Thursday 29 November 2012

Three ways to close your talent gaps

I digested with great interest the 15th global PWC CEO survey.  You can download it here.

The headline on page 8 says “Talent shortages biting.”  The opening line on this page is “Talent gaps and mismatches not just an issue for the future, they are hurting businesses now.” Yep!

The final paragraph on page 8 says
“The real question is why talent gaps remain such a challenge, despite being an evident strategic priority.  This is not a new issue. Our CEO surveys throughout the past decade have consistently highlighted the availability of skill as a significant strategic threat across all sectors.”

Why do talent gaps remain a challenge indeed?

I have 3 primary answers.


My first two answers invoke the wisdom of Albert Einstein.
1) "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

Leader after leader that I meet are thinking how business was in the 20th century and in some cases the 19th and even the 18th century! How it was is no longer.

Many leaders I meet think social media will go away. It won’t.
And crucially despite overwhelming evidence of what works and what doesn’t, a lot of people I meet still don’t get that if you put people first you do better in your business.

There is a lot of stupidity and idiocy across the board in the world today.

I love the following definitions.

Someone said that the definition of stupidity is
“Expecting a different result by continuing to do the same old thing”

Someone said that the definition of idiocy is
“Doing something different and still getting the same result”

What changes could you make today to be less stupid and less idiotic particularly when it comes to how you see people, help them identify their talents/gifts and how well you are helping people to enhance their gifts in their best interests, yours, and that of all your stakeholders?

The internet has changed business forever.  What changes could you make today to be less stupid and less idiotic in how you and your people use the internet and the tool that is social media?

What must you begin doing today that means thinking differently than in the past?

2) "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." (Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton)

The headline on Page 12 of the PWC survey says “Operating in the dark?” and then says “So how can companies become more strategic about talent? One place to start is by getting better data.

CEOs consistently say they don’t have enough information to improve
decision making in areas such as cost of employee turnover, staff productivity, or employees views and needs.”

Only 16% of CEOs according to the PWC survey believe that the data they get is sufficiently comprehensive.

What data do you have?  What data do you need to get?

More importantly what insights do you need to act on to stop the bleeding of money and other resources when it comes to leading people?

What do you measure?

And is your focus on lead measure
s not lag measures as outlined in my blog here?

3) Lack of role clarity

There is a lack of role clarity everywhere in business at two levels, employees and leaders.

I meet employees all day every day who don’t really know where they fit.  They are not clear on their personal piece of your organisation’s strategy execution plan.

Most strategies fail to get executed because employees, the chief executors of strategy, havenʼt yet bought into the strategy or as is more often the case, they donʼt yet understand or own their unique piece of the execution map.

My Enhancing Their Gifts System™ changes this big time.  If you don’t yet know about the system please see overview and links at the end of this post.

I liken strategy to a compass and execution to a map. Ensuring employees co-create with you and own their unique piece of your execution map is a key part of your role as a leader. Imagine a giant quilt woven together, each piece different, yet integral to the whole. All of your employees need their piece. 

Integral to each employee’s piece is how much they’re bringing their unique gifts to their work on a consistent basis. 

Your primary role as a leader therefore is talent maximisation.  There are thirteen key aspects.  Take your pulse here and see how well you are.

Improve your talent maximisation, think 21st century solutions to your challenges, and measure what really matters and there will no longer be a talent gaps at your place.  The results will astound you.

Be the difference you want to see in the world.
Ian

Enhancing Their Gifts System Overview

The Enhancing Their Gifts System is a proven methodology for obtaining full engagement by employees that enhances people performance and workplace satisfaction.  It is about people, performance, results.  In that order.

Please view the FAQs here.

From October 1st 2012 it became possible to not just implement the system with my help in person it can now be implemented through a do it yourself program with support from an accredited mentor online and/or in person.

The best way to see if the Enhancing Their Gifts System is for you is to register for a complimentary demonstration clinic here or get in touch with an accredited mentor or myself and arrange a private clinic.

Be the difference you want to see in the world.
Ian




Tuesday 27 November 2012

The power of peer groups

Do you have a 100 year plan for your business? My friend Bob Bradley has one "It is the norm not the exception for a business leader to be in a leadership development peer group." You can read all about Bob's plan here.

I have had the honour of speaking to Bob's groups twice and many other CEO/MD peer groups. It is very clear to me that the people who invest in these kind of groups are better performers than those who don't.

Are you a member of such a group?

If your answer is no you are doing yourself, your people and your business a great disservice.

