Strategy

Strategy Delegation and Motivation

Barely half of senior managers are excited by their own business strategies.

Are your people skills weak? Are you out of touch with the needs and feelings of customers? Are you infuriated by dissent? According to an article in the Director magazine, if you answered, “yes” to these questions, congratulations, you’re a perfect candidate to craft business strategies in the world today.

“Business strategy is often conceived in an ivory tower by top executives and then handed down in tablets of stone for middle management to implement,” claims the article. “But, because the strategy is not grounded in the reality of the business and lacks ‘emotional edge,’ the rest of the organisation neither believes in it nor engages with it. So it's not surprising that only 19 per cent of corporate strategies achieve their objectives, according to new research among more than 1,600 top, senior and mid-level managers in public and private sector organizations.”

This article also points out the only 25 percent of executives themselves are excited or motivated by the strategies they create and just 28 percent of senior leaders are engaged by their strategies.

If this is the perception that senior executives have of their own business strategies, how can they expect middle management and employees to be motivated by them, embrace them or wholeheartedly implement them? Delegation of goals that are not fully “owned” is a recipe for mediocrity or failure.

Based on the statistics above, is it any wonder that 81 percent of strategies fail to achieve their objectives?

You can read it here

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Relevant topics: Strategy, Motivation, Delegation




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Change Management

Change management, transformational leadership, business transformation

Have you spotted the replacement for your company yet?

I stumbled upon a fascinating article about change management the other day from 2007. I was struck by the power of the message which reminds us just how quickly new companies can arrive and how quickly they can take over and even dominate an industry. When the article was written, I wonder if anyone had hear the names Twitter, Squidoo, Technorati and many other household names that exist today? What may be even more fascinating would be to hear if any of the business ideas mentioned in this article ever took off themselves?

In a training video presentation, the famous leadership trainer Bob Johnson warned that, as leaders, “We have to find a better way to do things. If we don’t our competition will.”

As proof that this warning may be becoming a reality – right now – in several industries (including maybe your own), consider the following four examples profiled in the August 22 2007 edition of Business 2.0 magazine:

Startup wants to make power plants obsolete. Do you realize that almost two-thirds of energy produced in the conversion of fuel into kilowatts is lost as heat? Now, a company called Bloom Energy is taking solid-oxide fuel cells – a concept that been around since the 19th century – and using it to create more efficient, cleaner and more localized power production that can run on a variety of fuel sources, including ethanol, biodiesel, methane and natural gas. While making large, inefficient power plants obsolete, many experts also predict that this development could bring more affordable, more reliable power to developing countries and remote villages around the world.

Tired of car and insurance payments, fuel costs and auto maintenance? New firm has left a fleet of cars parked around town; use one of theirs instead. A company called Zipcar is out to prove that you no longer need an automobile. The firm has a fleet of 3,000 hip cars scattered throughout 23 dense urban areas – including London, Boston, New York and Vancouver – that subscribers can locate via the Web and use 24 hours per day for a $50 annual membership and $8 - $15 per hour. The firm already has more than 100,000 members and more than $60 million in annual revenue this year.

Who says that old dinosaurs can’t learn new tricks? If you thought that digital photography killed the old Polaroid camera company, think again. Housed in an old Polaroid R&D facility in Massachusetts is a little spin-off – with big plans – called Zink, which stands for “zero ink.” Zink wants to turn your cell phone, laptop or TV into a high-end color printer.

Think there’s a market for a $176 laptop that uses 90 percent less electricity than today’s models? While a “do-gooder” named Nicholas Negroponte set out to create computers for Third World kids, his invention, which relies on something called Wi-Fi mesh networks, just may transform personal computing for the entire world.

Remember Bob Johnson’s warning that, if we don’t find a better way to do things, our competition will. Maybe they already have. You can read the full story here.

Please do let us know if you have come across (or worked for) any of these 4 innovative companies? Did their dreams (and other peoples nightmares) ever come true?

Topics relevant to this article include change management business transformation, transformational leadership

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How to achieve a Work-Life Balance

Here's a great leadership tip for anyone in a management position who finds themselves working too hard.

A column appearing in the The Wall Street Journal makes a strong case that effective managers aren’t necessarily the people who work longer hours. In fact, the article argues that one of the tell-tale signs of effective management is that people might actually work less. Many managers and leaders are being swamped by an ever-increasing workload and the pressure to balance work and family commitments. The constant battle to achieve more with less can only be achieved by making some definitive decisions.

“New research suggests some have reached the point where a paradoxical truth applies: To get more done, we need to stop working so much,” claims this article.

Citing the results of a groundbreaking four-year study to be published in The Harvard Business Review, this column claims that scheduling purposeful time away from work responsibilities, “forced teams to communicate better, share more personal information and forge closer relationships.”

