Who do you need a YES from? You (and your team) can get to YES Faster.™
When: Friday, February 15, 2013—Morning Workshop (with afternoon Coaching Session for first 20 Registrants)
Where: The Harrisburg Amphitheater, Holiday Inn East at 4751 Lindle Road
For full details please read this PDF. To register for the workshop click here.
The graduates listed below completed an intense six month program where the group and program facilitator, John Dame with Dame Management Strategies, worked through key critical issues affecting their business.
Jen Delaye, The JDK Group
Anne Deeter Gallaher, Deeter Gallaher Group LLC
Susan Pera, Cornerstone Coffeehouse & Culinary Kitchen
Linda Goldstein, Harrisburg Regional Chamber & CREDC
Jodi Frank, Keystone Safety Supply LLC
Tina Nixon, YWCA of Greater Harrisburg
PerformanceCEO is designed for business owners, C-level executives and top level management.
If you are interested in more information or if you would like to apply, please click here.
One of my Vistage companies, HydroWorx, is putting on an Underwater Marathon in Heshey, PA at Troegs Brewery to help heal Special Forces Warriors. Most of my groups has gotten behind this cause and I thought you might consider it as well.
The healing for these soldiers is done by putting them thru intensive restorative rehabilitation and conditioning over and beyond the level they get from the U.S. military healthcare plan. This is all done via a non-profit foundation called the Eagle Fund and it takes these SEALS, Rangers, Recon warriors back to active duty status and helps heal their home life as well. All these guys want to do is serve and protect. This allows them to get back to that.
Here’s the website: www.underwatermarathon.com and you can watch a brief video on the soldiers and the restorative program at the bottom of this post.
HydroWorx is hosting a Special Ops soldier and the Founder of the Eagle Fund, Alex Lincoln, in from Pensacola, FL for breakfast and lunch presentations on April 26 and 27 (Thurs and Fri) at HydroWorx offices in Middletown, PA and I would like you to consider coming to meet the soldier and Alex and hear their story.
It’s a casual presentation and Q & A times and free meals are from 7:30 am and 12 noon on either the 26th or the 27th —- you can pick one of the days.
So far they have raised $55,000 in company pledges and also from individual runners for the Sept. 9th event. It’s really gaining momentum and about 15 local businesses are helping out so far and many are Vistage companies.
Thanks for your consideration and interest and I hope to see you at HydroWorx’s offices on April 26th or 27th.
Hay Group has conducted in-depth research into ‘megatrends’: the cultural, technological and organizational shifts that will define leadership over the course of the next two decades. They have a video and whitepaper available at their site.
So you’re a dynamic and effective leader. All your employees are invested in your vision for the company. They know their roles, trust your business acumen implicitly, and depend on you to lead them well. Candid 360 degree reviews confirm how much your employees value and rely on your leadership. You are effectively and profitably steering your company through these tough economic times.
Everything seems perfect, right? In the short term, the answer is probably a resounding “Yes.” In all honesty, you may be truly indispensable. You may also be immensely gratified by your personal importance to the organization and derive significant self-worth from your employees’ reliance on your leadership. In the mid- to long-term, however, you may be at serious risk of jeopardizing your company’s future health by fostering leadership atrophy in your organization.
One definition of “atrophy” is “a wasting away or progressive decline.” Leadership atrophy is the wasting away or progressive decline of employees’ leadership skills when leadership is centralized in one key person, particularly a dynamic individual such as the founder of a business or a charismatic CEO.
Few, if any, key employees are hired or survive for long in a competent business organization if they are totally devoid of leadership skills. However, stripped of any expectation that they will lead, or opportunities to actually lead, your employees’ leadership skills will wither away over time.
The potential consequences or leadership atrophy within an organization are dire. Most importantly, no one lives forever. As Steve Jobs’ recent resignation hammers home, the stark reality is that someone else will eventually run the business in which you have invested so much or your life. If you allow the leadership skills of your employees to atrophy as a result of your strong leadership, your succession planning will be infinitely more difficult due to a lack of strong successor candidates within the organization.
Leadership atrophy also detrimentally impacts the day-to-day life of the leader. Do you get sucked into making decisions that are within your employees’ areas of responsibility under the guise of “making sure you are on board?” Is your inbox crammed with email traffic on which you are copied “just to keep you in the loop,” but which really is an implicit invitation for you to weigh in on issues better left to your employees? Do your employees constantly interrupt your vacations seeking your input on less-than-critical issues? Such distractions limit your ability to focus on strategic planning and effectively manage your business.
To avoid leadership atrophy, here are a few key steps you can implement:
There are many tools to accomplish these steps, however, the key step is the first. Until the leader takes a stand against leadership atrophy, there can be no progress. If you are ready to take this first step, Dame Management Strategies is fully equipped to assist you in combating leadership atrophy in your organization.
-JD
DMS was recently featured in the Central Penn Business Journal in a article titled “Program Aims to help small-to medium-sized businesses grow. Read the entire article here.
An individual from an organization that I was working with commented, “Our greatest competitive advantage is the fact that our founder has unlimited resources and we never have to want for money.” I had never experienced a statement quite like this before. What happens operationally to an organization with very, very deep pockets? My response to this individual, “Tell me more.”
After an extended 1-2-1 interviews with the entire team, I had a better sense of the perspective that I had just run into. This organization, founded for a unique purpose by a single investor, had placed an emphasis on culture. The culture included elegance, grace, trust, etc. Stewardship and performance were missing. Individuals in this organization knew no boundaries. Think it, dream it, or just speak it; and it became real. Senior leadership’s actions exhibited a culture of entitlement. Staff at every level felt empowered to make financial commitments that were well beyond the scope of their position. The result was lots of money spent on worthless ideas and projects with little or no results and zero accountability. And, although everyone in the organization loved the culture and enjoyed working for this organization, nothing was happening and there was no traction toward any strategic goals.
