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Vol.31 No. 10

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Six essential leadership skills for today’s leader

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How to Lead Like a Weltmeister German insights into excellence, teamwork and success

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Hero or Victim? Facing the challenges of change

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Vol.31 No. 10


Presented By

5 Great Leadership Six essential leadership skills for today’s leader eileen McDargh

6 Hope, the New Leadership Competency 10 leadership actions worth considering David O’Brien

9 How to Lead Like a Weltmeister German insights into excellence, teamwork and success kerstin Plewhe

11 Are You Decisive? Decisiveness drives success for companies Greg Witz

15 Aligned Leadership How aligned leaders deliver high commitment + high performance Helanie scott

22 21 Timeless Tools to Excel as a CEO Touch your tipping point Prof. M.s. Rao

25 Why the How Matters The importance of recognizing success and failure Jim Murphy

30 The Big Distance Between the CEO & the Frontline 3 reasons for the disconnect Joe Clark

33 Hero or Victim? Facing the challenges of change Marshall Goldsmith and Jeffrey Balash

35 Are Your Employees in the Driver’s Seat? The wave of the future Julia Gometz

36 The Real Drivers of Innovation Deep expertise trumps all kim e. Ruyle

39 Harnessing the Power of Millennials 4 ways leaders can do that Lee Caraher

40 Identifying Your New Leader’s Rivals Detect, defuse and bring them back into the fold Linda Reese

42 Creating Mental Breakthroughs Uncomfortable conversations can initiate positive change Marcia Reynolds

43 Avoiding Difficult Conversations It is a rip off Marlene Chism

45 The Leadership Cornucopia Succeed with an abundance mentality Richard J. Bryan

46 Forecasting Fundamentals 5 best predictors of forecasting acumen Robert sher

47 Managing Your Boss The two-way conversation of management Prof. sattar Bawany

48 Activating Communicative Leadership Where’s the verb? sheila e. Murphy

49 The Culture of Conscience How will your business thrive in it? steven Overman

Risk Takers

Blue & Co., LLC PG.17

Interview with Jan Green

0905 Great Leadership

Six essential leadership skills for today’s leader

3322

How to Lead Like a Weltmeister German insights into excellence, teamwork and success

21 Timeless Tools to Excel as a CEO Touch your tipping point

Hero or Victim? Facing the challenges of change

If you are willing to learn and ready to listen, you have already taken the first step towards achieving your leadership goal. In fact, just open your eyes and observe and you will find powerful lessons coming from even the tiniest creatures – ants. From how they drag heavy loads of food, to their teamwork, organized approach and perseverance in getting things done, ants are definitely one of the best examples when it comes to leadership skills. This is just one perspective.

Now, let us come to the present and the October celebration Halloween. You might be wondering about the connection between leader-ship and Halloween. It is the time when people try different identities and project as if it were their own, a time when people are busy attending costume parties, decorating, carving pumpkins into jack-o’-lanterns, lighting bonfires, apple bobbing, visiting haunted house attractions, playing pranks and more. All are engaged and entertained. They forget the effort they put in and simply try to make it a great celebration – Don’t you have engagement lessons here? A little bit of fun increases the productivity rate. Hope you agree. So yes, don’t forget to pick your lessons from wherever possible if it helps you excel as a leader and a person.

Coming to the articles in this issue of Leader-ship Excellence, more focus is on leadership skills, leadership roles and success. And as a perfect start, we have included an interview with Jan Green, the L&D Officer from Blue & Co., LLC, who won the 1st place (Leadership Excellence Award 2014) in the Midsize Companies Category for their program, Building Leaders. The program aims to build great leadership talent within the company to help meet the organization’s suc-cession management objectives as well hone the leadership and business development skills of the managers. A great initiative to build future leaders, the program deserves a special applause.

On the same lines, we also have Eileen McDargh’s article Great Leadership, where she discusses about six essential leadership skills for today’s leader.

Yet another interesting and potent article on leadership, How to Lead Like a Weltmeister by Kerstin Plewhe reminds us how relentless focus on quality and teamwork makes success happen. With the background of Germany’s inspiring victory in the FIFA World Cup, leadership lessons are beautifully conveyed.

On a different note, Leadership expert Marshall Goldsmith and Jeffrey Balash in their article Hero or Victim? discusses about facing the challenges of change. Dwindling customers, poor profits, staying blind to upcoming technologies can all push a company to huge loss. Who can prevent it? The earlier a potential change is highlighted, the greater are the company’s revival options. The authors suggest that the position of a Chief Change Officer should be established with the explicit mandate of identifying potential threats, so that the company can formulate optimal ap-proaches to ensure its existence and continued success.

In brief, this edition of Leadership Excel-lence is a great blend of powerful, inspirational and thought-provoking leadership articles that can help you develop your skills as a leader. As discussed earlier, you can find leadership lessons from almost everything. Let loose your imagination and while you are having fun this Halloween, think about what you can apply to your leadership.

Happy Reading and do not forget to mail us your feedback!

Leadership Excellence Essentials (ISSN 8756-2308)is published monthly by HR.com,124 Wellington Street EastAurora, Ontario Canada L4G 1J1.

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Vol.31 No. 10Editor’s Note

4 leadership excellence essentials presented by HR.com | 10.2014Submit your Articles

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As of July 2014, log on to Amazon and you’ll find 116,796 titles under the heading “Leadership”. But if you’re in too big of a hurry to read a book, open up the American Heritage Dictionary. A careful examination of the various definitions of “leader” presents a fascinat-ing and brief explanation of great leadership.

1. Has the Power to Influence Leaving behind the standard definition of “one who leads or guides”,

consider the second definition: “one who has power or influence”. Have you known people in a leadership role who seem unable to influence the people around them? The ability to make connections, to speak clearly and to frame messages so everyone hears something compel-ling is essential for influence. We are also persuaded by people with conviction and passion. We are influenced by people whom we think we can trust. Lose or misuse any of this and a leader’s power vanishes.2. Conducts the Orchestra

A leader is defined as “a conductor or the principal performer in an orchestral section”. The finest of leaders discover ways to bring together the different talents of employees or volunteers so that all play from the same sheet of music and blend their instruments into a harmonious whole. We look to a leader to have the larger picture of

how great “music” can be played and to hold prima donnas in check.The finest of leaders discover ways to bring together the different

talents of employees or volunteers so that all play from the same sheet of music and blend their instruments into a harmonious whole.3. Becomes the Foremost Animal in a Harnessed Team

Think of Iditarod and sled dogs. Do we not look to leaders to guide the way, joined shoulder by shoulder to the rest of the team? The lead dog is not back at camp, yelping commands from a cell phone but rather providing muscle and mind to move forward. Remember how the presence of a leader at a front line became the rallying point for many battles? You get the picture.4. Serves as a Duct for Conveying Warm Air

Don’t laugh. This is not the “hot air of a blowhard”. The dictionary states it is a duct for blowing warm air from a furnace. What is more conveying of warmth than a person who cares! Care is a four-letter word heard more and more frequently in business circles. Employees want to know that a leader cares for them. The cold, stern dictator might get some results but never the full-blown commitment, creativ-ity and loyalty of a caring leader.5. Becomes an Economic Barometer

There’s the leader that is an economic indicator and the leader that is “lost”. A leader better be in command and have a clear indication as to the economic viability of the enterprise. And a leader also needs to know when something is done to attract talent or customers—not to make money in the short term but rather for LONG term benefit.6. Stands at the Front to Connect to a Desired Outcome

The dictionary also defines a leader as a short length of gut, wire, or similar material by which a hook is attached to a fishing line and a leader is the blank strip at the end or beginning of a film or tape used in threading or winding.

What’s the correlation with the world of leadership in these final definitions? Both are used for setting up the profit potential of the venture. Depending upon the type of fish one wishes to catch, a fishing leader strengthens the connection between the hook and the rest of the line. There are times in which the leader’s presence helps solidify the relationship between the customer and the sales team so that the customer “bites the hook”. Other times, a leader gently paves the way for the real presentation to the potential buyer or the investment community. She is the “blank tape” that opens the doors for the full presentation of the company.

If a picture is worth 1000 words, a metaphor is worth 1000 pic-tures. Using the metaphors provided by other meanings of the word “leader”, we gain a rich image of the scope and possibilities of true leadership. LE© 2014, The Resiliency Group.

Great LeadershipSix essential leadership skills for today’s leader

By Eileen McDargh

Motivational speaker and consultant Eileen McDargh is the CEO of MCDargh Communications. She has helped organizations and individu-als transform the life of their business and the business of their life through conversations that matter and connections that count. She is the author of five books, including Gifts from the Mountain: Simple Truths for Life’s Complexities (a Benjamin Franklin Gold Award winner).Visit www.eileenmcdargh.com

5leadership excellence essentials presented by HR.com | 10.2014 Submit your Articles

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With performance review season about to get under way in many organizations, countless conversations will be focused on leadership competencies. Despite a wide range of universal competencies that drive leadership success, few of these conversations will include a measure of the leader’s capacity to build hope. To be sure, competencies like visioning, execution, resource management and the full list of EI related competencies (to name a few) remain critical measures of leadership impact. What’s changed however is that today’s workforce is overworked and overstressed to a point where hope has been replaced by uncertainty and fear in many organizations.

As a beginning point, it’s helpful to consider what hope as a leadership competency involves. At a foundational level, hope is the absence of fear. It is the belief that the future (even tomorrow) offers an improved state of well-being. At another level, hope is the belief that the positive outweighs the negative. Within the context of work, it means that despite our daily challenges, we’re going in the right direction and we’ll be okay or even better off when we get to where we’re going. Herein resides one of the greatest opportunities available to leaders today. Namely, the opportunity to build hope not just as an antidote for fear but even more importantly, as a building block of community, resilience and engagement.

With very few exceptions, employees at every level are subjected to the rumor mill and all of its toxic, fear inducing half-truths. In 25 years of exploring this organizational phenomenon, I have never uncovered a positive or inspiring story that was spun in the rumor mill of organizations large or small. All too often these stories serve to erode trust, collaboration, accountability and of course, hope too.

Several years ago, I introduced the “good news deficit” concept as a way of not only helping to manage the rumor mill but also to help gauge the ratio of good news to bad news that employees are exposed to. Although quite simple, the concept and related test received kind feedback from leaders far and wide. In addition to validating my belief that the rumor mill was a very real impediment to morale and engagement, the feedback confirmed that the good news deficit was growing.

Take the good news deficit test in your world of work. Simply assess the ratio of organization specific good news to bad news (rumor mill included) that your employees hear or read in the span of one week. More than likely, the good news deficit in your organization is growing too. Creating hope involves more than this but it’s an important consideration as you guide your team through and beyond the challenges of today’s workplace.

Napoleon Bonaparte once said that “true leaders are dispensers of hope” Clearly, if there was ever a time when your team needed hope it’s now. In fact it’s probably safe to say that your team is hungry for hope. While there is no single, magic formula for helping teams to move from fear to hope, there is a wide range of leadership strategies that aid in this process. What follows

are some leadership actions worth considering.10 More Things You Can Do Now:

1. Invest the time to assess the good news deficit in your organization to help gauge the ratio of good news to bad news that employees are exposed to on a weekly basis. Also consider what impact this ratio has on team morale and engagement.

2. Seek feedback from your team and peer group about the good news deficit at your organization and encourage everyone to share ideas on how to reduce or eliminate the deficit across your organization. Also assess the range and scope of your organization’s rumor mill to help identify themes that may need to be addressed in a proactive manner.

3. Initiate a conversation with your leadership peer group to explore each leader’s role and strategy for communicating a consistent leadership message within a predefined schedule or sequence.

4. Assess the frequency and content of your own leadership communications and consider what impact they have on creating hope for your team.

5. Challenge yourself and others to uncover and celebrate positive outcomes and team wins however small.

6. Consider doing a weekly “round-up” or summary of organizational and team successes that serve to remind everyone of what is working well.

7. Stay connected to your team. Despite having to juggle more priorities than ever before, your team still needs you to be there for them. Schedule 20 minutes of Leadership By Walking Around (LBWA) time on your calendar every week to let your team know that you’re there for them and that you care about how they’re doing.

8. Look for opportunities to reinforce your vison of the future and how it creates an improved state of well-being for all stakeholders.

9. Resist the urge to allow daily pressures or small setbacks to put you in the fear mode.

10. Remember, your leadership influence is huge and you set the tone. If you project a sense of hope, your team is likely to do the same. LE

Hope, the New Leadership Competency10 leadership actions worth considering

By David O’Brien


David O’Brien is President of WorkChoice Solutions, a trusted provider of organizational effectiveness consulting services that was founded in 2000. He is also an internationally recognized author, consultant, speaker, coach and trainer with 25 years of experience in helping leaders and teams maximize performance potential.Email [email protected] www.workchoicesolutions.comConnect David O’Brien


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Aside from legendary cars, world class beers and the first-rate manufacturing, being a German is not always easy, especially when you are outspoken about your love for the United States of America. But, ever since the powerful and inspiring victory in the FIFA World Cup, it has become a little bit easier, especially because this victory could be foreseen purely by a closer look at the greatness of its team.