The other thing I like about Bob's 100 year plan is that it is about legacy.
What kind of legacy will you leave?

And what kind of legacy are you leaving right know?


Be the difference you want to see in the world.
Ian
I work with business owners/leaders of medium sized business and leaders of divisions in multi-national companies to lift employee performance by enhancing their gifts.




Wednesday 21 November 2012

How great is your influence as a leader?

This excellent article The Shift From Chief Executive To Chief Influencer By Julie Moreland provides great insights into real leadership.

How great an influencer are you?

I define leadership as the art of inspiring people to bring everything remarkable that they are to everything they do.

I also stress to anyone who will listen that leadership falters and usually badly without management.  I define management as the practice of making it simple for people to bring everything remarkable that they are to everything they do.

How great an inspirer are you?
and how simple are you making it for your people to bring everything remarkable that they are to everything they do?


Long gone are the days of command and control. 

Today your key role as a leader is to identify, enhance and deploy the unique talents/gifts of your employees in their best interests, the interests of all your stakeholders including the planet, and your business.  To fulfill this key role you must be inspiring, a prerequiste to positive and productive influence.

How inspiring are you?

The more inspiring you are the more you can step away from old style ineffective leadership and make the move from performance management to talent leadership and the profound difference such a move makes to your people and your business results.

The talent maximisation pulse check here is one way for you see how inspiring and influential you really are.  Take the pulse check.  You just might be staggered by what it reveals to you.

Be the difference you want to see in the world.
Ian
I work with business owners/leaders of medium sized business and leaders of divisions in multi-national companies to lift employee performance by enhancing their gifts.



Monday 19 November 2012

"Action, Brevity and Conviction" keys to all forms of communication

In his Change This manifesto Matt Eventoff states what leaders can learn from masterful orators of the past - "Action, Brevity and Conviction."

Read Matt’s manifesto here and take it to your heart and then change what’s normal about all your communication. You will become a greater leader. And you will inspire the people you work with to become greater leaders too.

Be the difference you want to see in the world.
Ian
I work with business owners/leaders of medium sized business and leaders of divisions in multi-national companies to lift employee performance by enhancing their gifts.






Friday 16 November 2012

Overcoming our biases is often a key to our differencemaking leadership

This 2 minutes and 26 seconds video by Ian Moore from United Kingdom looks at (in a hopefully entertaining way) one of the biases we have in our thinking - and how we can do something to overcome this bias.




The The Spirit of Community is a fascinating website and their publication “Spirit Of The Times” is a good read.  In issue 8, 2012 there is a great article by Richard Sanders “The flawed paradigms of economics and sustainable development.” Richard makes two observations worthy of some deep thinking about for differencemaking leadership as follows:

“Our planet’s scarce resources are massively over-allocated to the global growth economy resulting in ecological overshoot” and

“Planetary resources are massively under-allocated to the vast majority of humanity who live in poverty, yet massively over-allocated to the wealthy minority of humanity.”

The above quotes may test your biases.  Put them to one side (even if temporarily!) and answer the following question:

What is your leadership doing about the world’s great challenges?

One of my clients sent a link to another article that may test your biases.  It’s from Laissez Faire Today called “How to be free when you’re not.” You can read it here.

Seth Godin’s latest publication “Graceful” is worth far more than the $2.99 I paid Amazon for the Kindle version.  I think it is a key read for differencemaking leadership.

And speaking of Kindle if you want to understand how to make an impact in the digital world read Chris Brogan and Julien Smith’s “The Impact Equation - Are You Making Things Happen or Just Making Noise?”.  Invest just $9.99 for this on Kindle.  I first heard about the book via a blog from Chris titled “Social Media isn't dead, just boring” I am glad I invested the $9.99 in the book and highly recommend it to you.

Two further books I highly recommend that may challenge your biases, yet inspire you to be the differencemaking leader you want to be.

“Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman, and
“Wilful Blindess - Why we ignore the obvious at our peril” by Margaret Heffernan.

Be the difference you want to see in the world.
Ian
I work with business owners/leaders of medium sized business and leaders of divisions in multi-national companies to lift employee performance by enhancing their gifts.



Wednesday 14 November 2012

25 ways to move from performance management to performance leadership

25 ways to move from performance management to performance leadership and inspire premier employee performance (order not relevant)

1. Stop seeing people as they are.  See people as the can be.

2. Find out what’s really important to your people and help them achieve it.

3. Assess performance not people.

4. Stop trying to manage people.  Instead lead people.

5. Help each employee to create their own personal piece of your strategy execution map.

6. When you assess performance support assessment with data.

7. Provide "feedforward" before feedback.

8. Focus on standards instead of goals.

9. Discover a shared-view with your employees about where you’re going, why you’re going there, how you will get there, who will do what and when, how you will live your values.

