Crisis Management
Every individual and organization at some point in time will face a crisis and the way they respond will determine if the situation potentially becomes fatal or they experience a complete and total recovery. I have learned a lot from personal experience on this subject over the years and probably the most important lesson is to be incredibly proactive and not stick your head in the sand and hope it will get better.
In Jack Welch’s great book Winning he gives some great advice on how he dealt with crisis situations at G.E. These are his five guiding assumptions:
1. The problem is worse than it appears—No matter how hard you might wish and pray; very few crises start small and stay that way. The vast majority are bigger in scope than you could ever imagine with that first phone call and they will last longer and get more ugly.
2. There are no secrets in the world, and everyone will eventually find out everything—Information that you try to shut down will eventually get out, and as it travels, it will certainly morph, twist and darken. The only way to prevent that is to expose the problem yourself and tell the truth.
3. You and your organization’s handling of the crisis will be portrayed in the worst possible light—The very nature of a crisis means that you and your organization will be portrayed in a light so negative you won’t even recognize yourself. Don’t hunker down. Along with disclosing the full extent of your problem you have got to stand up and define your position before someone else does for you.
4. There will be changes in processes and people—Crisis requires change. Sometimes a process fix is enough. Usually not because the people affected by the crisis demand that someone be held responsible.
5. The organization will survive, ultimately stronger for what happened—There is not a crisis you cannot learn from, even though you hate every one of them. After a crisis is over the tendency is to put it away in a drawer. Don’t, teach its lessons every chance you get.
Practicing Feedforward
Filed under: Leadership Callling, Personal Development, Personnel Development
Almost every serious organization uses some form of feedback to evaluate the performance of their top leadership team. This usually works best in a 360 type environment where the person receives feedback from superiors, peers and subordinates as well.
The concept of feedforward was developed by Marshall Goldsmith in his best seller What Got You Here Won’t Get You There about how to coach senior executives. He encourages every leader to identify core behaviors that need to change through feedback. Then apologize for your mistake and commit to change that character quality in the future.
The primary way he recommends to accomplish this is through the four disciplines in feedforward:
1. Identify Target Behavior—choose the one behavior that your colleagues have told you about that you consider to be at the top of your list for change. The number one issue among the thousands of people he has worked with is to be a better listener.
2. Enlist Accountability Partners—the key here is to secure a personal commitment from as many people as possible to help you in this particular area. This should include family members as well as various levels of people within the organization where you work. They will all commit to help you focus on this one specific area and help you with ongoing feedback.
3. Solicit Specific Suggestions—ask everyone in your accountability circle for at least two suggestions that might help you achieve a positive change in your selected behavior. The key ground rule here is that there should be no mention of mistakes in the past but every comment is about the future.
4. Practice Active Listening—take appropriate notes if necessary but make sure you are really listening to each and every suggestion to the point that you can put it into practice. Also it is very important regardless of the quality of the input to be sure to graciously thank everyone involved who will take the time and emotional risk of telling you what you really need to hear.
The Building Blocks Of A Strategy
Filed under: Goal Setting, Leadership Callling, Leading Change, Time Management, Vision Casting
One of the best books I have read on developing a strategic plan and all that is involved in the execution of that plan was written by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan called Execution. It is a must read for any organization that uses teams to accomplish planning and execution.
A strategy is the key steps or methodology that you are going to use to accomplish your goals or mission. Many times the goal seems to be clear and necessary but the breakdown occurs at the point of determining how we are going to accomplish what we want to do.
In this book he lists several critical questions that should be answered during the development of your strategy to ensure a high probability of success:
1. How good are the assumptions upon which the plan hinges?
2. What are the pluses and minuses of the alternatives?
3. Do you have the organizational capability to execute the plan?
4. Are the short term and long term balanced?
5. What are the important milestones for executing the plan?
6. Can you adapt the plan to rapid changes in your environment?
The two most important questions are do you have the organizational capability to execute the plan? Just because it is the right thing to do may not mean we have the right people in place and this is the right time for implementation. If we add something major to our process without additional manpower it must be assumed that something else needs to go.
The last question is even more important in the culture we live in today. Just because something looks great as a strategy today and even works for awhile does not mean that it will be viable in the next twelve months. This means that nothing must become so sacred that it cannot be changed if necessary when a better plan is discovered.
Organizational Culture Change
Filed under: Leadership Callling, Leading Change, Servant Leader
According to John Kotter there are many reasons change initiatives fail especially in large organizations. The number one reason is there is not a clear sense of urgency for change that makes everyone willing to pay the short term price of pain due to change to gain the long term benefit of progress.
Many times the communications part of the process breaks down and the implementers do not get enough information to really buy in. The importance of creating short term wins for establishing credibility for the entire process cannot be overstated.
