WASTING YOUR KEY ASSET IN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

I often come across Chief Executives and Business Leaders who are prepared to spend great amounts of money to maintain the technological advantage over competitors but do not feel able to commit the same amount to the development of their people. All too often the cry is " Our people are our greatest asset" and yet everything that happens within an organisation goes against that mantra. Scant rewards, little engagement, no recognition eventually leads to someone moving on with a view to improving their lot. Well that's a years wages down the pan to recruit train and develop a successor according to Price Waterhouse Coopers. That is without looking at the competitive positives that come with that employee in the new organisation.
Loyalty is a word that springs to mind. Loyal customers are vital and loyal employees bring similar rewards. They don't require initial training, they spot opportunities, they understand the business, they know how to service customer needs and they know each other and all those benefits come without a bill!
Now should one of them leave and join a competitor what will go with them? Their knowledge of the organisation and the way it works will disappear, their experience and their training even perhaps their customers will all go! The gaining organisation wins hands down by investing in them and their future contemporaries.
Now lets invest some time with employees meeting  and matching their needs, engaging with them, leading them properly, empowering them to greater productivity and rewarding them appropriately with well thought out rewards. Suddenly people will enjoy work. They will strive for future organisational success and  ignore that other offer. With a little bit of investment staff will be content and happy to work with a caring and progressive organisation. When you work for one of those organisations you don't want to work for anybody else.

WHY ARE LEADERS FRIGHTENED BY LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

All too often today's leaders hide behind the ambiguity of the term leadership in refusing leadership development. The root cause of the problem is that most leaders have nothing to measure their leadership against, therefore they assume that they are by default successful leaders. But how much more successful could they be as leaders? Is their organisation where it is because of a set of circumstances despite them rather than because of them?
Until an individual leader wants to develop there is no real chance of him or her accepting any form of leadership development. It is only when a leader recognises the need to grow as a leader  that they become interested in  their personal development. Leaders if they are to be effective must be reflective and if they are reflective they will recognise their strengths and their development areas. So instead of hiding behind the ambiguity of the term leadership front up to it and challenge yourself to become a better leader. Who knows how far you and your organisation may go.

THE IMPACT OF THE INFORMATION AGE ON HAPPINESS

I think that many in the modern Western World have trouble accepting their life's lot. And by that I don't mean meekly accepting a position but remaining honest enough with yourself to set realistic and achievable goals.
For me many people attach the same emotions they feel for real events to what has appeared on their television or games console screen. Soaps can become as much part of their life as the woes of a neighbour. I believe this is because soaps and some games, unlike films which have a beginning and an end, are constant in life and have a longevity that makes them difficult to distinguish from reality.
This is really the crux of the matter for me. In the past, prior to the information age, people achieved the best they could in their area of the World. They knew how to measure their achievements and put them into context. Now because they have access to modern celebrities and sports stars the bar on realism has been raised and people have difficult distinguishing their lives from those who appear in the media. The more naive assume that they are only successful when they have matched their celebrity lifestyle. They become over ambitious and dissatisfied with  their personal achievements and unrealistic in their expectations. They are unhappy with their considerable personal progress and crave more.
People in poorer parts of the world often appear more content with their lot because they have not been continually influenced by the media. They understand relative success and failure far more clearly than many in the media oriented Western World. Those who are happy live for the present, learn from the past and challenge  themselves with realistic goals and are very content when they achieve them. Perhaps we should consider the impact the media makes on our own happiness?

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GOOD LEADERSHIP AND EFFICIENCY

I was shocked the other day when asking a group to tell me, as a percentage, how efficient they thought they were at work? The average from the group was 45%. So how are they getting away with being 55% inefficient? Surely they should be on half pay!
Poor leadership is the answer. Whether it be self leadership or leadership from superiors it was leadership that was at the heart of the issue. People need direction, they need guidance but they also need supervision, training and mentoring to perform to their optimum potential.It is here where the  main problem lies.
Too many of today's modern leaders do not perform their team development function effectively. They  allow their personnel to work at levels well below their capability and do not empower their teams by challenging them. Personal development, mentoring  and supervision all take time and all too often today's leaders are too busy to do it. Yet by doing it they create time and space to focus on other important issues as their workload is reduced by competent, satisfied team members who feel challenged and who are enjoying their work. The team performs close to its full potential and everyone gains it really is that simple.