Getting ahead, reaching the pole position in both global and extremely competitive markets is not at all easy. But the good news is it is possible and Germany has added an excellent example to this gallery of world masters with a simple but often

forgotten recipe: a relentless focus on quality and the one thing that matters most, a team that makes success happen.

It does not matter if it is a corporate team, a sports team, or non-profit team. With over a billion people around the globe watching and commenting on the weaknesses of the individual players, it was not easy to resist the temptation of putting one’s ego before the team spirit. But, the whole team, every single player plus the coach, Jogi Löw, resisted and focused on the thing that matters most if you want to reach the top: remaining unassuming, polite and focused on your goal. And being focused is something Germans excel in (sometimes so much that they

How to Lead Like a WeltmeisterGerman insights into excellence, teamwork and success

By Kerstin Plewhe



appear over efficient, non-humorous and insanely organized). In the end, these team qualities paid off. They can well be used as an inspiration and analogy for any other team worldwide.

When remembering the matches of the World Cup – from the agonizing draw against Ghana, the respectable victory against the US, to the dominating win against Brazil – it becomes clear that this victory is not just a long-awaited gratification for a reunified nation, it is a masterpiece and blueprint for organizations and teams around the world that dare to exchange quick fixes and fast bucks for the biggest financial and emotional victories that fuel organizations for decades. In German, a “Weltmeister” is the best in class, the leader of the pack, the one who has reached the pole position. Establishing Weltmeister qualities pays off in multiple ways.The following are 5 key qualities of a Weltmeister:1) Putting the team first and implementing a serving attitude

The German team has several world class players, all of them alpha males with long personal records of success. But nevertheless, they never allowed one ego to step up and leave the others behind. They understood, and were deeply convinced, that by helping their teammates with a serving, instead of deserving, attitude, they would all reach the highest goal. Funny enough, the youngest talent on the team, Mario Götze, was the one that scored the final goal, pushing a whole nation into ecstasy. Any business or team leader can use this approach to establish the qualities of team spirit, a dedication to service and willingness to help one another within their team. By doing this, teams help themselves grow towards a new level of success.2) Identifying and nurturing talent

Following the roots of success is always interesting. In the case of the German victory it was sourced from a continuous, relentless search for young talents and a bold investment, not only into their talents, but into everything that the team needed: new training facilities, diversified and trusting coaches as well as great relations on the inside and outside with external multipliers. Applying this quality to any business leads to a new look at anything that increases the team’s productivity. Those investments might sometimes hurt the bottom line in the short view but they increase the success and profit in the longer run. 3) Reaching out for Excellency

In our bottom-line focused world, customers often miss good “old world” qualities and authenticity in leaders and brands. Reaching for nothing less than excellence requires a lot from everybody involved. It requires setting the highest goals in every form of quality: product quality, customer satisfaction quality, leadership qualities. For the Germans this might be a bit easier since the term “Made in Germany” has been a long-term warrant for outstanding quality. None the less, it is possible for any organization and individual to restart their own quest for excellence – and forever step away from mediocrity and failure customers regularly experience, even with established brands.4) Being willing to pay the price

Sometimes the road to gaining, or regaining, the number one position is long. But, it is always worth it, as long as you are honest with yourself and the rest of your team about the price that comes with the package. In the case of the German team, the price was high. It included endless physical training sessions,

competitive video analyses and enduring team development. Applying those actions into the business world also means a lot of persistence and work. It means precise attention to every detail in the production and sales process and keeping the team spirit up within the company even when it seems that all odds are against you. It means to set different priorities in every day work and going the extra mile for the customer. 5) Focus on inspiration rather than motivation

Motivation is yesterday´s music. Inspiration is today´s must have for any world class team, because it comes from within a person and not from without. But, inspiration itself won´t secure the trophy either. It has to be followed up with persistent, daily actions which are exactly what the German coach, and any corporate leader, can achieve. Inspiring a team instead of relying on old-world motivational patterns, like bonuses, followed up by a joint plan of action is the key to the big win. Jogi went for this strategy with his team, and so can you.

The good thing about these Weltmeister qualities is that you do not have to be a soccer fan to be able to follow and benefit from them. What this German soccer team showed game after game was not only impressive and inspiring, it was the best proof that everyone who is willing to pay the price for excellence can rise from the ashes of their past towards a successful future – regardless if it is a nation, a corporation or an individual. LE

How to Lead Like a Weltmeister

Kerstin Plehwe, German bestselling author and international speaker based in Berlin, Germany, helps people and organizations to be courageous, excel-lent and innovative. She has built and sold several businesses in Germany suc-cessfully, advised hundreds of top executives and politicians and has become a highly reputable TV analyst, author and communication expert.Website www.kerstinplehwe.com


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By Greg Witz

Decisiveness drives success for companies

Are You Decisive?

Some people really struggle with making decisions. Some people just can’t make up their minds. Neither can some companies. But if they knew what their indecision was costing them, would they change how they operate?

In 2001, Ram Charan, a former faculty member at Harvard Business School wrote an article titled, “Conquering a Culture of Indecision.” In it, he talks about companies that have successfully created frameworks for decisive action. Highly marketed and distributed, this article was published in the April 2006 issue of The Harvard Business Review and met with many accolades. However, it’s almost ten years later and the problem exists even more profoundly today.

Indecision or lack of decisiveness is costing companies thousands of dollars every day. Opportunities are being lost, productivity is waning and the moral of millions of leaders and employees is eroding. Not to mention that actual bottom line results that are being affected.

According to business and economic analysts, the cost of lost oppor-tunities and lack- luster productivity in North America is somewhere

in the billions of dollars. Indecision affects companies across markets and industries. For example a large national construction company we work with told us the following when talking about decision making and a recent project that was on the table, “We (company execs) dropped the ball. By taking too long to make a decision we lost out on the entire bidding process which could have been worth over $2 million to our bottom line last year.”

History is full of stories such as this. Take for example the following cases, taken from an article on Digg;

In the late 70’s Kane Kramer came up with a device that would now be known as an MP3 player. His sketches from 1979 show a credit card-sized player with a rectangular screen and a central menu button to scroll through a selection of music tracks using arrows for left, right, up and down.

In 1988, on the brink of commercial success, the company was split by a boardroom coup. Distracted and unable to form a consensus on how to raise money in time to renew patents across 120 countries, Kramer watched as the technology became public property. Now the iPod is the world’s fastest selling electrical equipment ever.The literary agent

The first agent to whom J.K. Rowling sent Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone rejected her in little more than a day. Her second agent, Christopher Little, was turned down by 12 publishers before Bloomsbury said yes a year later.Decca Records and the Beatles

In January 1962, The Beatles were turned down by Decca Records because they were considered too similar to the Shadows. They signed with Parlophone and became the world’s most famous band.The forgotten genius

Nikola Tesla, a Serbian immigrant to America, invented the modern electric power system, the fluorescent bulb, neon lights, the speedometer and the basics behind radio, radar and the microwave oven. Others made millions from his inventions but he was paid a flat $216,000 fee.The other Bill Gates

Software genius Gary Kildall invented the first operating system for PCs in the early Seventies but missed out on supplying IBM because he went flying instead of meeting company bosses. Bill Gates later sold IBM the MS-DOS system.Fill in your company’s lost opportunity costs here:_______________________

What’s made the problem worse is that employees today are living in fear. Talk of reces- sion, downsizing and rightsizing has caused them to become paralyzed when it comes to making decisions and taking action. Ask anyone at your office if they consider themselves decisive and you’ll likely be met with sweaty palms, racing pulses and the response of ‘why do you ask?”

No-one wants to be held accountable for what might be considered a wrong decision.

So how do employers and managers promote an environment of decisiveness? In our work with hundreds of companies during the



last thirty years we have identified the following 5 keys for driving decisiveness at work. They are:

1. Foster a company culture of open, honest and candid conversa-tions

2. Clearly articulate the issue that needs a decision3. Remove fear from the equation4. Utilize a coaching approach to problem solving and decision

making5. Reward decisiveness and action at all levels

Foster a Company Culture of Open, Honest & Candid Conversa-tions

The first step to achieving this type of organization is to recognize that a company’s culture is largely defined by the personality and style of its leadership team. Strong charismatic leaders who are candid and open often engender the same in their staff. The opposite is also true. Secretive and insecure leaders foster the same in their company cultures.

When good secure leaders gather a group together to discuss chal-lenges and opportunities they are careful to allow everyone to share their opinions and thoughts. Positive or negative, each team member is given ample room to voice their concerns or ideas. A good leader encourages feedback and actively listens to his team. He does not support any negative feedback and therefore teaches his staff through example to do the same. These types of companies and conversations build trust amongst the team and ultimately confidence in the indi-vidual who has a thought or idea to share.

Insecure leaders do the opposite. They tend to surround them-selves with people who say one thing, but do another. Ultimately a decision that gets made in the boardroom gets derailed on the shop floor, because no-one felt they could speak up and disagree. Instead, they manage to put up roadblocks and share their negative opinions behind closed doors.

For example, one of the companies we recently worked with had a large sales team. The president, instead of working through and with his management team, felt compelled to go directly to the sales staff. The sales manager felt these actions severely undermined him, which made him react even more forcefully and critically of his team. The sales people felt they had the president’s ear and started bypassing their manager to complain. As the scenario unfolded, the level of disengagement increased and finally the entire sales team spiraled into self destruction.

While the president’s motives started out innocently enough, it took a huge disaster to force him to rethink his leadership style. He now works daily on encouraging open forums for discussion instead of one on one behind closed door conversations.

But deciding to become an open and honest company doesn’t just happen, or make it true.

Learning how to ‘live it” is where the real brilliance and solution lie.Clearly Articulate the Issue That Needs a Decision

Once trust has been developed amongst the staff and leadership team, successful companies have developed strategic frameworks and methodologies for identifying issues and articulating the big picture. What is the REAL issue at hand, and how does it affect the company’s goals and the day to day operations of its staff?

For example, when articulating an issue or problem most people will automatically start questioning the validity of the issue internally. They typically ask themselves three things, “Why does it matter? “, “How does it affect ‘us’” meaning the company as a whole? And finally,

although rarely in this order, they ask themselves, “How does it affect ‘me’”, the individual.

While there are hundreds of models for decision making available, most can be distilled down into five logical steps and two intuitive steps.Logical:

1. Gather the information and establish the facts2. Analyze the facts3. Seek the opinions of others (but be careful who you get involved)4. Weigh the merits and likely outcomes of alternative actions5. Make decision most likely to produce the desired outcome

Intuitive:1. Sleep on it – if possible2. Do a ‘gut’ check. Does it feel right?Companies and the people that lead them could be so much more

successful in their decision making if they focused more energy on the intuitive aspects.

Face it, we are intuitive beings. Philosophy defines intuition as the act by which the mind perceives the agreement or disagreement of two ideas. Intuition is not something you can teach, it’s a source of knowledge from within that everyone has, no matter their age. Learning how to listen and act on it is where the real challenge lies. Children can offer some enlightenment on this subject.

Watch a young person whose been put into a situation where they don’t have the intellect or experience to navigate from. Intuition is their default, and it’s because intuition is a survival skill available to everyone. If you’ve ever heard that small voice inside that told you to ‘wait one more day’, ‘turn right’, or ‘make the call now’ and disregarded it, I’m certain you found yourself regretting that decision. Feelings don’t lie, but they do offer us an opportunity to learn to trust ourselves.Remove Fear from the Equation

Employees today are nervous. Lurking around every corner is the idea that a decision they make or don’t make, could cost them their jobs, their dignity and potentially their lifestyle. Is it any wonder that the majority of staff vacillates when it comes to speaking up at work? Good, effective leaders know how to cultivate an atmosphere of safety and candor.

Candor is defined as the ability to speak freely without reservation in a straightforward, informal and honest manner. If employees feel safe to express their ideas and opinions the company could produce better decisions and ultimately more positive results.

Creative agencies and their leaders do this extremely well. Brain-storming sessions are designed to be open forums for creative think-ing. No matter how ‘out of the box’ or ‘out there’ and idea appears, it is not dismissed until it’s fully explained, explored and dissected. Creative agencies promote a ‘no sacred cow’ philosophy meaning that any concept can and should be equally analyzed and cultivated in order to produce the best decision possible.

Successful leaders are those willing to accept insight and feedback from a variety of sources, orthodox or not. If everyone, janitor to mail room clerk, feels safe and valued enough to offer their opinions the potential solution to an issue or problem would more readily be found. Concepts and perspectives that might otherwise be left untapped represent lost opportunities for countless companies.

However, leaders also need to know when to draw the line on including others and seeking opinions. Sometimes, in their resolve to be open and inclusive, even collaborative, leaders can mistakenly feed the indecisiveness of their team. Too many opinions, ideas and

Are You Decisive?



perspectives muddy the water and staff begins to question whether they have gathered ‘enough’ feedback.

Instead of actively soliciting opinions of those outside of the deci-sion making team, simply ‘allowing’ other influences to introduce ‘themselves’ should become part of the company culture. Fostering a safe atmosphere will begin to transform the company’s ability to gather, process and act on information.

