with your manager and your direct reports matters, your peer relationships become increasingly important as you rise in an organization.
This past weekend’s special Wall Street Journal publication, The Journal Report: Business Insight, bolsters that argument. James Kelly and Scott Nadler, principals at an environment, health, safety, and social responsibility firm, write about their observation of leaders over the past seven years. Here’s what they say about peripheral vision:
Throw away the traditional vertical organizational chart. Imagine the effective organizational chart as horizontal. Think about how to connect with peers, and how they in turn can connect you to other peers. View your colleagues as a focus group, not a barrier. In a horizontal world, your peers’ concerns are no longer objections to overcome. Instead, they are important feedback to hear and heed.
(Subscribers can get the whole article by clicking this link. Non-subscribers can sign up for two free weeks and see it too!)
Who’s in your horizontal organizational chart? Have you reached trusted advisor status with them? What’s a next step you can take to build that kind of relationship with them?
Dirty Word #4 - Happy Adversity
March 2, 2007
I recently talked with a client who had undergone a setback in his organization. In his case, a key staff relationship had blown up in his face, necessitating the departure of a colleague from the organization. Make no mistake, it’s a difficult situation. There will be repercussions throughout the organization as people sit back, ask questions, and possibly take sides. After all of that, the organization will have to go out and find a replacement for this key staff member and try it all over again. A lot of hard work stares them in the face.
As we talked, I could tell that this client was feeling a little down. Not wanting to sound too Pollyanna, I tentatively made a statement to him that changed the conversation.
“This could turn out for good,” I said.
“All right, what’s the silver lining?” he responded quickly with a tired laugh.
We went on to talk about significant, foundational choices and ways of operating that this organization’s leadership team has been avoiding for months, if not years.
“If the leadership team faces these things and uses this painful experience as a prod to move through them, this could be a defining moment for your organization.”
Thinking about it later, I believe this more and more. Adversity doesn’t have to be all negative. Yes, it’s often unpleasant, but it can force us to see where we’ve been trying to take shortcuts to our vision. We all know that shortcuts often turn into the long way around, but we all try them too. Adversity shakes us up and has us face the facts. And on good days, it makes us stronger, more capable people as well.
How about you? How have you seen adversity transformed into good news? What are the keys?