Wisdom JournalBy William Seidman
The International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) San Francisco conference is April 19th through the 22nd at the Marriott Marquis. We’re presenting on Persuasive Technology Wednesday, April 21st at 10:30 AM. The following day, Thursday April 22nd at 8:30 AM, we’ll be talking about the need for Courageous Leadership in Change.
We went to ISPI last year; it was a great conference and we hope to see you there next month.
By William Seidman
I’m working with a group of very competent, smart managers now. I’m coaching them to unlearn certain practices that, frankly, aren’t working anymore.
Our challenge: to change the culture of the company from one that fills orders and generally meets customer expectations — a transactional approach — into one that anticipates future needs and can propose new and creative solutions that please customers and energize managers. (And can still fill those orders!) This new approach can be called transformational.
While the managers I’m working with may talk about making the organization transformational, like so many of us they tend to return to their comfort zone and stick with same-old, same-old business processes that are fundamentally transactional.
They’re constantly surprised when they don’t achieve their objectives.
Do you want your company to merely meet needs — or to be a vitally important resource?
Fortunately, these managers are learning the Cerebyte approach and to think and to function like positive deviants – transformationally. We coach managers to think like their best positive deviants: that’s where the creativity is.
Managers who are empowered to think freshly are happier and more productive. We know that fresh thinking is an art and a craft that can be taught and learned.
By William Seidman
I’m excited about Daniel Pink’s book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.
Pink thinks “there’s a mismatch between what science knows and what business does.” Intrinsic motivation, according to Pink, is what really motivates people. He calls autonomy, mastery, and purpose THE motivating forces, and the old carrot-and-stick approach “a lazy, dangerous ideology.”
Numerous good studies have shown that people want autonomy at work, and that it’s a better motivator than money.
Drive is consistent with Cerebyte’s approach. We focus on the knowledge of an organization’s positive deviants. Social good is a powerful motivator for these workers. They’re driven from within and by the pleasure of doing things they care about — and that really matter, both to them and to their organization.
By William Seidman
We’re working on several leadership programs right now, leading an organization through a transformation.
We have built decent best practices that are different from the usual. We’ve been emphasizing “authenticity.”
When we talk about deploying the best practices, though, we get stuck.
After a lot of conversation and thought, we realized that the leaders who most need enhanced leadership capabilities are executives most convinced they are already great leaders. This mindset is a good part of why they are powerfully resistant to considering their own need to grow and change.
Ironically, the best leaders are those who seek out — and are open to – growth opportunities. They’re easy to work with but don’t need the development.
How do you you engage “leaders” who are so resistant to learning from others?
By William Seidman
Ever wish your company had come with an instruction manual? Michael McCauley and I have written a book, Advantage Media has published it, and we’re excited. You can buy “Strategy to Action in 10 Days: Creating High Performance Organizations” directly from us, in bookstores, or on Amazon. There’s a Kindle edition, too.
Join our Facebook page and come with us as we travel to promote our book.
Ron Nakamoto, CEO of Strategic Financial, has praise: ”I recommend Strategy to Action in 10 Days to any person interested in creating a high performance organization. It clearly illustrates how to break from the status quo and create a truly sustainable change. It is as much a practical guide as it is a game changer.”
We’re as excited about our book as we are about the many people who are using it to create real, lasting, and positive change in their organizations.
By William Seidman
We’ll be presenting two papers at the International Society for Performance Improvement’s 2010 Annual Conference in San Francisco April 19-22, 2010.
ISPI is a good forum for people interested in learning how organizations can improve themselves, and its conferences bring in a wide ranging group of organizational development, training, and other professionals, both from inside organizations and as outside consultants.
The topics we’ll be discussing:
Persuasive Technology: A New Paradigm for Maximizing Organizational Performance — on the incorporation of the neuroscience of learning into technology and how this can lead to faster and more far-reaching organizational change on a larger scale than previously thought possible. Mike McCauley and I will present this paper.
The Importance of Courage in Leading Change: Creating Courageous Organizations — on the times and ways that leaders need to be courageous when leading a change effort, and how you can test for courageous leadership before you begin a change. Rick Grbavac and I will present this paper.
We hope many of you will be able to come to our sessions at the ISPI Conference in April.
By William Seidman
Often in large companies, the difference in the perspective and cultures of headquarters and the people in the field can be so large as to be startling. I’ve wondered, Are these people in the same company?
But I realize that each has a particular set of strengths along with some blindspots, and it’s only when they are integrated that the company gets the best results from everyone.
Headquarters tends to think more widely and theoretically. They tend to see a bigger picture and a long-term view. This type of thinking is good for an organization.
However, headquarters loses touch with operational reality very quickly. HQ tends not to understand the customer, their needs, or what it takes to sell and service them. It’s hard to make their ideas into operational reality. Too often, and sometimes unfairly, their work is seen as “more crap from headquarters.”
The field, on the other hand, tends to be great at getting something done. Field sales and service can be very effective at running the business, connecting with the customer and generating sales.
But the field’s narrow and short-term perspective — the world in which they live — doesn’t account for longer term issues. Planning and the long view are absent.
The optimum is to have the intellectual strength of HQ and the operational strength of field sales and service. The best way to attain this, we’ve found, is to have a third party facilitate the discussion. The goal is integration of these two powerful halves, resulting in a high-quality and effective new program.
By William Seidman
A recent article by Maureen Farrell in Forbes.com, “Doing Business With The Big Boys,” discusses several ways in which smaller companies, eager to do business in the big leagues, got burned - or at least chastised. The gist of the warning is:
If you’re signing a contract, you need a lawyer. Then check out that big company thoroughly, proceed with caution, be prepared, get it in writing, make sure you have read and understand ALL the fine print - and then read it again. I’m profiled and quoted (though Cerebyte is in beautiful Lake Oswego, Oregon - and not the nonexistent location Lake Oswego, Canada!) because it’s happened to us, too. We dealt with a senior manager who, in fact, didn’t have the decision-making authority we’d thought he had. Ouch. But it won’t ever happen to us again, and needn’t happen to you.
By Rick Grbavac
Jim Clifton, CEO and Chairman of Gallup, comments in The Gallup Management Journal :
“In the world we’re competing in now, solving problems isn’t about spending money. It’s about understanding and managing ideas and talent — and states of mind. That’s where the new leadership breakthroughs will be. Leaders who can quantify states of mind and make decisions about their constituencies based on that information are the ones who will lead the world.”
This makes perfect sense to me. But when he goes on to say that companies have maxed all of the benefits of performance improvement ideas, I think he has been sitting in his office a little too much. I think leaders have a tendency to want to talk about the next shiny ball and have trouble staying with good ideas that just take time to fully pay off.
The idea of tapping into the ideas, beliefs and actions of the 1 in 10,000 is exactly the right idea. He just left off the part about getting the other 9,999 to embrace those ideas and truly elevate performance.
By William Seidman
What creates courage? I go back to the work of Ron Riggio on transformational leadership. Commitment to a greater social good seems to be one of the keys to acting with courage.
Think about some of your favorite companies or people. Do they act courageously? The odds are good that they aren’t doing the same old safe thing year after year.
When you can get people to see something worthwhile that is beyond themselves they’ll take risks that might seem a little crazy - but that are brave.
More than ever, organizations need to be courageous. Can you honestly say that yours is?