Predisposed ideas and great solutions will no longer be kept hidden from those needing to make good, fast decisions.Utilize a Coaching Approach to Problem Solving & Decision Making

A coach style, unlike a typical boss or supervisor leads through col-laboration more than with directing. Coaches ask questions in order to cultivate a deeper level of thinking and problem solving.

Questions open up new insights while leaving the team’s dignity intact. For example, Ram Charan tells the following story in his article.

“Not long ago, I observed the power of a leader’s dialogue to shape a company’s culture. The setting was the headquarters of a major U.S. multinational. The head of one of the company’s largest business units was making a strategy presentation to the CEO and a few of his senior lieutenants. Sounding confident, almost cocky, the unit head laid out his strategy for taking his division from number three in Europe to number one. It was an ambitious plan that hinged on making rapid, sizable market share gains in Germany, where the company’s main competitor was locally based and four times his division’s size. The CEO commended his unit head for the inspiring and visionary presentation. Then he initiated a dialogue to test whether the plan was realistic.

“Just how are you going to make these gains?” he wondered aloud.“What other alternatives have you considered? What customers do

you plan to acquire?” The unit manager hadn’t thought that far ahead.“How have you defined the customers’ needs in new and unique

ways? How many salespeople do you have?” the CEO asked.“Ten,” answered the unit head.“How many does your main competitor have?”“Two hundred,” came the sheepish reply.The boss continued to press: “Who runs Germany for us? Wasn’t

he in another division up until about three months ago?”Had the exchange stopped there, the CEO would have only humili-

ated and discouraged this unit head and sent a message to others in attendance that the risks of thinking big were unacceptably high. But the CEO wasn’t interested in killing the strategy and demoralizing the business unit team. Coaching through questioning, he wanted to inject some realism into the dialogue. Speaking bluntly, but not angrily or unkindly, he told the unit manager that he would need more than bravado to take on a formidable German competitor on its home turf. Instead of making a frontal assault, the CEO suggested, why not look for the competition’s weak spots and win on speed of execution? Where are the gaps in your competitor’s product line? Can you innovate something that can fill those gaps? What customers are the most likely buyers of such a product? Why not zero in on them?

Instead of aiming for overall market-share gains, try resegmenting the market. Suddenly, what had appeared to be a dead end opened into new insights, and by the end of the meeting, it was decided that the manager would rethink the strategy and return in 90 days with a more realistic alternative. A key player whose strategy proposal had been flatly rejected left the room feeling energized, challenged, and more sharply focused on the task at hand.

Think about what happened here. Although it might not have been obvious at first, the CEO was not trying to assert his authority or diminish the executive. He simply wanted to ensure that the competi-tive realities were not glossed over and to coach those in attendance on both business acumen and organizational capability as well as on the fine art of asking the right questions.”

How many times does your job provide you with the opportunity to coach others towards a more successful outcome? And how do you learn to coach? First of all, a leader must understand the personality and styles of those around it. This can be done and should be done at the onset of a team member’s career with the company. However the level and depth of understanding continues as the team works together. Knowing how and why someone thinks and behaves a certain way is tremendously valuable to a company and its decision making ability.Reward Decisiveness & Action at All Levels

While indecision has a huge price-tag, decisiveness pays off hand-somely for those people and companies brave enough to stand up and take action on their decisions. Think about the companies and people we noted at the beginning of this paper, the Parlophone Records, Bloomsbury publishing, Bill Gates, etc. They were willing to act quickly and therefore reaped the rewards.

But rewards aren’t only monetary. Good leaders reward their team with other valuable things. Acknowledgement, increased responsibility, more opportunities for growth. These are all things that employees want and need. In fact through as our work with a diverse client base over the last 30 years we found that money is often the ancillary reason a person chose their profession or took a specific job. Following are some of the top motivators we’ve identified:• The feeling that they can succeed and will be supported in that

drive for success• Access to leaders, managers and mentors who foster loyalty

and camaraderie• The opportunity to be part of teams and projects that matter

to them• The opportunity to learn new things on a consistent basis• The ability to exercise their creativity• The feeling they have a ‘voice’• Being recognized both privately and publiclyStrong decisive leaders know what ‘currency’ each of their team

members likes to be paid in, and they design their feedback accord-ingly. They reward their staff for taking decisions, even if the result of that decision isn’t positive.

In brief, as you can see being decisive is a powerful advantage to many people and companies while indecisiveness is a virus that can spread rapidly. How would you rate your organization?

Do you follow the five steps for successful decision making? Do you foster an open and candid atmosphere, removing fear from conversations? Do you trust your team to make decisions and guide them through questions and curiosity instead of criticism? Do you reward them accordingly? LE

Greg Witz is President and CEO of Witz Education, a company committed to the ongoing development and training of today’s emerging leaders. Greg delivers a number of courses, workshops and keynotes focusing on leadership, management, customer service and sales. Through a rich understanding of business processes, facilitation and executive coaching, Greg delivers programs that transform careers and lives.Email [email protected] www.witzeducation.com

Are You Decisive?



http://www.witzeducation.com


STRESS is not the problem…It’s the REACTION that matters

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http://www.tracomcorp.com/solutions/by-element/resilient-mindset/model/

Navigating between the poles of profit and people or returns and trust is at the center of every leader’s job. However, urged on by the demand for performance and results in tough economic times, leaders have placed more emphasis on High Performance or driving accountability over High Commitment or motivating engagement.

Those leaders Driving Accountability tend to focus more on getting things done and can instill fiercely passionate account-ability. Leaders Motivating Engagement tends to focus more on how happy people are and can inspire genuine committed engagement. Neither, especially when over-used, is necessarily effective, and placing too much emphasis in one area at the expense of the other can lead to low overall commitment or performance.

Adequate leadership is most prevalent in workplaces today where, with the best intentions in the world, leaders simply fall short with feeble attempts at instilling an engaged and sustainable culture while driving high levels of accountability. Let’s look at this dynamics in action.

The stories of David and MaryMeet David

One very accomplished CIO, let’s call him David, took over a large IT organization. David was hugely successful in the past for delivering business results quickly. His analytical skills and focused drive for productivity always helped him increase the quality and speed of project delivery and raise customer satisfac-tion levels in the past.

Without hesitation shortly after David’s arrival in his new organization, he very quickly alerted everyone to his expectations and laid out a solid plan for execution. He drove a high sense of urgency throughout the organization, moved under-performers

sideways or out and even took on his peers around tough busi-ness decisions that had to be made.

In his haste, he did not fully comprehend or care about bottom-up involvement and engagement of individual contributors or informal leaders throughout the organization. He soon discovered that his management team seemed hesitant, delivering slower performance metrics, and hidden operational efficiencies were still lagging. Rumors started about his hard-hitting and relentless pursuit for success, leaving people fearful of losing their jobs. Many became compliant instead of using their institutional knowledge and experience to remedy the situation.

Within six months customers were much more satisfied with results, but his CEO called to express concerns about unwanted attrition and lack of loyalty within his organization.

Compare David’s story with another executive, Mary.Meet Mary

CMO for a national customer relationship management orga-nization, Mary is one of those leaders who has a real affinity for building teamwork and camaraderie. She likes to give people the opportunity to act with full autonomy and fosters collaborative participation in her unit.

She listened to people and tried to remove the obstacles in their way but couldn’t understand why her team seemed slow in meeting their performance metrics. Eventually she started hearing complaints about their lack of success.

Upon conducting some interviews, we discovered that many team members were frustrated that one of their team buddies was bringing their metrics down, and as a team they felt solutions were discussed several times, yet nothing changed. In fact this situation caused a valuable member to leave the organization simply because he felt Mary did not deal with the situation in an effective manner. She was slow to address the issue, and when she finally addressed it, she did so in a very diplomatic way without getting any action on the part of the poor performer.

Being too nice to one person on the team can lower commit-ment from all team members. Isn’t it true, we all want to be part of a team where we feel we are all pulling our weight?

The two diverse styles, as demonstrated in their stories, show that what may have appeared as strengths may actually be weak-nesses that limit the success of leaders.

What’s obviously needed is an approach that delivers sustainable outcomes, a model for leaders to follow that balances driving accountability and motivating engagement.Aligned Leadership

Clearly, experienced leaders do not always operate in either of the two extremes. Based on the aligned leadership approach, we see basically four types of leaders. Some leaders are natu-rally talented at driving bold accountability (DA), others have strengths in motivating engagement (MA) and strong teamwork, while some rare leaders operate in the leadership sweet spot and demonstrate exceptional proficiency in both these critical

Aligned LeadershipHow aligned leaders deliver high commitment + high performance

By Helanie Scott



skills (DAME). The fourth style is not as strong in either and rather adopts a

run-of-the-mill style of leadership (Mediocre). Aligned leaders (DAME) are able to hold everyone responsible for executing clearly defined goals delivering high performance, and they are skilled at influencing people to contribute their best work in self-directed and empowered ways.Aligned Leadership Model

We do not want to over-simplify leadership with our Aligned Leadership Model. We understand that humans and organizations are rather complex, and the model cannot adequately capture all the factors involved. Rather, our Aligned Leadership Model offers a window into individual leadership styles for the purpose of creating High Commitment and High Performance.

Aligned leadership incorporates, integrates, and balances a combination of Driving Accountability and Motivating En-gagement. True workplace engagement, commitment and per-formance start with an individual’s emotional reactions (affect regulation), cognitive processes (mental models and attitudes), behaviors (actions), and communication (interactions). Aligned leaders know how and when to adapt their style according to the situations and individuals involved.The model addresses the following:

What emotion, cognition, behavior, and communication leaders must:

1. Demonstrate2. Reinforce, redirect, and reward in others3. No longer tolerate among themselves and in others My friend and colleague, Cash Keahey from Your Best Element,

and I came up with a nifty little formula to demonstrate this critical leadership requirement.C = f L(M2 + 3R – T)

Culture (C) is a function of what leaders Model (M), what behaviors leaders Reinforce, Redirect, and Reward (R), minus what they Tolerate (T). Where are you?

We plot four core leadership approaches on the x and y frame-work as shown in the grid below. Each approach is represented by an acronym, based on the grid coordinates. DAME represents the ideal Aligned Leadership style and is recommended as the most appropriate style for advancing High Commitment and High Performance.

Adapted from Gridworks by Robert R. Blake, Jane S. Mouton and Walter Barclay, Scientific Methods Inc. 1993

In order to demonstrate Aligned Leadership, begin by reflecting on your feelings, attitudes, behavior, and communication and consider the frequency at which you demonstrate each style. Think of your leadership behavior in various workplace situa-tions. Place yourself in the grid below according to where you believe you best fit.

We have provided you a few Aligned Leadership characteris-tics designed to help you assess your most prevalent individual Leadership style, with descriptions of the emotions, attitudes, behavior and communication that characterize each style.Identify your Leadership Style

Taking ownership of your style can often mark the beginning of your quest toward Aligned Leadership. Without feeling that you are right or wrong in your approach to leadership, you can make the necessary adjustments to be more aligned and adaptable.

Review the descriptors in the graph above and note those that most accurately describe you in most situations. Reflect on the extent to which each applies to you. To achieve the most mean-ingful results, be as truthful as possible. Consider the character of your emotions, thinking, behavior, and communication to achieve an intended objective. What now?

If you want to create a better balance in your leadership, contact us to learn more about the Leadership Development Solutions that may be right for your specific situation.

Aligned Leadership

Helanie Scott, founder and CEO of Align4Profit Inc., has driven stunning leadership and cultural transformations for an impressive list of organizations. She has mastered the ability to connect with her audiences in the boardroom, classroom, on stage, or in one-on-one coaching sessions. Her long list of Align4Profit clients rave at the way her engaging programs freshen outdated mindsets and deliver immediate and measurable, results-oriented, aligned results.Email [email protected]




Tell us about your overall leadership vision and mission specific to the Building Leaders program.

In 2010, Blue & Co., LLC decided to put the spotlight on leadership development and found the best way to grow internal leadership talent would be to tap into the knowledge of our directors and create a best-in-class leadership program for managers and senior managers.

In December of 2013, Blue celebrated the completion of the second offering of the Building Leaders program. The business purpose of this advanced leadership program was to build a pipeline of leadership talent within Blue to assist in meeting the Firm’s succession management objectives and help develop the leadership and business development skills of our managers and senior managers.

We also wanted to deepen participants’ knowledge and understanding of Blue’s business strategy, gain clarity about the role and expectations of being a director/partner, and build strong peer relationships across the Firm – which assists in retention, creates a one-firm mindset, and is a catalyst for future business development opportunities.

What makes your program unique and different?What makes this program so unique is our custom approach, variety in delivery

methods, and involvement of many leaders to facilitate the program. Building Leaders is an internally-designed, 18-month long program that is face-paced, extremely challenging, engaging, and customized to the needs of our leaders.Interested participants apply through an application process and are selected for the

program by Blue’s Executive Committee (the Firm’s top governance). The Building Leaders program is led by Blue’s Learning and Development Officer. The philosophy regarding leadership development is that it “takes a village,” and is all executive leaders’ responsibility to grow the leadership talent within the Firm. So although the program is facilitated by the L&D Officer, the program includes active participation by more than twenty individuals including Blue’s Executive Committee, other key directors, and special guest speakers.