10. Teach people to be accountable and let them be.

11. Appreciate people when they do well.

12. Never confuse a person with their performance.

13. Name the elephants in your rooms.

14. Role model candid and authentic conversations.

15. Never review performance and salary at the same time.

16. See problems as opportunities to innovate i.e. change what’s normal rather than solve the problem and reinstate the status quo (normal).

17. Keep your promises.

18. Praise in public and in private.

19. Share success stories other people can see and feel themselves in.

20. Be a disruptive influence for good.

21. Be fully present in the now.

22. Only have performance conversations about previously agreed actions. Only change actions with agreement.

23. Focus on processes not outcomes.

24. Do your life’s work and inspire your employees to do theirs.  Taking the pulse check here may help you and your people.  As soon as you complete the pulse check and press send you will be able to download the PDF version of my Changing What's Normal book. Sparkenation 6 in my book 'Discovering Your Life's Work' will help you a great deal because it contains lots for you to think about concerning the 16 statements of the pulse check.

25. Be remarkable at identifying and deploying the gifts/talents of your people. Take the Talent Maximisation Pulse Check here.  You just might be staggered by what completing this pulse check will reveal to you.  As a thank you for completing the pulse check, as soon as you press send you will be able to download my appendix ebook to the leaders guide in my Enhancing Their Gifts System™ - 45 really useful tools, tips and techniques for recruiting, engaging and retaining great people, a resource people worldwide have used to help them maximise the gifts/talents of their people.

Be the difference you want to see in the world.
Ian

I work with business owners/leaders of medium sized business and leaders of divisions in multi-national companies to lift employee performance by enhancing their gifts.




Monday 12 November 2012

Rather than trying to manage your poor performers out, how about leading them in?

I have had many people contact me following my recent article Performance management is an oxymoron too!  There have also been several discussions in LinkedIn groups about the article.  I have felt despair at times because when a lot of people talk about performance management what they often mean is managing someone out of their workplace because of poor performance and so performance management’s bad name is heightened.

Rather than trying to manage your poor performers out, how about leading them in?

There are many tell tale signs of under performing workplaces.  Here are my top 10:

#1. Leaders avoiding and/or putting off difficult conversations about performance.
#2. Leaders confusing problems with people.
#3. Leaders confusing problems with personalities.
#4. Leaders have poor communication and presentation skills.
#5. Lack of a shared view between leaders and employees about where the organisation is going, why it’s going there, how it will get there, who will do what and when, and how we will behave regardless of the situation.
#6. Employees don’t know the organisations strategy for moving forward and particularly they don’t know and own their piece of the execution map.
#7. Leaders failing to truly appreciate people when they do well and employees failing to appreciate other employees when they do well.
#8. Poor accountability.
#9. Blaming and shaming rather than being accountable.
#10. A focus on business goals and how they will be achieved rather than a focus that maintains harmony between personal and business goals.

Seth Godin offers some great insights into overcoming these short comings in a recent blog Bad performance, good performance and the other two kinds
Seth talks about personal performance.

All change is personal first. Relationship change is second.  Organisational change is a distant third.

Start with the personal.  Humanize your relationships with your employees.  They are people first, employees second.  Get to know your people, their hopes and dreams, their fears and failings.  See your people as they can be, not as they are. 

Have conversations with your people about how they can turn their personal hopes and dreams into reality.  Document with them how they will do this.  Keep this to a page and just focus on the next 90 days yet with the long term firmly in mind.  On the other side of the page help your people to outline how they will bring their unique talents to their work on a consistent basis.  Use this document as the basis for daily appreciation and accountability conversations.

The writer Leon Gettler, who for me makes the Management Today magazine in Australia, said in a recent article “The toughest job for managers is having difficult conversations.”  If you don’t know how to have such conversations get to learning how and fast.

My promise to you is that the more you treat people as the one-of-a-kind human being that each of us is, the tough conversations get simpler and paradoxically there is less of a need for them because people become accountable for their own intentions, feelings, thoughts and actions.

Documenting performance possibility and having daily appreciation and accountability conversations (the tough ones) are key components of a performance leadership system.  Operative word leadership.  System is the management bit.  Rule of thumb leadership is about people, management is about systems.

