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January 23 - March 21, 2019
AUTHENTICITY:
SELF-AWARENESS:
SELF-MASTERY:
When you know yourself, you can master yourself. You can keep your ego in check, take responsibility for your behavior, adapt to change, embrace new ideas, and adhere to your standards of integrity and honesty under all conditions.
HUMILITY:
also recognized that it’s not useful to beat other people up when they make mistakes. To the contrary, that’s the time to coach them, encourage them, and help them regain their self-confidence.
The behavior of a business’s leaders is, ultimately, the behavior of the organization. As such, it’s the foundation of the culture.
in an organization the hardware (strategy and structure) is inert without the software (beliefs and behaviors).
First you tell people clearly what results you’re looking for. Then you discuss how to get those results, as a key element of the coaching process. Then you reward people for producing the results. If they come up short, you provide additional coaching, withdraw rewards, give them other jobs, or let them go. When you do these things, you create a culture of getting things done.
Behaviors are beliefs turned into action.
The norms are about how people work together.
The social software includes the values, beliefs, and norms of behavior, along with everything else that isn’t hardware. Like the computer’s software, it’s what brings the corporate hardware to life as a functioning system.
We don’t expect people to know everything, but we do expect people to get the best answers they can get, and they get them by working with other people.
Indeed, harmony—sought by many leaders who wish to offend no one—can be the enemy of truth.
A good motto to observe is “Truth over harmony.” Candor helps wipe out the silent lies and pocket vetoes, and it prevents the stalled initiatives and rework that drain energy.
the difference was in the quality of the dialogue.
“The culture of a company is the behavior of its leaders. Leaders get the behavior they exhibit and tolerate. You change the culture of a company by changing the behavior of its leaders. You measure the change in culture by measuring the change in the personal behavior of its leaders and the performance of the business.”
Can you create an execution culture in your own business if it’s part of a larger organization that doesn’t have one? If you try, will you become a social outcast? The odds are that you can do it—especially once you start showing profit and revenue growth.
We took care not to say anything about the person that you wouldn’t say to his or her face.
Often, in fact, he doesn’t have a good grasp of the job requirements themselves. He hasn’t defined the job in terms of its three or four nonnegotiable criteria—things the person must be able to do in order to succeed.
the foundation of a great company is the way it develops people—providing the right experiences, such as learning in different jobs, learning from other people, giving candid feedback, and providing coaching, education, and training. If you spend the same amount of time and energy developing people as you do on budgeting, strategic planning, and financial monitoring, the payoff will come in sustainable competitive advantage.
I didn’t always understand that. I too was of the mind that the better the education and pedigree, the smarter the person. But that’s not true. You’re searching for people with an enormous drive for winning. These people get their satisfaction from getting things done. The more they succeed in getting things done, the more they increase their capacity.
Getting things done through others is a fundamental leadership skill. Indeed, if you can’t do it, you’re not leading.
“What did you get done, and is everybody else in the game?”
Follow-through is the cornerstone of execution, and every leader who’s good at executing follows through religiously. Following through ensures that people are doing the things they committed to do, according to the agreed timetable.
Never finish a meeting without clarifying what the follow-through will be, who will do it, when and how they will do it, what resources they will use, and how and when the next review will take place and with whom.
How leaders meet their commitments is at least as important as whether they meet them and is often more important.
If I’m doing the appraisal, at the end I’ll say, “Now I’m going to give you the last line. You’ve heard what I think—what would you like to add to this?” He’ll reply, and then I’ll say, “Well then, we’ve agreed that these are the issues you’ve got to work on. Now, some of the problems may be in your DNA, and you may not necessarily be able to change them. But you can modify them, improve them.” Finally, the person being appraised initials the document, saying in effect, “Okay, you’ve said some nice things about me. I appreciate it. I accept the fact I have these learning needs and that I will
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If you don’t get the people process right, you will never fulfill the potential of your business.
robust people process does three things. It evaluates individuals accurately and in depth. It provides a framework for identifying and developing the leadership talent—at all levels and of all kinds—the organization will need to execute its strategies down the road. And it fills the leadership pipeline
Who are the people who are going to execute that strategy, and can they do it?
It’s not hard to identify the person who is wrong for a job because of his behavior. But it’s better to make sure such a person doesn’t rise to a critical job in the first place.
A robust people process provides a powerful framework for determining the organization’s talent needs over time, and for planning actions that will meet those needs. It is based on the following building blocks: Linkage to the strategic plan and its near-, medium-, and long-term milestones and the operating plan target, including specific financial targets. Developing the leadership pipeline through continuous improvement, succession depth, and reducing retention risk. Deciding what to do about nonperformers. Transforming the mission and operations of HR.
There’s no one system for creating and maintaining a robust people process, but certain rules are needed: integrity, honesty, a common approach,
The Duke team identified four basic groups of competencies: functional skills, business skills, management skills, and leadership skills.
If a strategy does not address the hows, it is a candidate for failure.
who buys this product?
what you distill and gain from the process is an understanding of what needs to be done.
A plan that doesn’t deal with the near-term issues of costs, productivity, and people makes getting from here to there unacceptably risky—and often impossible.
his strategy for the product would make money and provide adequate return on investment: Pricing at different levels of demand. Will the customer pay a premium for what you claim is a differentiation? Cost and cost structure now and in the future. Cash required for working capital. Actions required to ramp up revenue growth. The investment required to market the product. Continued investments in technologies to prepare for the next generation of product. Competitors’ pricing reactions.
The review should be a creative exercise, not a drill where people regurgitate data. If creativity is absent from the conversation, the participants might as well stay in their offices. People have to leave with closure to the discussion and clear accountability for their parts in the plan, and the leader must follow through to be sure that everyone is clear about the outcome of the review.
The strategy review is also a good place for a leader to learn about and develop people. You’ll find out about their strategic-thinking capabilities, both as individuals and as a group. At the end of the review, you’ll have a good perspective on the people involved and an assessment about their potential for promotion. And you’ll have had opportunities to coach people.
Achieving everything we’ve talked about so far depends on linking the strategy process to the people and operations processes well.
Throughout the processes outlined above, asking questions constantly keeps the critical issues in mind: Do you have the right leaders in the right jobs? How well do they work together? Do you have enough of the kind of people you need? Do you have the production, financial, and technological resources to execute the strategy?
What you need is what you find in companies that execute: a robust operating process, centered on an operating plan that links strategy and people to results.
It’s not just the leader alone who has to be present and involved. All of the people accountable for executing the plan need to help construct it.
Then you want to test those assumptions, by going to customers or some other source, to be sure they’re valid. With this kind of information, the group can make intelligent trade-offs based on reality. That’s what you do in an operating review.
Debating the assumptions and making trade-offs openly in a group is an important part of the social software. It builds the business leadership capacities of all the people involved. As they construct and share a common comprehensive picture of what’s happening on the outside and the inside, they hone their ability to synchronize efforts for execution. And they publicly make their commitments to execute.
You need to be able to identify any assumptions that might be troublesome, in case they don’t spot them. You are not saying in the back of your mind, There’s no way these guys are going to make this plan, so as to later smile and say, “I told you so.” You want to do all you can to help them make the plan.
For example, if I saw a big fourth-quarter sales spike in somebody’s plan, I’d say, “Why? What’s going to happen in the fourth quarter that’s going to cause this? I don’t want you to go into the plan with an unrealistic challenge. I want it to be ambitious. I want it to be a little bit of a stretch, but I want it to be achievable.”