Building Leaders is not a canned program purchased off the shelf from an external training vendor. The content of this program was designed in-house based on Blue’s needs in the area of leadership development. The program is continuously being evaluated and updated to stay current and support the Firm’s vision and direction.

How many people do you impact every year with this program?Since the start of the Building Leaders program in June of 2010, twenty-six people

have graduated. Twelve leaders graduated in December, 2011, and fourteen leaders

Midsize Companies Category

Leadership Excellence Rank

#Globalleadership14 Global Leadership Excellence 2014

Jan Green

1

Company Name: Blue & Co., LLCProgram Name: Building Leaders ProgramProgram Director: Jan GreenAddress: 12800 N. Meridian Street Suite 400 Carmel, Indiana 46032Call: 317-428-6822Email: [email protected]: www.blueandco.com

Risk TakersOur editorial team interviewed Jan Green, Learning and Development Officer from Blue & Co., LLC, at the Leadership Excellence Awards this past April. Following are the excerpts from the exclusive interview.

Video

mailto:jgreen%40blueandco.com?subject=

http://www.blueandco.com

http://youtu.be/jm-2A7Bdn48

graduated in December, 2013. Of these graduates, fifteen individuals have been promoted (twelve to senior manager and three to director – our highest level). Four of the graduates have received the distinguished Ron Blue Award, and two have received outstanding leadership awards in the community.

How long does it take to complete this program?The program is eighteen months long and consists of twenty-five

different development opportunities. After the participants graduate from the program, they move into the Building Leaders Alumni Group, which unites all graduates for further leadership development, networking opportunities, and fostering relationships.

How is this program delivered, both online and in a classroom?As this program is made up of individuals from eight different offices,

it is important for these participants to meet face-to-face and get to know each other. Most of these meetings are conducted in-person,

in a classroom format; however, we also include experiential learning, video conference meetings, small group meetings, one-on-one mentor meetings, and accountability groups for project work. Most of the content is created internally; however, there are a few other instances when we hire external experts to work with the group to keep the learning fresh and exciting.

How do you measure success and ROI of your program?A variety of measurement tools have been incorporated into the

program. Assessments are conducted by the participants at the start and completion of the program. 360 degree feedback is included in the program, and a follow-up 360 is delivered one year after the program.In the first Building Leaders program, we measured business development numbers prior to the program and the amount of increase during the Building Leaders experience. The group doubled their business development efforts while participating in the program. In addition, many of the sessions include Levels 1, 2, 3 and 4 feedback



(Kirkpatrick’s Four-Level Evaluation) to continuously verify we are meeting the needs of the participants. One aspect that is harder to measure, but very easy to witness, is the growth in confidence of the graduates as a result of the program.

Increased confidence is demonstrated through individuals stepping up to take on assignments, demonstrating leadership-in-action, modeling the way, displaying more confidence internally and with clients, coaching others, providing delicate feedback, etc.

What is your area of expertise with regard to leadership training, such as teamwork, execution and frontline managers?

We are an accounting firm, so we are very strong in providing technical development to our employees at all levels. Blue recognizes that great leaders must have a balance of strong technical competence, as well as solid skills in leadership awareness, understanding, and application.This program was designed to build the following aspects of leadership development: • Developing individual awareness and commitment to a personal

leadership philosophy. • Developing influencing skills in areas such as one-on-one

discussions, small group meetings, and large group presentations.• Understanding group dynamic issues (both positive and

challenging), learning how to be a leader among other leaders, and when to follow, encourage and support.• Dealing with conflict and challenging situations.• Working outside one’s comfort zone.• Teambuilding, relationship building, experiential training, and

philanthropic work.• Problem solving and working through issues as a team – peer-

to-peer coaching.• Execution of large scope projects from the initial design process

to final presentation. • Linking accountability to every aspect of being a leader.

What are the key takeaways from your program? How does this program impact the organization?

During the last six months of the program, each Building Leaders group is tasked with identifying an innovation project (or two) that will improve the Firm in some capacity. Three projects have been completed that have had significant impact on the Firm.1) Practice Management Software

In partnership with an IT expansion committee, the group researched, evaluated and recommended a new practice management system for the Firm. As a result of this project, the Firm adopted a new practice management system that impacted every aspect of how it operates: time entry, billing, expense reports, client reports, firm financial reporting, accounting, etc. This system is being used today and will be used for years to come.

2) Navigate your Career at BlueThe second project was to improve Blue’s coaching culture and also

help employees learn and take charge of their careers. The Building Leaders group designed an online coaching system that unified the process of goal setting, facilitated creating meaningful development goals, and improved the frequency and effectiveness of coaching practices across the Firm. This project also introduced a new tool to Blue – the “Individual Development Plan (IDP)” – for all employees, and is now a standard practice across the Firm. During the 2013 performance management process, 96.4% of all employees had clear goals and coaching conversations with their coaches/managers regarding these goals.3) Growth Strategy for Blue

The final project was to evaluate the Firm’s strengths, competition, market, trends, challenges, economy, and create a growth strategy for the Firm. This included recommendations of existing niches to expand, new niches to move into, strong markets for development, what to avoid, when to build, buy, or hire, etc.

What impact does your program have on users?The best way to summarize the impact of the program is to hear

from the participants of the program:• This program ignited me to take power and ownership over my

career and clearly define the essence of my legacy. (Michelle)• This program was an incredibly challenging and rewarding experience.

The opportunities led to growth, both personally and professionally. (Eric)• Each session was an experience that allowed me to build relationships

with future leaders at Blue that will last a lifetime. (Kyle)• This program challenged and pushed me to limits I didn’t know I

could achieve. (Steve)• The visibility to Directors across each of the offices is a rare and

invaluable experience to individuals at this point in our careers. (JT)• This was one of the best investments I’ve made in my career. (Sara)

What are the next steps for this program?In June of 2014, the graduates of both Building Leaders programs

met for a full day of training as the newly-formed Building Leaders Alumni Group. They had an outstanding day of teambuilding, problem-solving, building relationships, and giving back to the community. These alumni meetings will take place two times a year, and each new group of graduates will join the Building Leaders Alumni Group.

The next Building Leaders program will launch in June of 2015.

What is your leadership vision and mission specific to this program?One of our company’s core operating principles is to learn constantly so that we

continually improve. With this in mind, our overall objective is to develop high potential leaders in the organization through a variety of venues throughout our footprint.

We evaluate banking schools, banker association leadership groups, chamber community leadership groups, etc. and invest in a larger group of upcoming leaders. Our MidWestOne Leadership Institute (“MWO LI”) is our internal venue customized for our brand, our mission, and operating principles. It is a way to organically grow high potential officers and prepare them for greater contribution opportunities.

The MWO LI mission improves our ability to lead at all levels and exposes our leaders to other leaders and leadership principles.

What makes your program unique and different?MidWestOne is one of the sixth largest Iowa-based banks in the state and one of the

few who offer an internal leadership development program. We identify individuals from within our organization who have already demonstrated high potential leadership abilities and who we want to invest in more for succession, career development, and management progression within the company.

We teach leadership principles within the MidWestOne culture and brand and tailor the leadership experience to us. Our leadership class of candidates is small and focused. Our faculty comprises of internal senior managers, members of our board, and external training professionals. It has become a highly coveted opportunity for which individuals must be nominated and then selected even though participation in the leadership institute does not guarantee a promotion.

How many people do you impact, every year, with this program?Our senior executive team nominates officers within their division for participation.

Our CEO, COO, and Director of Human Resources select 12 officers every year. Apart from these 12 candidates who are directly impacted, members of internal faculty are also impacted. Every year, two representatives from each graduating class are elected to form an Alumni Group. Each year’s alumni join previous years’ alumni for continuing leadership dialogue and development. We budget for a continuing education session each year for interested alumni to take part in. The total number we impact each year is approximately 30 people. Further, co-workers of the newly graduated leaders reap rewards as leadership skills and abilities grow on their individual work teams.




Sondra Harney

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Company Name: MidWestOne BankProgram Name: MidWestOne Leadership InstituteProgram Director: Susan WeinschenkAddress: 102 South Clinton Street, Iowa City, IACall: 319-341-2003Email: [email protected]: midwestone.com

Training Tomorrow’s Leaders Today

Our editorial team interviewed Sondra Harney from MidWestOne Bank, at the Leadership Excellence Awards this past April. Following are the excerpts from the exclusive interview.

Video

mailto:sweinschenk%40midwestone.com?subject=

http://midwestone.com

http://youtu.be/2g-YTcTwcNY

How long does it take to complete this program?The MWO LI starts with a celebration dinner program each Fall.

The outgoing leadership class joins the incoming leadership class. A guest speaker delivers a keynote address on leadership. Official classes begin in January and conclude in September.

How is this program delivered, both online and in classroom?All sessions are in-person and classroom delivered content.

Participants have pre-work prior to each session.

What level of leaders do you address?Since the program’s inception in 2010, we have focused only on

officers of our company. In our first year we included two senior managers in the group of 12; most participants are middle-level managers and leaders in the company. Typically, by the time a high potential individual is considered for the program, he/she is already assuming an officer level position in our company.

How do you measure success and ROI of your program?Average investment per individual participant is nearly $5,500 in

their leadership institute year. Throughout the last four years we have invested approximately $265,000 in our program with the majority spent on participants. Approximately 4,300 hours has been invested on our participants which we believe to be a significant time spent.

Our ROI is fairly subjective because of the program’s design. We measure the success of the program by recognized improved job performance, and a greater capability of each officer to take on more responsibility whether it is a project, a new position, or team contribution. Even during the years of the financial crisis, MidWestOne maintained its commitment to its Leadership Institute while we saw some of our peers make cuts in these type of training and development expenses.

What is your area of expertise with regards to leadership training, such as teamwork, execution and frontline managers?

The MWO LI is administered by our Training Officer who is certified through ASTD as a Certified Professional in Learning and Performance (CPLP). Our President & CEO, our Chief Operating Officer, our Chief Financial Officer, one of our Regional Presidents, our Director of Human Resources, and a group of our Board of Directors make up our internal faculty.

This approach helps us achieve one of our focus areas which is to expose our high potential candidates to other leaders in the organization. MWO LI Session Content includes: ‘Leadership through the Perspective of the CEO’, ‘Understanding MWO Branding and Culture’, ‘Leadership through different leadership styles’ (using Predictive Index), ‘Business Accumen’, ‘Generational Differences in Leadership’, ‘Leading in Teams’, ‘Organizational Change’, ‘Presentation Skills’, and an intensive course on ‘Decision Making’.

Our board panelists speak about their personal leadership lessons with an open forum of questions and answers to follow. The

presentation skills session teaches participants how to prepare for a group presentation which is later applied at the end of the Institute by the officer presenting a leadership topic to the senior management team.

What are the key takeaways from your program? How does it help participants to improve their as well as their team’s performance?

The MWO LI concentrates on individual leadership styles, strengths and weaknesses, and how to be more effective. By taking a leadership topic and studying it outside class and then presenting it after going through all the sessions, provides for a significant take away of applied skills.

What impact does your program have on users?A great amount of pride exists among those officers who are selected

and complete MWO LI program. We believe that we are making a difference by investing in future leadership and by recognizing high potential performers through this program. New relationships are formed as a result of our program as it helps strengthen lines across different departments. It has also fostered stronger employee engagement within those who have participated.

What’s in store for future?We intend to continue doing this to eventually include non-officer,

high potential leaders at some point in the future.


By Prof. M.S. Rao

Touch your tipping point

21 Timeless Tools to Excel as a CEO

When you look at Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Jerry Yang & David Filo of Yahoo, Pierre Omidyar of Ebay, Matt Mullenweg of WordPress, and Chad Hurley and Steve Chen of Youtube, it is obvious that they are all CEOs who made it big in young age itself. Do you also want to become a young CEO like them? Or do you want to become a CEO quickly? Re-member, there are a number of tools required to become a CEO. But I have condensed the key tools to save your time and ensure essence quickly. Here are the 21 tools to reach to the CEO position quickly:

Develop a CEO mindset. It is rightly said that a battle is won twice – first in your mind and then in reality. You must think like a CEO first to become a CEO. Find out what is required to become a CEO and start acquiring the knowledge, skills, and abilities to excel as a CEO.

Follow the road less travelled. If you look at Steve Jobs, he fol-lowed the road traveled and excelled as an innovation legend. Hence,

don’t get into rat race. Explore the unexplored areas where you find a huge potential and better opportunities, and then work on them.

Work in line positions than in staff positions. The employees who work in line positions rather than in staff positions have better prospects of reaching to the top quickly.

Write your failure resume. It sounds strange right! In fact, you learn more from your failures than from others as failure teaches you several hard lessons and let you know what did not work for you. A failure resume helps you find your blind spots. Hence, follow the three step process while writing your failure resume. In the first column, list out your failures; in the second column, write down why you have failed; in the third column, mention what are the lessons learnt from your failures.

Acquire positive, right and strong attitude. Positive attitude is about looking at the things from a positive perspective. Right attitude is about emphasizing the right means to achieve your outcomes. Strong

Interactive



attitude is about sticking to your principles through thick and thin to accomplish your goals despite being the odds are stacked against you.