The scarcity of resources creates a natural tension that is needed to enhance performance and creativity. Most organizations will never have to deal with the power of excess. If you do, be sure to value stewardship, accountability, and performance. Excess places a special responsibility on leadership. If you are too comfortable and decisions are easy, you are not leading. You are just a willing participant on your own “gravy train.”
Occasionally, you witness an event that has broader implications than the anecdotal retelling of a personal story.
During a company meeting, a CEO and his COO were looking for uninterrupted focus and decided to put their BlackBerry® smartphones in a box on the desk. At the end of this meeting, each executive picked up his phone and left for a busy day of client conferences. Once out the door and on the road, the CEO prepared to make a call and discovered that he had the COO’s phone. He also noticed an email that said DELIVER TO The CEO. Intrigued, he opened the email and read it. It was a series of messages from the COO’s daughter-in-law and son (another company employee) calling the CEO to task over the company’s holiday schedule. The daughter-in-law’s diatribe was vicious. In this written exchange, his COO added fuel to the fire by claiming the CEO couldn’t make a decision on any important issue and he even suggested possible improprieties by claiming the CEO’s wife called continually to check on her husband’s whereabouts.
The CEO was angry and hurt. His first thought was to dismiss the COO. After some reflection, he called the COO and asked to meet to exchange phones. During this brief meeting, the CEO asked his COO about the emails he had seen. Shocked, the COO explained that he had been feeling left out and wanted more face time with the CEO. This was just his way of venting frustrations. The CEO commented that he had been very happy with the COO and felt that the reward for a job well done should be fewer directives regarding operational priorities. Initially, the relationship seemed repaired. Within 60 days, the COO left citing the desire to work in a more structured environment.
Two lessons come to mind. First, as a key executive you need to publically have your CEO’s back. This does not mean that you have to agree with every idea, strategy, or action taken by your CEO. It does mean that whether it is family, colleagues, or coworkers you need to be in complete alignment. The second lesson and possibly the most important is the lack of an authentic relationship between the CEO and COO. Strong feelings, frustrations, and a sense of misunderstanding lead to a disconnection. Full engagement can only come through rewarding conversations that skillfully address the important issues. Don’t say it or write it unless you mean it. Better yet, say it to the right person and then have a meaningful conversation.
By: Greg Bustin
You probably know that the Roman god Janus is the origin of the month we call January.
And you’re likely aware that Janus was most often depicted with two faces looking in opposite directions because of his ability to look into the past and see into the future.
But did you know that Janus was frequently used to symbolize change and transitions such as the progression of the past into the future, of one vision to another, and of one condition to another?
It’s this notion of transitioning from one condition to another that I’ll address here.
In the past four years, I’ve been invited to lead 62 planning sessions for the leadership teams of companies of all sizes, ages and industries, including not-for-profit organizations. The CEOs of most of these companies are members of Vistage, the world’s largest CEO organization (www.vistage.com). And I’ve spoken throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe to hundreds more leaders that are eager to improve their effectiveness.
What I’ve observed is that most organizations are two-faced. They constantly transition from one condition – the desired condition – to the actual, less-than-effective condition. You might even characterize this organizational behavior as schizophrenic. That’s because, like Janus, most organizations have one vision of the future that differs markedly from the reality of their day-to-day operations.
The Schizophrenic Organization
As part of my planning and process improvement work with these organizations, we undertake an exercise that uses a model I’ve developed called the Identity Pyramid (you can download the Identity Pyramid shown below for free atwww.bustin.com/resources).
In the course of the exercise – which will take at least a couple of hours and sometimes as long as a half-day – we spend significant time examining how the organizations delivers on its promises.
Every organization I’ve ever worked with – profit and not-for-profit – has cited the pursuit of customer satisfaction as one of the by-products of the organization’s ability to deliver on its promises. There’s often a “Whatever it takes” mindset that comes into play. That’s the promise you and your company make to your customers and prospective customers OUTSIDE the company.
Here’s the problem. Promises being made INSIDE the company – deadlines, commitments, agreements, in effect, spoken and sometimes written contracts that colleagues make to one another – are broken every day. If a missed deadline involves a customer, it means that you, one of your star players or a special group of team members must jump in and through some heroic effort deliver on the promise that’s been made to your customers.
Has this happened in your organization?
A Culture of Accountability
When it does, it’s an accountability issue. Somebody has dropped the ball somewhere. And when that type of behavior is allowed to continue, it becomes the default culture of your organization. This behavior must be called out and addressed during the planning process so that solutions can be developed and consequences – good and bad – can be established to reward the behavior you expect and penalize under-performance.
Such behavior has an even more costly impact on your organization: Heroic events and a “whatever it takes” mindset may make your organization a winner today, but the organization will lose in the long run. Heroic events make it highly unlikely that you will be able to grow and scale your organization because you are managing by exception rather than by objective. And at some point, your star players may decide that it’s not worth their effort to tackle their assignments if they know the level of commitment from their colleagues is lacking.
If this behavior is occurring inside your organization, you have created – by default – a culture of double standards and not a culture of accountability.
The culture of your organization matters. After all, people don’t leave companies – they leave cultures.
So if creating and sustaining a culture of accountability throughout the organization is important to you, you as a leader must be very clear about your expectations up and down the organization.
Start the New Year with a single-minded vision to treat promises made on the inside of your organization with the same regard as those made to customers on the outside. Don’t be two-faced.