It’s important to note that two of the firms profiled in the study are top-performers Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and professional services firm KPMG. Originally, BCG executives virtually had to threaten employees in the study to take time off.  By the end of the study, the firm was so pleased with the performance improvement from this initiative that it is rolling out similar efforts in other groups. “It really changes how we do our work,” said a senior BCG partner.

“Amid layoffs and burgeoning workloads, it seems, working any time, all the time, has become a habit,” shares this Wall Street Journal article. “A survey of 605 U.S. workers by the Society for Human Resource Management found that 70% of employees work beyond scheduled time and on weekends; more than half blame ‘self-imposed pressure.’”

The article also introduces an interesting differentiator in workplace efficiency between “good intensity work” – that positive “buzz” you get from constant learning and involvement – and “bad intensity work” – which is the negative feeling you get from never having time away from your job, from foggy priorities or a lack of control over your life.

“Setting limits on work motivates people to work smarter,” claims the article.

Terms relevant to this article: Leadership tips, management skills, staff productivity, time management, prioritisation, prioritization GVHCAJGCMKFW

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Management Training Continues

Management attitudes to training:


76% of Canadian senior executives say their training budgets are unchanged – or increased – from 2008

An article appearing in the August 13 edition of Canadian business development publication Exchange magazine claims that while 23% of executives admit that training budgets have been reduced this year, 45% of senior execs claim their training budgets are unchanged, while 21% say their development budget has “expanded somewhat” or has “expanded significantly” (reported by 10% of survey respondents).

Selected Management Training/ Leadership Quotes:

“Knowledge is like a garden; if it is not cultivated, it cannot be harvested.” - African Proverb

“In this economy, you need to take advantage of every available resource to propel your career. Finding a mentor – and preferably a network of mentors – is an easy and smart way to get started.” – Source: An article titled “Pile on Mentors in Tough Times” published in The Wall Street Journal, October 6, 2009


Topics relevant to this article include: leadership development, management training, training budgets, training, mentoring


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Staff Motivation Drops

Article shows there has been a big drop in staff motivation and morale.

If you are looking for a way to boost morale as part of your own leadership development, then this leadership tip will be extremely helpful.

An article published recently by CNN finds that as tougher economic conditions have led to increased workloads for less pay, employee morale has dropped sharply.

“Forty percent of employees at organizations affected by layoffs say productivity has been negatively impacted,” claims the article. “Of those 40%, two-thirds of them say that morale is suffering and that employees are less motivated than before.”

What’s concerning businesses most about this trend, however, is the corresponding impact these falling attitudes are having on corporate productivity and performance.

"The risk here is the organization's financial health," said business author Roxanne Emmerich in the article. "Employee morale is the leading predictor of future growth and profitability."

In the article, Emmerich predicts that at some point, employers will have to do more to incentivize employees. She recommends rewards that tie into the company's vision and values, but that are not necessarily monetary. "People just want to be recognized for the most part," she said.

You can read the full story here



Subject matter of this article includes: staff motivation, morale, Leadership tips, leadership development, management training

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Management Development

Have you ever wondered if you are getting a good return on the money you are spending on management development?

“Despite the billions of dollars, euros, and yen invested in coaching and management development, remarkably few executives can be regarded as skillful managers,” says Gill Corkindale, the former management editor of The Financial Times. In a posting on a Harvard Business School blog, Corkindale asks readers how this reality is possible.

Answering her own question, Corkindale offers two reasons, saying, “It's my guess that the majority of managers with responsibility for large teams and significant businesses either do not possess the requisite skills of a manager — or they just don't put them (new skills learned) into practice.”

Corkindale then proposes three reasons why executives fail to apply the leadership development skills they learn, including lack of time, budget constraints and the reality that, “behavioural change is difficult.”

Next, Corkindale proceeds to share some of the rules she recommends to help ensure that new managerial development skills are applied, including being open to experimentation and new ideas in learning, trusting that the learning will help, and committing to the plan for a minimum of six months. She also outlines five of the key development areas that she recommends for executives.

 You can read Corkindale’s full posting here

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Qualities of Leadership

Leadership Tip: Qualities of Leadership


For people who wonder about what are the qualities of leadership the following research may be interesting.


”Our team (at Gallup) initiated a study of more than 10,000 followers around the world. In this study, we asked followers to tell us – in their own words – why they follow the most influential leader in their life. Three key findings emerged from this research: 1. The most effective leaders are always investing in strengths. In the workplace, when an organization’s leadership fails to focus on individuals’ strengths, the odds of an employee being engaged are a dismal 1 in 11 (9%). But when an organization’s leadership focuses on the strengths of its employees, the odds soar to almost 3 in 4 (73%). So that means when leaders focus on and invest in their employees’ strengths, the odds of each person being engaged goes up eightfold.” – Source: Strengths Based Leadership by Tom Rath & Barry Conchie


The moral of the story? Focus on the strengths of your people and make this your main focus.

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