Build your leadership abilities. Leadership is an ability anybody can acquire. It is the key component to take you to the top quickly. It differentiates between the chaff and cheese. When you lead it shows your inner spark and projects your abilities and people follow you based on them.

Hone your conceptual skills. Robert Katz said there are three skills needed in varied proportions at each level of management. They are technical skills, human skills, and conceptual skills. As you go from lower to middle, and to top level management you must possess more of conceptual skills and less of technical skills while the percentage of the human skills remain constant at each level of management. As a CEO, you have to provide your vision to your company. Hence, you must hone your conceptual skills to touch your tipping point.

Blend hard and soft skills. A right blend of hard and soft skills is needed to reach to the top. Hard skills are about your technical aspect while the soft skills are about your polite and pleasing way of communicating with others. Hard skills will rise you to the top while the soft skills will put you firmly on your corporate ladder.

Lay more emphasis on EQ. David Campbell, The Center for Creative Leadership unfolds, “Half of the CEOs in the world are below average.” Hence, your (Emotional Quotient) EQ plays a major role than (Intelligence Quotient) IQ. Here is good news! EQ can be acquired through various means including, reading, training, observing, and through experience and practice. IQ is inborn while EQ can be cultivated. Hence, develop your EQ and blend it with IQ proportionately and effectively to reach to the top.

Work in team. When you work in teams, you display your strengths and leverage others’ skills. You develop tolerance to others’ views and empathize with them. You also generate better results. You develop a great synergy and network that will catapult you to the top quickly.

Be an expert in your domain. You must discover your strengths and talents and work on those areas only. You must focus on them forever to achieve the desired outcomes quickly. Acquire knowledge continuously in your area of interest. Reinvent yourself with the chang-ing times and technology. Update yourself constantly by networking with the people in your interest to share your knowledge, and also to know the latest developments.

Involve in job rotation. Job rotation is about doing various tasks outside your routine nature of work. It has multiple advantages. It eliminates boredom and keeps you active. You get to know what is happening in other areas. It helps you develop conceptual skills. Above all, it helps you stay motivated.

Brand yourself. Nowadays, branding is very important. It is an effective tool to build your career and project your personality to others. You must be careful before branding. Choose carefully how you would like to brand yourself as your brand will enhance your professional image and longevity.

Be loyal to your organisation. Some employees change their jobs often for peanuts but they must know that changing their jobs too often dents their credibility. Research reveals that most of the CEOs worked for a long period in their organizations and ultimately they reached to the top. They laid emphasis on their careers, not jobs. When you work in an organization for a long duration, your talents will be spotted, and you will be slotted in the leadership pipeline through continuous training and development thus reaching to the top quickly.

Manage complexity and uncertainty. Although technology is a

boon, it has become a bane in some areas bringing a lot of uncertainty and complexity. You must develop tolerance towards complexity. You must be flexible to accommodate with open arms.

Embrace change. The only thing constant in this world is change. Hence, change before you are forced to change. Change is painful and stressful if you view it negatively. In contrast, if you view it positively, you will be able to embrace it with open arms and enjoy every moment.

Update with latest technology. The technology is changing rapidly. You must update yourself with the rapidly changing technology to leverage several benefits and save your time, money and energy. In addition, most of the young CEOs are from technology domain.

Take feedback regularly. Ken Blanchard said, “Feedback is the breakfast of champions.” When you take feedback you assess yourself where do you stand in terms of your performance and results. If you failed to achieve your goals you will be able to spot the barriers that prevented you from reaching your goals. You can address them and move forward.

Look at similarities, not differences. The globe has become a small village where technology connected all people together under one platform. Develop flexibility and respect all communities. Treat diversity as an opportunity, not a challenge. Be tolerant towards other communities. Empathize with others. Love your mother but don’t hate another person’s mother. As your mother is precious to you, another person’s mother is equally precious to him. As your community is close to your heart, others’ community is close to their heart.

Coach others. When you coach others you earn their good will; develop rapport with them; and you excel as a true leader. Most of the employees prefer to work with superiors who handhold and coach them. They look for their career guidance and support. Hence, coach people, support them and build leaders around yourself.

Learn constantly. Remember the sage advice from Marshall Gold-smith, the CEO Coach, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. You need to update regularly with latest tools and techniques to reach to your next higher position. What worked to reach to your present successful position might not work to reach your next higher posi-tion. Hence, acquire secrets and strategies, and update your tools and techniques to become even more successful in your professional life.

To conclude, these 21 tools will help you become a CEO and achieve success quickly in your chosen sphere. Follow these time tested tools to touch your tipping point. Remember that leadership is a journey, not a destination. Hence, enjoy your journey to becoming a CEO. Good luck! LE

21 Timeless Tools to Excel as a CEO

Professor M.S.Rao is the Father of ‘Soft Leadership’. He is an international leadership guru and the author of 30 books including the award-winning ‘21 Success Sutras for Leaders’ which has been ranked as one of the Top 10 Lead-ership Books of the Year – 2013 by San Diego University, USA. His authored book Success Tools for CEO Coaches: Be a Learner, Leader, and Ladder is the Community Award Winner for 2014 by Small Business Trends, USA.Connect Professor M.S. RaoEmail [email protected]

BookBooks by M. S. Rao

Youtube: Prof. M.S. Rao


http://www.linkedin.com/pub/professor-rao/34/11a/b52


http://www.amazon.com/M.-S.-Rao/e/B00MB63BKM

http://www.youtube.com/user/profmsr7


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By Jim Murphy

The importance of recognizing success and failure

Why the How Matters

Recent events provided the opportunity to congratulate a respected colleague on a major career milestone. Regrettably, I had to decline the invitation to attend the formal military ceremony that marked his achievement. Instead of a typically short “regrets” note, I felt the occasion merited a more thought-ful statement. Rather than sending a standard response like “Congratulations; unfortunately, I can’t make it,” I wrote a few paragraphs explaining the reasons why I was applauding him and why missing the ceremony was personally disappointing. His response surprised me and was a gratifying confirmation of my decision to take the time to pen a longer than usual note.

My colleague was thankful that I had considered and under-stood the way in which he had achieved this particular milestone. His leadership style is unconventional in the military setting, so he was especially grateful to learn how others perceived his atypical performance. As he put it, knowing that I appreciated his “how [was] really validating.” These words inspired me to think a bit more deeply about this otherwise simple exchange, and I had to consider how many times had I failed to express adequately my approval of someone else’s “how.”

As pleased as my colleague was that I celebrated his achieve-ment, he was even happier that I grasped how he had done it. This is an important distinction. We are often tempted to believe there is only one way to attain professional success in a career field, and those who take a different tack are second-guessed. We congratulate them when they are successful nevertheless, but how frequently do we reflect on how success happened? Even then, how often do we share those thoughts with them?

In this case, the how is quite different. He is, as I said to him, a different kind of leader than many people have experi-enced. To the traditional leadership skills – the basics we learn in the classroom and on the through trial and error – he adds unconventional methods more often seen in the most contem-porary civilian organizations than in his military environment. Invariably he succeeds because he understands when to use each technique, and he does this despite naysayers and their head-shaking disbelief. For example, he took the unusual step of introducing junior military team members as panelists for a civilian hiring committee, granting them the rare opportunity to participate in choosing their own supervisor. This may not seem earthshattering, but in the military and in federal civilian hiring, it was unique. Aware of just how unusual this was, the applicants’ reaction to the panelists was a factor in determining suitability for the position.

In retrospect, his reaction to my congratulations should not have surprised me, given that one of the reasons he succeeds is his commitment to “why.” Going far beyond the typical vision statement – or commander’s intent in military jargon – he fully explains why an action is needed, describing how certain ideas should improve the organization, but letting followers decide how they will institute them. When taking action as part of a team or individually, he similarly explains both how and why, leaving no doubt in the minds of his seniors, juniors, or contemporaries.

This behavior results from the confidence gained from thought-ful decision-making, a willingness to lead, ready acceptance of accountability, and the humility to follow, all without regard to anyone’s relative position or title. His example and support of similar behaviors inspire those around him to do the same.

When contemplating someone else’s success or failure, it is important to recognize exactly why they succeeded or failed. It is even more important to recognize these traits in our own results.

When complimenting positive behavior, it is important to tell others why their how matters. It is just as important when commenting on substandard conduct. When counseling sub-ordinates, let them know why your observation of their actions (the how) is significant, then lead them to change their approach to particular situations. Seek to alter their how with an under-standing of why it matters – why it matters to you, to them, and to the organization. Apply these same goals when discussing issues with peers or seniors.

The importance of recognizing the how in all situations cannot be overlooked; failing to do so can have debilitating effects. Too often we focus only on results – widgets produced, contracts signed, or employees retained – with too little attention paid to how goals were achieved. Later we may find hollow numerical objectives were attained outside the rules or without regard to employee safety or morale.

How really does matter. Ignoring how can lead to negative headlines that too frequently cast a cloud over an entire orga-nization or industry.

The leader who inspired this article gets results ethically and morally while instilling confidence and high morale in others. Except when it is not practical due to the situation, we should never take the easy road and choose short, unexplained words of congratulations or correction. As I discovered in the response to my note, fully detailing why we are happy for someone else’s achievement will make that person “happier than you know.” Similarly, when people fall short of expectations, they will appreciate the correction and the explanation; perhaps not im-mediately, but they will with time.

Understanding and valuing how someone succeeds or fails is important. Explaining it to a person goes a long way toward encouraging or correcting certain behaviors. In dealing with others, let them know that why and how matter. LE

This article was adapted with permission from “Why the How Matters” which appeared in the September 2014 issue of Proceedings magazine published by the U.S. Naval Institute. The original article and others by the author are available at http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/.

The views expressed here are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Naval Institute, the U.S. Navy, or any of their subordinate elements.

Jim Murphy retired from the U.S. Navy in 2008 as a Senior Chief Petty Officer. He has been the inaugural author of “From the Deckplates,” a lead-ership-centered column in Proceedings magazine, since June 2009. He also authored chapter six in Everyday Leader Heroes: 10 Leadership Characteris-tics in Everyday People by Dr. Rich Schuttler (Caboodle Publishing, 2013).Call 1|850|452-6961Email [email protected]


http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/

http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/



Tell us about your overall leadership vision and mission specific to Paycom’s Product Certification and Recertification program?

Our mission is to be the leader in our industry, and we do that by providing every customer with unparalleled service, coupled with our innovative payroll and HR technology. Our customers get to speak with a live individual who is an expert in all areas of the Paycom application and their businesses. The certification and recertification programs play a huge part in the customer-service portion of our mission because each customer has a dedicated Paycom specialist who is both courteous and incredibly knowledgeable.

We help our customers manage their employees and their business with proprietary HR software that manages everything in the employee life cycle, from recruiting to retirement. The product certification and recertification programs develop our specialists into experts in all areas of the Paycom application. Because we are 100 percent committed to being a learning organization, we empower our employees, who in turn empower our customers. It is a win-win scenario, and the vision ensures that our employees give our customers a first-class experience. What makes your program unique and different?

What makes our program unique is the way in which we deploy the training and how we customize it. The program itself is extremely interactive and includes hands-on learning and role-playing that engage the specialist in real-life customer scenarios. All of our trainings at Paycom are organic and are customized based on the needs of our customers.

Our Product Certification and Recertification courses help members of our organization serve our customers smarter. We empower our employees with extensive knowledge about our products, our customers’ needs and overall business acumen. The courses teach each Paycom product, but also help our specialists understand the business need behind each product. These courses are instrumental in helping specialists develop strong relationships with our customers.

How many people do you impact every year with this program?

Through our Product Certification and Recertification courses we are able to impact millions, from HR users to executives and not to mention the profound impact it has on our employees.

How long does it take to complete this program? Product certification happens for all new employees who directly serve our customers.

This includes a seven-week course with testing requirements at the conclusion.




Stacey Pezold

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Company Name: PaycomProgram Name: Paycom’s Product Certifica-tion and Recertification Executive Vice President of Operations: Stacey PezoldAddress: 7501 W. Memorial Rd., Oklahoma City, OK 73142 Phone Number: 1-800-580-4505Email: [email protected] Visit: paycom.com

Customer-Centric LeadershipOur editorial team interviewed Stacey Pezold from Paycom, at the Leadership Excellence Awards this past April. Here are some excerpts from the exclusive interview.

Video


mailto:spezold%40paycomonline.com?subject=

http://paycom.com/

http://youtu.be/VhCZifvwjaY

Recertification happens quarterly and consists of seven weeks in the classroom, in addition to simulation trainings throughout the year.

How is this program delivered, both online and in classroom? We offer both in-person classes and self-directed, self-study activities,

so even remote-location employees have the opportunity to become certified. The online-learning component in place today is quite impactful for our employees who happen to miss a day of coursework or learn better through online studies. We have product paths, videos, quizzes, recordings and reports, all of which we analyze on a consistent basis.

What level of leaders do you address? We address leaders at all levels throughout our organization.

Customer service is at the heart of what we do, so we believe that it is important for all employees and leaders alike to get certified. How do you measure success and ROI of your program?

It is easy to gauge return on investment, because it is tied directly to our client retention numbers. These courses have a direct impact on the relationships our employees build with customers. The coursework adds knowledge and credibility while building rapport between customers and their dedicated specialist. It is one of the many things that align with our model and expectations that we promise our customers, so they truly have one point of contact who can answer all of their questions.