I actually prefer the word talent to the word performance in this context.  Talent or the lack of using our talent/s well is what leads to performance, good and bad.

A powerful talent leadership and management system means we

*recruit people aligned with our values
*identify and cultivate people's gifts/talents
*induct and engage people to bring their best to their work consistently

Such a system also means:
*leaders are having informal and formal and candid conversations daily about performance that inspires and leads to personal accountability
*employees are having the same kind of conversations with each other and other stakeholders
*wisdom is retained when people move on
*how achievements are celebrated is known, agreed, and lived
*succession planning works in practice
*overall the special gifts/talents of individuals are being enhanced

How does your system stack up?

Having such a system is integral to leading people in and soon means a far less need to manage people out.

Be the difference you want to see in the world.
Ian

PS My Enhancing Their Gifts System™can help you move quickly from performance management to talent leadership and management.

In just 30 days time the very special offer for implementing and embedding the system via a web based learning program and with the help of an accredited mentor expires.  It is an offer I will never be making again.

I will hold the offer for anyone who participates in a demonstration clinic.  The next clinics are on this Thursday the 15th.  Details here. There will be more clinics before the December 12th offer cut off day.  You can also make arrangements for a private clinic simply by contacting an accredited mentor or myself.


Wednesday 7 November 2012

When problems are bigger than the people trying to solve them

I watched a show on ABC television last night about American politics.  I am sorry I didn't catch the name of one of the people interviewed.  A non politician, this person said something like
"it was easier for Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, they were men bigger than the problems.  Today the problems are bigger than the men."

I find this very insightful. American politics like many other nations is virtually gridlocked and therefore little of great value gets done.  If this continues it won't matter of course who is the new President when you read this because nothing of value will get done and America will slip further. 

The world in many ways is gridlocked and we need inclusive leaders willing and able to collaborate in order to solve the big problems affecting us all.

How about your business?  Are you trying to solve big problems and not being inclusive and collaborative?

I witness a lot of go it alone leaders.  These folk try to do it their way and ignore people who would do things differently.  True leadership is about finding a way forward together.

Think about all the problems you face in your business.  See them as opportunities for innovation.  If you solve the problems will this mean a return to normal, a reinstating of the status quo and therefore mean you are just back to where you were?  Or will you solve your problems in such ways that will take your business to performance levels never achieved before?  To do this, to truly innovate, you need to be inclusive, collaborative and inspiring so that everyone puts their shoulders to all the wheels.   

True leaders inspire people to bring everything remarkable that they are to everything they do and then they get out of the way.

Be the difference you want to see in the world.
Ian

I work with business owners/leaders of medium sized business and leaders of divisions in multi-national companies to lift employee performance by enhancing their gifts.




Monday 5 November 2012

Chicken Soup Not For The Soul - Guest post by Steve Harris

This is a guest post by Steve Harris one of the accredited mentors of my Enhancing Their Gifts System™



Many years ago I worked in an organisation that had a very advanced, very modern online performance appraisal system. This system was well structured for such a device, Senior Management and HR had bought into the concept of taking their old paper based system online.

Participation was mandatory and all sorts of strange penalties awaited tardy employees if they did not put in the required data.

In an MBA textbook fashion, the goals were set annually, in concrete, and reviewed quarterly by both parties to trace performance. A series of subjective behaviours was also included to help “develop our human capital”, like they were something you bought from a supplier and needed to be kept well serviced and shiny.

It also included a section on personal and professional development, where the good employee wrote down their career and developmental aspirations, in the fond expectation that those in the rarefied air of senior management would look out from their lofty perch and reach down to help this aspirational employee up into the realms of management possibility.

Indeed, this no doubt happened, and may well have helped me along.

But I also knew a very intelligent fellow who, faced with this intellectual challenge of determining where he should aspire to be inside this shining example of corporate life, wondered if anyone really read this stuff.

His recipe for chicken soup, pasted into the personal development section regularly, appeared to go unnoticed for many years, proving to him a pet theory and providing me with a story I have told over and over again.

Why? Because put simply, if you want to demotivate or demoralise the very people that your business success depends upon, then create a system that everyone has to slavishly follow, but no one pays any attention to.

Better to engage directly and openly with your employees and treat them as the unique, talented individuals they are, than process them like a bunch of chickens destined for the soup.

Steve Harris can be contacted on +61 438703570.


Be the difference you want to see in the world.
Ian
I work with business owners/leaders of medium sized business and leaders of divisions in multi-national companies to lift employee performance by enhancing their gifts.