by Charles Plant | Nov 28, 2012 | Emotional Intelligence, Leadership Development
A friend of mine told me a story yesterday about his 6 year old son. Last year in school his son had been the master of rebellion, not doing what the teacher asked, not lining up and holding the rope when out for a walk. A positive James Dean in the making.
This year, the son has been completely different. He does the school work that his teacher asks. he follows the rules in the playground. He is a completely different student.
So much so that his father asked him why the difference?
His son’s response. “It’s because the teacher likes me.”
Out of the mouths of babes and straight into the world of the working stiff. Don’t forget: “They won’t care what you know until they know that you care about them.”
by Charles Plant | Nov 26, 2012 | Leaders, Leadership Development
Another great TED Talk. It goes back to the issue of passion, my hobbyhorse of a few weeks ago.
by Charles Plant | Nov 23, 2012 | Leadership Development
Random thought for the day.
Many people get the concepts of process and bureacracy confused. They think that adding process is making an organization more bureaucratic. This really isn’t so.
What process does is allow you to delegate decision making down to the lowest level possible in the organization.
With good process, few people need to be involved in a decision and thus decisions can be made quickly. Thus customer service is improved, people get things done, and there is clarity, coordination and speed. No bureaucracy.
Bureaucracy results when there is a lack of process or too much process. Without process, no one is sure how a decision is to be made, who gets to make the decision and as a result lots of people have to communicate and decision making is slow. With too much process, too many people are involved, communication is slow and as a result customer service is poor and people are frustrated.
by Charles Plant | Nov 21, 2012 | Leadership Development
It’s funny but when you look at early stage companies, they all seem to have a strong corporate culture. When you look at them again several years later after much growth, the original culture has usually died and been replaced by another less appealing one. What’s going on here?
First, a definition of corporate culture. To me it’s the set of values and beliefs that a group of people hold, it’s how they communicate, and how they make decisions. Now why is this important? Well all the research seems to say that a strong culture of leadership, client service, and innovation results in much better financial performance than where those cultural elements are weaker.
For a company of below 10 people, it’s really easy to develop a positive corporate culture. A passionate founder with a strong personality, the ability to talk to everyone in the company every day, and the greater use of group decisions means a stronger culture. Employees are more engaged, customers are closer to the company and everyone is passionate about the next product.
Take that company out a few years and give it more than 25 people, a plethora of products, and a new CEO and you have the recipe for cultural stagnation. No longer is there a passionate founder leading the charge. You can’t talk to everyone every day and with that many people, who knows who makes the decisions? The result is unfortunately, less engaged employees, a weaker link with customers, and less radical innovation.
One key to success in a startup is to keep your culture strong as you grow. That is possible and you can even regain it even after you lose it. Google is a positive role model for maintaining a strong culture and Apple is a great case in point of a company that lost its corporate culture and managed to regain it.
To keep your corporate culture strong you need to work at it every day. An annual retreat won’t work and neither will a sporadic program or two. What does work is having the CEO take responsibility for culture, defining that culture in written form, getting a buy-in from everybody, and talking about and reporting on culture on at least a monthly basis.
If you force yourself to assess and report on cultural changes on a regular basis you’ll be able to keep it strong and vibrant and keep being a high performance company.
by Charles Plant | Nov 20, 2012 | Leadership Development
Perhaps if you’re in a relationship your partner will tell you nicely that you smell. But will your direct reports tell you that you’re a lousy leader?
There are times I feel like I’m trying to sell deodorant to people who don’t know they smell. While the rest of the world is telling them that a bath once in a while is all you need, I’m trying to tell them that bath works for a short while but you have to keep taking baths your whole life and use deodorant if you don’t want to stink.
What’s up here? It seems like everyone I talk to is a great leader. How can everyone be a great leader if 65% of employees are not fully engaged in their work. Perhaps leadership is like driving, sex or bodily odours. We all seem to think that we’re great leaders, great drivers, great in bed and don’t stink.
Wake up, if you think you’re a great leader, chances are high that this isn’t really the case. And why should it be? You’ve probably not spent much time working with a great leader, taking courses, reading books, trying things out or getting feedback.
Most companies seem to offer a leadership course every now and then and think that is enough. Well golly, is a bath once a week good enough so that you don’t stink? No way. Leadership is something that you will need to learn your whole life. It is so multi-faceted and situationally dependent that unless you stay in the same job at the same company working with the same people your whole life, you’ll need to be learning leadership your whole life.
So here’s an idea. When you have your shower tomorrow and every day thereafter, when you put on your deodorant, and get into those fresh clothes, all so you don’t stink, ask yourself…..what am I doing today to become a better leader?