What impact does your program have on users? Our tool drives our customers’ businesses. To executives, the real

power is in learning how to turn data into actionable information that can help them drive business initiatives.

The Paycom tool is a repository for all the tools they need to drive their business forward. From document management for storage of electronic files to talent-acquisition tools such as applicant tracking, we offer them all. This is why it is vital for our employees to know the ins and outs of every product in our arsenal, as well as proper business models. The Paycom system impacts an organization’s workforce from top to bottom.

What’s in store for the future? As a company, Paycom is dedicated to success – not just for our

customers, but for our hardworking employees as well. We believe that the two are indelibly linked, so you can be sure we will continue to enhance our training modules for both. We do this by continuing to leverage technology to create consistency across the organization from strategic and learning perspectives.



Tell us about your overall leadership vision and mission specific to Radically Transparent Leadership at Qualtrics?

Today at Qualtrics, radical transparency is a core tenet of the business and is the understanding that everyone knows everything. As a result, it strives to achieve what most companies only dream about -- an overachieving culture with employees who seek out tough problems and take them to resolution.

The Qualtrics executive leadership team practices this philosophy because it believes that when companies fail it is because employees lose focus. This can be especially true of fledgling, high growth organizations pushing to meet revenue targets. To avoid this, Qualtrics decided to make all employees’ performance data available across the organization.

Our goal is to eliminate diversions, doubts, and negativities that can deplete concentration. As a result, radical transparency has become a central component of the company’s success.

What makes your program unique and different?Radical transparency is the idea that everyone in an organization knows everything.

A transparent culture, from CEO to intern, is a huge catalyst for enabling employees to execute at a high level. Every employee knows not only where the company is going, but also what everyone else is working on in order to contribute to those goals.

The three characteristics of radical transparency at Qualtrics are: Focused goals: Qualtrics believes that employees thrive with focus. At the beginning

of each year, the company develops five corporate goals, which are broken down into quarterly objectives and key results (OKRs). These OKRs include revenue and satisfaction targets, so that employees are fully aware of the overarching corporate direction. Based on these corporate goals, every employee sets measurable individual OKRs, which are then broken down into weekly objectives, or snippets. Transparency focuses employee actions, making progress and priorities clear and lessening diversions. This fosters a singular emphasis on the corporate objectives, providing all employees with clear guidance as to how they will contribute.

Information freedom: Qualtrics errs on the side of information freedom, rather than information exclusion. For example, notes are released to the entire organization for every high-level meeting including board meetings, executive team meetings and weekly product planning discussions. Weekly all-hands meetings highlight areas of success and innovation across the company, as well as areas for improvement. Qualtrics believes that an increased level of transparency creates certainty, arming employees with the information needed to execute efficiently and excel in individual roles.

Midsize Company Category



Mike Maughan

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Company Name: QualtricsProgram Name: Radically Transparent Lead-ership at QualtricsProgram Director: Ryan Smith, Stuart Orgill, Scott Smith, Jared SmithAddress: 400 Qualtrics Drive, Suite 100 Provo, UT 84604Phone Number: (801) 319-7736Email: [email protected]: qualtrics.com

Building Corporate Culture on Transparency

Our editorial team interviewed Mike Maughan from Qualtrics, at the Leadership Excellence Awards this past April. Here are some excerpts from the exclusive interview.

Video


http://www.qualtrics.com/

http://youtu.be/Ql7ZnNIW1sg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUJ1tl6028E

Lead with data: At Qualtrics, radical transparency intensifies corporate loyalty and empowerment, because the organization uses data to measure employee performance. Every employee is benchmarked, all data are broadly accessible and all employees are treated accordingly.

How many people do you impact, every year, with this program?All 500 employees at Qualtrics are participants and beneficiaries of

a radically transparent culture.

How long does it take to complete this program?Radical transparency is ingrained in the corporate culture at Qualtrics.

Even the office environment has open workspaces, glass conference rooms, employees are free to bring their dogs to work and Qualtrics offers a family-friendly workplace, encouraging employees to bring their families during corporate outings and special lunch meetings.

How is this program delivered, both online and in classroom?Qualtrics leverages technology to communicate and to ensure that

all staff is involved and aware of internal activities, challenges and milestones. The company built an internal scalability and execution platform, called Odo, to efficiently communicate both corporate and employee objectives. The best way for employees to think and make decisions effectively is if they have all the information that they need at their fingertips. The goal is to provide staff with all relevant data so that they can perform their jobs at the highest level possible.

In conjunction with Odo, Qualtrics delivers a company-wide e-mail every Monday that reminds staff to set weekly objectives, called snippets, and to reflect on accomplishments from the previous week. This information is then compressed into an e-mail that the entire company receives and these snippets are also posted on Odo. This fosters heightened transparency because employees can see and respond to activities across the organization.

What level of leaders do you address?Every level in the company participates in a radically transparent

culture, reinforcing the belief that ‘everyone knowing everything’ is a major driver of increased organizational performance. Transparency is also one of the core leadership principles at Qualtrics. Leaders create a culture of meritocracy and are not afraid for others to know exactly what they are doing.

How do you measure success and ROI of your program?Radical transparency automatically creates a transparent measurement

of success. With visibility to both individual and company OKRs, everyone can measure the success of individual employees and teams in achieving overall corporate goals.

The principles of radical transparency work well for employees who like to receive continuous feedback on individual performances. The added bonus is that staff is also informed on co-worker performance. Qualtrics has found that making the accomplishments of top performers available for comparison against the company as a whole motivates

others to excel. This seems to increase commitment for the corporate mission because employee data are clearly connected to performance.

Everyone is benchmarked, all data are available for inspection and analysis, and all employees are treated accordingly. An added bonus is that staff will often start to emulate the right behavior by shadowing the competent, not just the confident.


Qualtrics believes that every leader is a player/coach. Leaders lead by example and mentor from in the trenches. Good leaders are top performers who give feedback, and share leadership. They develop and promote, ‘A’ Players don’t feel threatened by the success of others. ‘A players hire A players, B players hire C players, and C players sink the ship’. Whether or not employees hold a leadership position, they can be a leader. All employees are both learners and teachers.

In sales leadership training, for example, team members with excellent performance and strong teaching skills teach several classes each quarter, based on assigned topics from sales leadership. These team members are also assigned to participate in several training classes each quarter. This gives all team members regular opportunities to be both a mentor and a student. In addition to its expertise in sales leadership training, Qualtrics also engages a variety of outside consultants on an ongoing basis to teach seminars and training sessions. This training is available to all employees.

What are the key takeaways from your program? How does it help participants to improve their as well as their team’s performance?

By making the successes of top performers accessible and easy to compare against the department or company as a whole, newer employees at Qualtrics are motivated to excel through mirroring the best practices of high-performing employees. This mirroring is extremely powerful in encouraging positive work performance. Another big plus is that right people get promotions, i.e. people who consistently perform are rewarded, and not those who are good at making other think that they perform well.

What impact does your program have on users?A radically transparent culture creates winning teams and minimizes

a lot of the backbiting and internal politics that tend to happen by simply letting everybody understand who is working on what and why. So, while employees still have conflict, being transparent allows us to get into another’s shoes, so to speak. To understand their challenges and successes, ultimately this creates stronger teams.

What’s in store for future?We will continue to maintain a transparent culture. At the same

time we will see to it that we evolve the program as per current and future needs and thus also develop our culture on the go.


By Joe Clark

3 reasons for the disconnect

The Big Distance Between the CEO & the Frontline

CEOs often underestimate the distance between their office and frontline employees. They spend a lot of time crafting well-articulated strategies and then ship the message off by passing it along to their executive team, which then gets funneled across a great distance to employees. This can be a serious roadblock that keeps firms from really good strategy execution. Additionally, this gap is especially problematic when those frontline employees have direct contact with customers. Ouch.Are you familiar with the game of Telephone?

Organizations can wind up in a situation where the whole firm is playing one giant game of Telephone. On the good versus bad scale...this is bad. It’s bad because strategy execution is everyone’s job, every day. If employees across teams, whole departments, and functional units, are all operating from different play books then this creates a scenario where mediocrity is the best outcome. Again, this is not good. Especially if you happen to be a shareholder. Sure, these firms might have a quarter or three where their numbers are solid but sooner or later they’re going to have a “miss.” Sustainable results are not possible if employees aren’t rowing the boat in the same direction. There are too many ways for costs to sneak into the system.

There are many reasons why this disconnect between the C-Suite and employees can take shape. Here are three of our favorites:

1. The strategy or game plan of the company is not commu-nicated in a way that is clear and meaningful to all employees. For example, the CEO is communicating the strategy with a one hundred slide Power Point deck filled with spreadsheets and fancy but complicated models.

2. The strategy is not communicated frequently enough. For example, the CEO communicates the strategy once a year at the holiday party or the summer picnic.

3. Objectives, goals, and performance measures aren’t tied to the strategy. Measurement systems are not strategy-focused and therefore employees are not strategy-focused. For example, the

CEO says the strategy is to create innovative new products and services and be the first to market. However, at the very same time the company is measuring managers based on operating profit. Innovation requires taking some risk and testing new things. Operating profit can prompt managers to avoid risk. (See the problem?)

Are these happening in your organization? What are the im-plications for you and your company if they are? What can you do to fix the situation? LE

Joe F. Clark is the CEO of Prana Business. Joe has over 18 years of strategy management, leadership development, and entrepreneurial experience. As a strategy consultant and executive coach, Joe is highly sought-after by board directors, the C-suite, and managers from mid-cap businesses to the Global 500 enterprise. Joe has co-authored the Keys to Strategy Execution™ model that has helped thousands of managers across dozens of organizations execute strategy and create competitive advantage.Call 1|303|4476889Email [email protected] pranabusiness.com


“Telephone is a game played around the world, in which one person whispers a message to another, which is passed through a line of people until the last player announces the message to the entire group. errors typically accumulate in the retellings, so the statement announced by the last player differs sig-nificantly, and often amusingly, from the one uttered by the first.”


http://pranabusiness.com/


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers

What is your leadership vision and mission specific to Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) Services?

Our mission is to enhance our clients’ talent acquisition practices by designing best-in-class recruiting processes through a customized solution that allows them to hire qualified healthcare practitioners, deliver superior patient care services and maintain a well-balanced workforce that will thrive in today’s ever-changing healthcare industry.

What makes your program unique and different?Our RPO program is differentiated due to our ability to provide the focus, cost-

efficiencies, and dedicated processes and systems – combined with 30 years of healthcare expertise – to offer our RPO clients a flexible, cost-effective workforce solution that addresses their core hiring challenges and helps reduce vacancy rates.

The extensive healthcare staffing expertise we’ve gained allows us to work with our clients in a consultative role while providing structures, processes and technologies that improve the efficiencies of their recruiting, credentialing and hiring procedures.

For each RPO client, we undergo an exploratory process to identify the specific workforce and patient care dynamics of their facilities. This insight is then leveraged to assist in building strategies that are both sustainable and flexible, allowing us to address new challenges and client demands as we implement long-term solutions.

Utilizing a client-branded recruiting approach, we launch extensive recruitment campaigns across targeted skill sets utilizing a dedicated centralized recruiting team and proprietary recruiting technologies. To support the ongoing success of each program, we often leverage on-site support teams from both Supplemental Health Care and our clients for account management, candidate coordination and daily interaction with departments and hiring managers.

As the healthcare industry continues to transform, our RPO program is proving to be an ideal workforce solution that delivers results in a cost-effective and timely manner. Most importantly, it enables our clients to continue delivering the high quality healthcare services their patients expect and deserve.

How many people do you impact, every year, with this program?We contacted over 30,000 people this past year to fulfill more than 700 full-time

openings for our clients. One of our largest clients, a public hospital in the Dallas area that has more than 10,000 employees, had a vacancy rate over 15 percent that we reduced to 6 percent. Also, our program helped reduced time-to-start by 38 percent




Cherie Ware

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Company Name: SHC Services, Inc. dba Supplemental Health CareProgram Name: RPO Services (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) Program Director: Cherie Ware, RPO Divi-sion ManagerAddress: 9441 LBJ Frwy. Ste. 602Phone Number: 214.462.7510Email: [email protected] Website address: www.supplementalhealth-care.com

Recruiting High Potentials

Our editorial team interviewed Cherie Ware from SHC Services, Inc. dba Supplemental Health Care, at the Leadership Excellence Awards this past April. Here are some excerpts from the exclusive interview.

http://www.supplementalhealthcare.com/

http://www.supplementalhealthcare.com/

and average time-to-hire by 50 percent.

How long does it take to complete this program?Our RPO programs can be launched in 30 days or less. This time

frame is based on each client account as it is decided only after we complete the contracting process and conduct final due diligence and discovery.

How is this program delivered, both online and in classroom?Depending on the level of participation our clients would like us to

have with their hiring managers and other end-users, we will develop both on-site and virtual recruiting, training and onboarding services that meet their staffing and patient care needs.

What level of leaders do you address?We address a variety of healthcare executives to support the

implementation of our RPO programs including: chief executive officers, chief financial officers, chief operating officers, chief marketing officers, chief networking officers and chief human resources officers, among others.