When the new of change becomes the norm there are several key factors that let you know it is now firmly in the D.N.A. of your organizational culture:
1. More change, not less: The guiding coalition uses the credibility afforded by short-term wins to tackle additional and bigger change projects.
2. More help: Additional people are brought in, promoted, and developed to help with all the changes.
3. Leadership from senior management: Senior people focus on maintaining clarity of shared purpose for the overall effort and keeping urgency levels up.
4. Project management and leadership from below: Lower ranks in the hierarchy both provide leadership and specific projects and manage those projects.
5. Reduction of unnecessary interdependencies: To make change easier in both the short and long term, managers identify unnecessary interdependencies and eliminate them.
When everyone in the organization starts to articulate the new vision in their own words as if it were their idea then you know they own the process. It is time to start looking for what needs to be changed next, the process never stops.
Level Five Leaders
Filed under: Leadership Callling, Personal Development, Servant Leader
In my opinion the best organizational leadership book that has been written is Good to Great by Jim Collins. It proves beyond any doubt some things we have always know about effective leadership but he discovers some key principles that fly in the face of everything we have been taught in the past.
One thing that is really not new but clearly prioritized in his book is the importance of character in the life of any leader. Character ensures that the motives of the leader are always focused on what is best for the people they are leading and not for themselves.
The most significant myth that this book destroys about great leaders is that they all must be very outgoing cheerleader type personalities and that they have to lead with an authoritarian dictatorial style to be effective.
According to Collins, “Level 5 leaders display a compelling modesty, are self-effacing and understated. In contrast, two thirds of the comparison companies had leaders with gargantuan personal egos that contributed to the demise or continued mediocrity of the company.”
This personality type should never be mistaken for laid back soft leaders who don’t have the strength to make the hard calls. As a matter of fact they combine humility with an incredible strong will to make sure the right things are getting done. If they have to they would fire their mother if that is what was necessary for the long term benefit of the organization.
They also give credit to others when things are going well and when they are not they assume personal responsibility. This combination of personal humility and professional will make for the type of leader anyone would want to follow.
Problems With The Boss
Filed under: Leadership Callling, Personal Development, Servant Leader
All of us have worked at some point in time for someone who at worst just could not get it done or at best was personality challenged. We come into our jobs with the hope that we can be a part of the solution and yet there are times when we don’t see the progress we had hoped for.
I changed jobs three times in the first five years out of college because I thought the problem was external. If I could just get with the right company with a great boss then I would be successful. To my shock I realized that the real problems were internal and I was simply carrying all of my personal issues from one company to the next expecting different results.
These are some of the things I have learned over the years about problems with the boss:
1. Check Your Motives—make sure that your real agenda is to do what is best for the organization and not for yourself. When you make it a priority to help make your boss successful then it becomes a win-win for everyone.
2. Keep It Real—when things are not changing at the pace you had hoped you have a choice to make. You can get your feelings hurt and start telling people what they want to hear and emotionally quit or you can have the character to tell the truth with a respectful attitude.
3. Watch Your Tongue—if you allow your concerns to become public in an inappropriate way then you just became part of the problem and not part of the solution. You should never say anything negative about another person to someone else because it will only spread disunity and destroy team moral.
4. Do Your Job—when we get in the negative cycle not only are we causing problems for other people we are not focused on getting our own jobs done with excellence. We must show up every day with a clean heart and high level of commitment to be and do our best.
I can promise you it is not in your job description to change your boss or even your organization for that matter. What is there is a clear set of priorities that need to be done by a person who is mature enough to stay positive when things don’t go their way and passionate enough to never settle for anything less than their personal best every day.
Work-Life Balance
Filed under: Core Values, Family Ministry, Life Balance, Marriage, Personal Development
If there has ever been a day when the demands of work and home have been greater I am not aware of it. The sheer pace of life today leaves us emotionally and physically worn out and feeling empty at the end of most days.
Technology keeps us connected all the time and people in the workplace culture almost demand that we stay available 24-7. Our families are all running on the same high speed treadmill that produces stress in every area of our lives.
There are several key principles that must be in place if you want to create margin for the people and priorities that you care about the most:
1. Lead Yourself First—it is impossible to successfully help lead other people at work or in the home if you are not able to accomplish what is most important in your own life. You should set specific goals in the areas of health, personal development and faith with the necessary time allotment to make sure they get done.
2. Prioritize Your Family Next—at the end of your life it will not matter how much professional success you have had if you consistently neglected your role as a spouse and parent. There are no guarantees that time alone will produce a great marriage and character driven children but without it there is a high probability that both areas could fail.
3. Choose Right Career—most organizations are looking for people who will perform and improve their bottom line. However there is a growing awareness that if you want to attract and keep the best people you have to give some deference to work-life balance. The key is you have to be outstanding at what you do and you have to be in a culture that will reward that effort by giving you more time off and not more projects to accomplish.