KNOWING WHERE YOU STAND AS A LEADER

Leadership as a term is as broad as it is wide and hence all encompassing. It exists  in every facet of life from self leadership through to multinational corporation and even national leadership and it exists at different levels in an organisation. But how do we know how good we are as leaders and hence where we might need leadership development? Could you turn an ordinary successful organisation into an extraordinary successful organisation?
Leaders are successful in myriad ways and what suits one situation may not suit another. Leadership in times of plenty is simpler than leadership in fallow times. Self analysis through reflection is essential to understanding your personal leadership style,strengths and areas for development but to quote Donald Rumsfeld "There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know." And that is the issue for without a real depth of leadership experience and knowledge we cannot gauge whether we are performing at our optimum leadership level and hence are we leading  our organisation in the best way they deserve.  Internal 360 degree feedback is useful,  mentoring helps but an external leadership audit can be really effective in leadership development terms.

HAVING DIFFICULTY MEASURING LEADERSHIP

As a leadership development company one of the most difficult aspects of our work is measuring the return on investment from any form of leadership development.

There is no doubt that leadership drives success in an organisation and therefore has a direct influence on the bottom line profit of any organisation but the relationship between leadership and profit is indirect and tenuous therefore difficult to correlate and hence measure. Anyone can tell fairly quickly if a company is well lead or badly led by the way it functions. Good leadership is after all the difference between being an ordinary or an extraordinary organisation and that difference is stark  to the honed eye. Yet rarely is the success of an organisation directly attributed to the leadership function.
Leadership needs to be measured over a substantial period of time as its impact will take time to manifest itself. And leadership cannot be measured easily for its effects are entwined in every outcome or efficiency measure. There is no simple clearly evident link between good leadership and success although such leadership is commonly acknowledged as  fundamental to success.

Leadership, good or bad, is exercised in a personal and individual way and therefore there is no real metric that meets the leadership requirement as most of it is about feeling and subjective rather than tangible objective assessment. Different types and styles of leader suit different situations and a leaders influence is so ubiquitous it can be measured in many different ways.

One thing each leader is responsible for is selecting their supporting team and it is perhaps here that there are certain common requirements that need to be met. Having the key skill sets embedded within that team and allowing those skills to come to the fore when necessary is probably one of the true abiities of a successful leaders and perhaps one of the  simplest and  yet most effective way of measuring  good leadership. Leadership is after all about decision making and leadership is about making sure that the right expert is in the right place to enable the smart decision.
So what are the key skill sets required within any leadership team and how do we measure them. tasks can be duplicated as long as each team member understands his or her duties.

A team needs a Vision Maker someone who sees and can clearly articulate the desired endstate this may be the leader. The team also needs an Organiser to marshal people and resources. But people don't do things without a Motivator or Enthuser so one of those is required. Opportunities need to be recognised and exploited by a Watcher. An Innovator is key to overcoming issues that have no precedent.     Motivation once estabished needs to be maintained and goals set and reviewed by a Driver/Manager. If a team is to be successful it must build relationships within it and with other teams, hence the requirement for an Alliance Builder. We all get bored and some are not good at finishing what they started so a Deliverer/Finisher is key to completing anything. Learning and communicating are the domain of a Communicator, someone who ensures the smooth passage of communication and learning wherever it is required. Last but not least is the person who thinks the unthinkable who keeps the whole team true to the purpose and consequences through challenge, whatever the appeal elsewhere; long live the Honest Broker.

As Marshall Goldsmith said "Every decision in the world is made by the person who has the power to make that decision - not the "right" person, or the "smartest" person, or the most " qualified" person". Key to leadership and being effective in power is being  able to make that decision with the right, the smartest and the most qualified people on your team advising you.

THE ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE PROCESS OR TRANSFORMATION

Key to an organisation going through any change are a few fundamental principles which apply to any size organisation. Rather like a journey you have to decide where you want to go and once you have that clear in your head you have to decide where you are now. Most people have heard the story of the Irishman who informed a lost couple “that if he wanted to go to their desired location  he would not start from here” . And there is a lot in that statement, for it is understanding the reality of the current position of the organisation and preparing and adjusting it until it is  right to begin the journey that is vital to the process. For it is from there that the journey starts.

Once you know where you are and where you want to go youe have direction and vision underpinned by a dose of reality. This is your strategy.

Now you must turn to the execution of that strategy constantly basing your assumptions and reviewing that strategy when necessary.

The execution phase continues the planning of the change journey. How are you going to move from where you are to where you want to be? Who are you going to undertake the journey with? What controls and checks do youneed in place to assist you upon that journey?

The first question is complex and yet simplified by the strategy,  for it is here that the dastardly detail lies. The second is more about knowing your people and optimising their talent and potential; putting the right people on the right tasks. The final question is about boundaries and momentum. Boundaries and checks to ensure that you progress in the right direction at the right pace  and the measurement of progress to maintain momentum to keep you going when you lose motivation or drive to complete the journey.

So simply the rules for the change process are:

• Decide where you want to go
• Recognise where you start from
• Develop a detailed plan based on the agreed strategy
• Know and optimise the strengths of your people
• Maintain momentum through checks controls and the measurement of progress