How do you measure success and ROI of your program?We determine ROI based on our clients’ priorities. Typically, ROI is

measured by a reduction in cost per hire and time-to-fill percentages, improvements in candidate and end-user satisfaction, and a variety of other key performance metrics that demonstrate the success of this customized workforce solutions.


First and foremost, Supplemental Health Care holds 30 years of experience in the healthcare staffing industry. Over the years, we’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with our clients to build a number of training and HR programs that support their workforce and provide continuous learning opportunities for healthcare practitioners.

In recent years, we’ve assisted in all aspects of program development – everything from designing streamlined hiring and onboarding processes to crafting hiring guides and utilizing internet technology to conduct on-boarding, orientation, and training modules. What are the key takeaways from your program?

The largest takeaway from our program is that each client receives a custom designed program that is able to be deployed and sustained efficiently and cost effectively.

In a time where healthcare organizations are required to do more with less resources, our scalable RPO solution allows them to get back to doing what is most important – delivering quality patient care, providing excellent customer service to their patients and securing more positive healthcare outcomes.

What impact does your program have on users?Many of our clients experience immediate success and positive

improvements in their staffing practices within only a few months of implementing our RPO solution.

Often times, we find that our RPO solution has contributed to improving vital human resource processes that greatly impact the success of a healthcare facilities including: streamlined hiring processes, reduced vacancy rates, faster time-to-hire and offer acceptance rates, and reduced direct costs across various hiring metrics.

What’s in store for the future?With new legislative changes coming to the healthcare segment and

a variety of dynamics impacting the healthcare workforce, our clients are going to seek even more solutions that allow them to endure the shifting tides of this industry.

In the future, Supplemental Health Care will remain committed to expanding our workforce solutions portfolio to help our clients successfully navigate these changes and gain access to the best healthcare talent in the United States.

Similar to our clients, our company is continuing to evolve and adapt to new regulations, changes and advancements within the healthcare industry. Due to this perspective, we believe we are uniquely poised to serve as a dedicated partner in patient care to our clients because we possess a first-hand understanding of important healthcare topics, trends and issues.

Quality patient care is our passion and we look forward to assisting healthcare facilities across the nation better serve the citizens in communities in which they operate.


By Marshall Goldsmith and Jeffrey Balash

Facing the challenges of change

Hero or Victim?

We’ve all heard for many years that “change is constant”. Unfortunately, human nature resists and fights change. We maintain that we weigh exactly what we did in college. We certainly look as good as we did when we graduated: “70 is the new 30!” And we hate when we need to move to a new office.

Fight change as much as we might, change almost always wins out. The current environment has also added a different and more challenging dimension. The rate of change has acceler-ated. Furthermore, this rate of change is non-linear, as noted by Malcolm Gladwell and Geoffrey Moore in their respective books The Tipping Point and Crossing the Chasm1.

Change now happens very rapidly. Every company’s and competitor’s “edge” is constantly eroding. Sometimes at a shock-ing rate—and the company may not even know it. Its patent is running. A new technology is threatening. Customers are dwindling, finding a different approach or alternative product more attractive.

However, all too frequently, when an employee points this out,he/she is said to be “not on the team”, “not on the program”, or a “negative thinker” and suffers adverse consequences, whichencourages people to keep their mouths shut.

We’ve experienced this first hand, even in “life or death” situ-ations. We advised a leading industrial company that was the object of a hostile takeover by a financial buyer. A takeover target should almost always win this battle against a financial buyer2. The financial buyer needs to generate returns of 20%+ on its equity investment in order to meet its return targets. The target company merely needs to increase its debt in the same way that the acquirer would, use the cash from this debt financing to pay a dividend to its shareholders and leave its shareholders with the resulting “stub equity” (i.e., what that firm’s stock is valued at in the public markets after the addition of debt), which does not need to achieve as high a rate of return, since the existing shareholders are already “stuck” with the equity.

So we told senior management that the company needed to reduce overhead dramatically, effectively taking the same steps that a hostile acquirer would, in order to support its increased load of debt, which would be used to declare a large cash divi-dend to its shareholders. The CEO, COO, CFO and other senior managers would likely lose their jobs if the attacker were to win.

However, in the face of this challenge, they still weren’t able to achieve or to accept the cuts that needed to be made. The CEO told me that he couldn’t possibly lay off a division head with whom he and his wife had a bi-weekly dinner for many years. Furthermore, he maintained that the workforce would rebel and simply not agree to the required reductions. We’re sure that by now you have figured out the conclusion of our story. The company was acquired, senior management was terminated and the workforce trimmed in what turned out to be a very profitable investment for the acquirer.

You’re probably observing “That’s a heck of a story. But I

will never be in that situation. So what’s the point of your ‘war story’?” We agree that you may not face a similar challenge. However, our point is that if management couldn’t achieve the required changes in such a dramatic situation, how likely is it to be thoughtful about and really responsive to some “distant threat” that may appear more theoretical than real.

We would suggest that you speak with the CEOs of some widely admired and leading companies of the past in photog-raphy, copying, and minicomputers. However, you may rather smugly note that “That’s the tech world of hyper-competition and radical change. My company isn’t in that rat race, which is why I chose to work there.”

So let’s talk to another group of CEOs, who have led newspaper companies, domestic auto manufacturers, “bricks and mortar” electronics, book and other retailers and makers of men’s suits. Each of their businesses has been negatively impacted. None of these CEOs considered his/her business to be “high tech”.

Very astute and highly regarded managements have been ambushed. A software company missed the impact of the Internet and then missed the change to SAAS (“”software as a service”), which led to “thin client3” solutions and the signifi-cant weakening of its franchises. A chip manufacturer failed to see the forthcoming importance of mobile platforms, which have dramatically reduced the sales of its personal computers and laptops as tablets and smart phones have established large and growing user bases. And the list goes on.

So how does a company identify, assess and proactively respond to such threats? It may well already have a Chief Strategic Officer. Isn’t foreseeing these challenges his/her job? Theoreti-cally, yes. However, in our experience and in practice, not so much. The CSO’s role is generally perceived as supporting and enhancing the existing business units. This is an evolutionary versus revolutionary role. We are all prisoners of our respec-tive business models. The CSO needs to be “supportive” and a “team player”. To suggest that the current business model will no longer work is anathema and could well result in his/her marginalization or termination.

We suggest that a new senior management position and man-agement orientation may be essential for a corporation to survive and to prosper: the appointment of a Chief Change Officer, who would report directly to the CEO. A direct report would not have his/her ideas filtered or colored by an intervening manager. Moreover, the CEO is the one person, in addition to the Board of Directors, who should be most interested, since he/she is free from any daily operational duties and is responsible for the continued success of the company.

His/her mandate would be to identify potential threats to that company’s businesses and to articulate how the company should respond. Such as acquire, build from within, and recruit that company’s key employees. This would involve not only learning about these other companies, but also entail a further analysis




to determine (i) the seriousness of the threat (e.g., Disruptive in what specific ways? Resources, financial and other, of potential competitor?), (ii) its likely evolution path and time frame, (iii) risks to that new company’s successful implementation of the new product or service, and (iv) what would be required to modify his/her company’s existing product or service either to remain competitive or to lengthen its productive life, if it couldn’t be sufficiently changed to remain competitive.

We believe that the ideal candidate would be a senior operat-ing executive from within the company, since that individual would both understand operations and, more importantly, enjoy existing relationships and credibility with other senior execu-tives within the company. We suggest that the position rotate every two to three years, so that, ideally, the company’s entire senior team can have this experience, which would change the culture of the company to be sensitive to potential threats and to be attuned to change.

In the words of Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel: “Only the paranoid survive”. Grove and Gordon Moore, then Intel’s Chairman, who’s known for “Moore’s Law”, are an excellent example of how to adapt to radical change.

Intel had been the leading manufacturer of DRAM semi-conductors, which accounted for the majority of its business. However, foreign competitors began to displace Intel’s products and severely threatened Intel’s existence. Grove and Moore decided to take a walk outside the office and asked each other: “If the Board fired us and we were brought in as the new team, what would we do?” Each simultaneously answered: “Get out of DRAM”. This exit required a year of meetings with manag-ers throughout the company to convince them that, although DRAM was Intel’s heritage, the future lay in microprocessors4. Grove and Moore saw the dramatic threat and need for change and completely changed Intel’s business not only to survive, but to prosper.

We recommend that the CCO’s staff be recruited from outside the company. That way they won’t have to be “retrained” or “deconditioned” from legacy ideas and perspectives. They would not have been exposed to the company’s culture, so that they can offer unbiased, fresh views of potential threats and solutions. The CCO would then curate and modify these suggestions, so that they were attuned to the culture.

In order to achieve acceptance and involvement, bi-weekly meetings with the senior divisional operating executives should be scheduled. The information can flow both ways. Namely the CCO can note particular new strategies, technologies and weak-nesses so that the operating team can respond to and comment on them. Possibly these threats are not as serious as originally observed—or they may be greater in scope. These meetings would also begin to change the company culture, so that the operating team understood and accepted the importance of ac-tively seeking out potential significant changes in the industry that might affect the company’s business.

As Grove further observed5, “Let chaos reign and then rein in chaos”. Namely, when there is a dramatic shift in the environ-ment, no one individual has a monopoly on the “best ideas”. Important insights and suggestions may come from the work-force, the administrative staff or a new employee. The point is that all ideas should be considered, irrespective of the source.

To promote confidentiality, an intranet “chat page”, where each of the participants is anonymous to eliminate any fear of reprisals, could be implemented both to encourage suggestions as well as to float possible new approaches in order to get im-portant input from the rank and file. Such a site would ideally be hosted by a third party firm to ensure confidentiality. In addition, the host firm could assign numerical identities to people making comments, so that (i) management could follow the “thread” of a particular discussion and (ii) employees making valuable contributions could then be rewarded should they wish to be identified.

In conclusion, we are proposing the seeming oxymoron of “institutionalizing change”. We believe that the costs attendant to these potential risks are too great to respond only at the last moment or in “firefighting” mode. The best strategies and tactics can only be developed in a thoughtful manner through discussion and recruitment of the management team to the proposed solution. Moreover, the earlier a potential change is highlighted, the greater are the company’s options.

Very few if any companies that we know are organized to seek the seeds of their potential destruction, which is why so many have been caught unaware until it was too late. This is why we suggest that the position of a Chief Change Officer be established with the explicit mandate of identifying potential threats, so that the company can formulate optimal approaches to ensure its existence and continued success. LENotes:1 The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell (Jan 7, 2002) and Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Technology Products to Mainstream Customers by Geoffrey A. Moore (Nov 1991).2 A private equity firm or ultra-wealthy family office.3 This is where the software is in the cloud and the owner’s device doesn’t have any of that application’s software loaded on the device.4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel5 Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company by Andrew S. Grove (Mar 16, 1999)

Jeffrey Balash has worked with and in successful growth companies for over thirty years, including his full-time involvement in four start-ups. He was a managing director in corporate finance and M&A, both at Lehman Brothers (NYC) and at Drexel Burnham (Beverly Hills).Connect Jeffrey Balash

Marshall Goldsmith is an expert in leadership who was ranked as one of the field’s 15 most influential business thinkers in a study involving 35,000 respondents that was published by The Times of London and Forbes. Goldsmith’s books have sold more than a million copies and have been translated into 25 languages. His newest book, written with Don Brown and Bill Hawkins, is What Got You Here Won’t Get You There in Sales (McGraw-Hill, 2011)Email [email protected] www.MarshallGoldsmith.com

Hero or Victim?


http://www.amazon.com/Tipping-Point-Little-Things-Difference/dp/0316346624/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397260867&sr=1-1&keywords=gladwell+tipping+point

http://www.amazon.com/Malcolm-Gladwell/e/B000APOE98/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1397260865&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Crossing-Chasm-Marketing-Technology-Mainstream/dp/0887305199/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397260951&sr=1-4&keywords=crossing+the+chasm+geoffrey+moore

http://www.amazon.com/Crossing-Chasm-Marketing-Technology-Mainstream/dp/0887305199/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397260951&sr=1-4&keywords=crossing+the+chasm+geoffrey+moore

http://www.amazon.com/Geoffrey-A.-Moore/e/B000APBO2I/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_4?qid=1397260951&sr=1-4

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel

http://www.amazon.com/Only-Paranoid-Survive-Exploit-Challenge/dp/0385483821/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397259766&sr=1-1&keywords=andy+grove+only+the+paranoid+survive

http://www.amazon.com/Andrew-S.-Grove/e/B000AQ48KW/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1397259766&sr=1-1

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffbalash


http://www.MarshallGoldsmith.com


By Julia Gometz

The wave of the future

Are Your Employees in the Driver’s Seat?

Many organizations want employees to embrace change, but that doesn’t go far enough. They should drive it.

Employees have trouble embracing change because they have to get behind something they did not create. While some strategies appear to be effective at getting employees to embrace change, a stronger and longer-lasting solution comes from having skin in the game and constant employee involvement in the chang-ing organization.