4. Develop Life Plan—it never ceases to amaze me that some of the most effective leaders in the corporate arena do not practice any of the leadership disciplines that made them successful in their home and personal life. The can lead multi-million dollar projects from start to finish at work but not take more than 30 minutes to plan the annual family vacation.
When you develop a total life plan with goals and strategies for everything personal, private and public you just assumed the C.E.O. leadership role for your whole life. You will never have a more important job.
Lessons From Michael Jackson
Filed under: Core Values, Financial Stewardship, Life Balance, Personal Development
We have all been affected by the sudden death of Michael Jackson in different ways. Some of us feel compassion for the children who are left behind to grow up in the huge shadow of their father. Others are feeling regret for such a waste of a very talented person who lost so much of what really matters during his life.
Most of us will never have to deal with all of the things that Michael did that come with being a famous celebrity who earns millions of dollars in income. However we all have to deal with the life issues that he faced:
1. Resolve Past Hurts—if you do not deal with the pain from when people close to you have failed you when you were growing up then you will surely carry those open wounds into adulthood. The tragedy for all of us is when the core issues that we are dealing with as adults are really problems that surfaced many years ago but were never appropriately resolved.
2. Trust Right People—show me who your friends are and I can tell you a lot about your character. The temptation for all of us is to surround ourselves with people who tell us all that we want to hear but they really don’t care enough to tell us the truth. These people make us feel good for the moment but leave us eventually broken and empty when the fun runs out.
3. Develop Core Values—there is no doubt in my mind that many times Michael wanted to do the right thing and really wanted to help people. When you don’t have a solid foundation to build on you will consistently make very bad decisions that seem extremely inconsistent with whom you want to be as a person.
4. Decide How Much Is Enough—driven people are never satisfied because they are trying to satisfy their deepest needs with things that can never bring real peace and fulfillment in life. If you are not content with what you have now there is no reason to believe you will be in the future regardless of how much you get.
Michael Jackson’s legacy will be a hotly debated subject for years to come. Some only see the bad and others refuse to say anything was wrong at all. Will the people closest to you be debating your legacy when you are gone or will they all agree it was a life well spent.
Corporate Shepherd
Filed under: Leadership Callling, Leading Change, Life Balance, Personal Development, Servant Leader
There are many leaders today that want to move beyond just making a profit to really making a difference. They want to be successful and that’s great but they also want the significance that only comes from adding value to other people.
When leadership is approached from a Christian perspective a new model starts to develop where the leader becomes more of a shepherd to their people than a boss to their employees. They do care about performance and productivity but they also feel responsible for developing alignment around core values and creating the right culture for work-life balance for their people.
They also see life beyond the immediate pressures of planning, project management, staffing, goal setting and execution. The legacy they want to create for their life and organization includes eternal metrics that must be included when talking about the ultimate bottom line.
The clear plan for every Christian is to use your professional life as a platform for ministry because we are all in full time Christian service. Our lives should no longer be seen as segmented into faith, family, friends, recreation and entertainment but become totally integrated into being one life on mission for God. The various roles that we fulfill are no longer competing with each other but complimenting the calling God has for our lives.
In the end there is only one performance review that really matters. The evaluation criteria is simple, How faithful were you with all that I entrusted to your care? Thinking about that moment should overwhelm us with gratitude and give us a renewed sense of passion to hear well done my good and faithful servant.
Love & Respect
There have been a lot of great marriage books written over the last twenty years. The Marriage Builder by Larry Crabb is probably the best based on how our individual needs for security and significance impact our relationship with our spouse.
Love & Respect by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs is extremely good from the standpoint of giving a simple foundational framework for the major role that each partner needs to play in the marriage. Then the book gives lots of practical applications and illustrations on how to live this out in real world.
He writes that the husband should love his wife by:
1. Closeness—she wants you to be close
2. Openness—she wants you to open up to her
3. Understanding—don’t try to fix her; just listen
4. Peacemaking—she wants you to say, “I’m Sorry”
5. Loyalty—she needs to know you’re committed
6. Esteem—she wants you to honor and cherish her
The wife should respect her husband by:
1. Conquest—appreciate his desire to work and achieve
2. Hierarchy—appreciate his desire to protect and provide
3. Authority—appreciate his desire to serve and to lead
4. Insight—appreciate his desire to analyze and counsel
5. Relationship—appreciate his desire for shoulder-to-shoulder friendship
6. Sexuality—appreciate his desire for sexual intimacy
One of the very helpful points that he continues to make throughout the book is just because our needs make us so different that does not make either of us wrong. When we assume the best about our spouse’s motives then we can give them the benefit of the doubt when they fall short of giving us what we want and need.