Businesses have become much more transparent. Giving em-ployees more of a say, is hard to avoid. Instead of hiding company challenges and solving them behind closed doors, consider in-viting employees into problem-solving discussions. Companies like Google, LinkedIn and Sony have had some success with employees submitting new product ideas and developing them. And it leads to a competitive advantage. What should you do to put employees in the driver’s seat?

1. Listen to employees and take action. Sounds simple, however companies of all sizes find this difficult to actually do. It takes leaders at all levels who actively listen and follow up, regularly. When this happens consistently, employees have

reason to speak up and get involved. 2. Share organizational challenges that inspire employees

to help solve. If employees don’t know how they can help, the value and impact they bring will be easily lost and wasted. On the flipside, they can bring a new perspective and become a greater asset.

3. Have processes that make it easy and efficient for an em-ployee idea to go from inception to execution. There are new platforms being developed that go way beyond sharepoint and the traditional suggestion box that can help share, track, evaluate and action employee contributions.

4. Constantly encourage everyone to share success stories. When employees see their own impact on driving change, it encourages the cycle to continue and become ingrained in the culture. One of my favorite stories is from Morton’s. An em-ployee saw a hungry customer jokingly tweet from an aircraft as he was boarding his flight: “Hey, @Mortons – can you meet me at newark airport with a porterhouse when I land in two hours? K, thanks. :)” The passenger was absolutely shocked when he landed and found a guy in a tuxedo greeting him, holding a hot porterhouse steak in his hands. It may not have been the normal course of business for Morton’s but this is the upside to having an empowered workforce.What are the results of putting employees in the driver’s seat?

Employees become, what I like to call, “brandful.” This means they start living the brand because they are now a part of it. They genuinely promote your products and services through their personal networks. They go the extra mile to best represent your brand. This can have a tremendous impact on marketing, corporate citizenship and recruiting efforts. It allows you to step away from pushing such efforts onto employees and becomes something they are inspired to do.

Companies mistakenly spend time and resources on being a part of the top employers list. This approach focuses on enticing employees to feel proud because of what they are given, instead of what they are giving. The approach of placing employees in the driver’s seat is the wave of the future, where employees and employers win together by what they both contribute to the winning brand. The pride comes from what they can do together.

The next time you feel yourself becoming frustrated that employees aren’t getting onboard with all the changes going on, think about trying a different approach. Let me know how it goes. LE

Julia Gometz is author and founder of The Brandful Workforce, which helps bring good brands to life, through employees. Formerly she was head of employee engagement at JetBlue Airways. She previously worked at Morgan Stanley and served as a mediator on Wall Street, as well as in court systems and in the community.Email [email protected]



By Kim E. Ruyle

Deep expertise trumps all

The Real Drivers of Innovation

The following is adapted from Lessons from a CEO’s Journal: Leading Talent and Innovation by Kim E. Ruyle, published by Inventive Talent Consulting, 2014.

To innovate is to create and implement something new and different. Innovation is a fresh approach to solving a problem and application of the solution. It is both thinking and doing. It is follow through, the commercialization of a good idea. Innovation is vital because it’s the only way you can reliably achieve profitable growth. And profitable growth is the chief objective of every CEO. Your CEO cares deeply about innova-tion. So should you.

After reviewing 280 peer-reviewed research studies related to innovation and contrasting the research with dozens of books and articles, I’ve learned that there’s quite a bit of mis-placed emphasis in the popular innovation literature. A lot of what’s written about innovation focuses on getting the right culture, recruiting diverse teams, implementing gate reviews and process metrics, taking risk, and celebrating failure. These things may prove helpful, but there are more powerful drivers of innovation.

The perfect culture to drive innovation is yet to be defined. Even if there was a perfect innovation culture, it wouldn’t guar-antee innovation. The power of team diversity is often over-rated. In fact, diversity may work against you. And even if you use gate reviews, take risks, celebrate failure, and do a great job measuring everything, it doesn’t guarantee innovation. Through the research, I’ve identified six drivers of innovation

leadership and address two of them in this short article: 1) Deep Expertise and 2) Management of the Expert Career Path.

Above all, innovation requires expertise. We can all cite ac-cidental discoveries that have launched groundbreaking inno-vations. But if we’re serious about innovation, we can’t wait for accidents. We have to be intentional about it, and that means we need experts.

Experts have the ability to see anomalies that others don’t. They see similarities others miss. They see connections that are invisible to non-experts. They see patterns. And it’s those pat-terns and connections that are the basis of innovation. Innova-tion comes from the connections experts see between patterns. The first step to becoming intentional about innovation is to understand experts and the nature of expertise. Here are some of the salient elements: • Experts are passionate about their discipline. Experts

are focused, obsessive, and single-minded in a way that’s nearly incomprehensible to the non-expert. They are driven to study, think, experiment, and to develop their own unique point of view that is the result of their own work.• Experts have a vast amount of experience. The passion

of experts leads them to spend more quality time working in their discipline. Although there are ways to accelerate and enhance the value of experience, there is really no way to get around the sizable investment in time required to develop ex-pertise.• The nature of an expert’s experience is different. It’s

not just that experts have more experience, there’s a qualita-tive difference in their experience. They practice differently. It’s more focused, more intentional, and more mindful.• An expert’s motives are different. They are achievement-

oriented, but the way they define achievement is different from others. More than anything else, they are motivated by being an expert. They love to have answers that others don’t. They love to be in demand for what they know.

Further to our understanding of experts, we also need to un-derstand the nature of expertise so we can nurture it in our or-ganizations. Our knowledge of expertise will help us to better develop and engage deep experts. • Deep expertise is rare. Most everyone has some level of

expertise in one thing or another. But the truth is, there are very, very few true experts. Deep experts stand head and shoul-ders above others in their command of their discipline.• Expertise changes the way problems are solved. Many

are prone to think that experts find the best solutions because they’re analytical and use a disciplined approach to problem solving. No. The best problem solvers are simply those who know the most about the subject. Pure and simple. Experts know the most. Their experience has provided them with many stored patterns that are the source of their intuition. It’s non-experts who are more likely to resort to analysis and structured




problem solving.• Expertise is transparent to the expert. Experts typically

have a high degree of unconscious competence. They often can’t explain how they see solutions that others miss. Their stored mental models and patterns are incredibly rich, and focused practice has carved deep neural networks that enable solutions to spring forth clearly and unobstructed.• For the most part, deep expertise is tacit. Because it’s

transparent to the expert, it’s virtually impossible for the expert to articulate. This phenomenon presents a real dilemma to those of us who would like to capture and document and dis-seminate expertise. If your organization develops the capability to transform the tacit to the explicit, you’re on your way to building a capacity for innovation.• Multiplying expertise is difficult. Because expertise is

rare and largely defines one’s value to an organization, asking an expert to share expertise represents a threat of sorts because his or her value may be diminished. Remember that experts are motivated by being an expert. Recognition for expertise is fer-tilizer for the ego, and many experts have outsized egos. Those egos can be a huge problem. Egos confound teamwork, listen-ing, teaching, cooperation, fairness, understanding, sharing, negotiation, humor, and relationships in general. When you try to multiply expertise in your organization, you’ll face all these obstacles and more. • Support the expert career path If deep experts are the drivers of innovation, we need to un-

derstand how their expertise is developed, how their careers are built. Career support is an engagement driver, a driver that many organizations fail to fully leverage. Those organizations that do define career paths and provide career support often focus on the generalist path. Few provide sufficient definition, branding, and support for the technical career path. But it’s your pool of technical specialists that provides the talent most likely to drive innovation in your organization. It’s important to support the careers of technical talent, in particular, high potential specialists.• Build depth in the discipline. Unlike generalists who

typically have a variety of roles in their careers, experts normal-ly stay within a narrowly defined discipline and career track. They may take one or two short assignments outside of their function over the course of their career, but this is relatively rare for deep experts. But specialists still need to be aggressively developed in jobs just as generalists do. To accomplish this, it pays to get creative and introduce a variety of developmental stretch assignments for deep experts.• Develop teaching/coaching skills. Stretch your techni-

cal experts by pushing them into coaching and teaching roles. These roles can be formal or informal, but the important thing is to get them accustomed to sharing, to talking about the spe-cifics of what they do. Since expertise is transparent, experts find it very difficult to share their tacit heuristics. Sure, they may be able to talk about the general technology or discipline, the stuff typically found in related textbooks. But can they articulate their heuristics, their rules-of-thumb, their tricks of the trade? In this, they will most assuredly struggle, yet this is a primary way to grow and multiply organizational expertise.

• Develop perspective. Experts are focused on their disci-pline and stick to a narrow career path. Nothing wrong with that as long as they don’t develop tunnel vision to a point that they’re unaware of business challenges, the competitive land-scape, customer segments, and business fundamentals. You don’t need to jump to a different career track to gain perspec-tive.• Leverage external development opportunities. En-

courage your experts to participate in professional activities outside of the organization. Support them in those activities. Experts will find it stimulating and engaging to participate in professional societies and conferences. You want them to be more than passive attendees, though, and it’s OK to push them outside of their comfort zone to be presenters and authors.• Enhance self-awareness. The first step to development is

awareness. Self-awareness is a critical component of emotional intelligence, which enables us to build effective relationships. It is critical for your experts.• Focus development on emotional intelligence. The

ability to manage emotions and build relationships is a strong predictor of success. And the lack of EQ is an even stronger predictor of derailment. When your experts disappoint you, it’s almost always because of relationship problems. They may find it difficult to relate to others. They may be unable to coach effectively. Worse, they may be obstinate, arrogant, uncoopera-tive, defensive, tactless...and the list goes on. These problems are due to a lack of EQ skills. The greatest gift you can provide your experts is help with developing emotional intelligence.• Respect the importance of personal influence. Personal

influence is an engagement driver and especially important for high potential specialists. Nothing wrong with providing awards, public recognition, even monetary incentives. But re-member, experts are motivated by being the expert. It’s hard to top the recognition value of simply asking them for their opinion.• Modify compensable factors as needed. Compensation

is normally calculated using several factors that may unduly short-change your deep experts, factors such as budgetary re-sponsibility and span of control for direct and indirect reports. Your deep experts may work as individual contributors and provide value that far exceeds what can be inferred from tra-ditional comp factors or position level or title. Consider how you may need to modify your comp calculations for targeted positions.

Innovation is the way to grow your business profitably. It is incredibly difficult to do well. You need deep experts, those who make their craft appear deceptively simple. And you need to proactively manage their careers. Copyright © 2014 by Kim E. Ruyle, Inventive Talent Consulting

Kim Ruyle is President of Inventive Talent Consulting, LLC, a Miami-based firm that provides strategic talent management and organizational development consulting for leading global organizations. He is an Associate in Korn Ferry’s Global Associate Network. Kim has thirty years of experience in human resources, organizational development, and general management.. Kim’s latest book, Lessons from a CEO’s Journal, was published in 2014.Email [email protected] www.inventivetalent.comTwitter @inventivetalent Connect Kim Ruyle

The Real Drivers of Innovation



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By Lee Caraher

4 ways leaders can do that

Harnessing the Power of Millennials

Millennials (born 1980 – 2000) will make up more than 50% of the workforce by 2020. Yet many Boomer and Gen Xer leaders are frustrated and perplexed by the attitudes, behaviors and expectations they perceive of their younger colleagues, and often regard Millennials as exotic animals in their midst.

However, Millennials have much to offer when pointed in the right direction and armed with the knowledge that what they do matters. Don’t buy into the prevailing negative belief that Millennials are entitled; instead work from an understanding that they’ve been conditioned to believe that their presence is important, that they are capable, and that they can change the world. They are and they can … if you let them. If you don’t, you’ll probably lose them and need to start again.

Four things you can do to help harness the incredible millen-nial talent in, and entering, the workplace:

Context is King. While it might have worked in years past, “Because I said so” doesn’t work as a viable answer to the question “Why am I doing this?” that so many Millennials ask today. The most important thing a manager or team leader can do to get projects on a good path is to provide ample context and color for each task or assignment before the work starts.

Explain the goals of the project, and how it fits into the bigger picture at the company. Talk through what you expect from each person and how each person’s work matters to the team and project as a whole.

The more context and color you give the better. Once people understand how their work, no matter how dull it may seem, matters, they become more engaged, more active, and more thoughtful about it. All work matters, or it wouldn’t need to be done. Drive context into your day wherever you can so that the people doing the work get it too.

Be Transparent. In today’s constant flow of digital commu-nication, transparency in the workplace is critical. Millennials have grown up one click away from any information they wanted (whether it’s true or not is a different question) – they know a lot about your organization. Assume everyone has news alerts about the company popping into their email daily. Communicate good news, neutral news and bad news early and often.

Well-informed organizations tend to have less gossip and less time wasted on employees wondering “what if,” and, very importantly, more trust of leadership and management, all of which lead to greater morale and productivity.

Obviously, not all information can be shared in real time. However the more you share with your employees – the more they know – they more they can contribute.

Solicit Input Often. In general, Millennials want to con-tribute day one to the shape of the business. When people see their ideas in action they become more engaged which starts a virtuous circle that builds good will, morale and productivity. If we can regularly ask the questions “How can we do this better?” or “How would you go about this project?” and then coach our

people to productive ends, we dramatically increase our odds of getting better results and more engaged teams.

I believe in High Input, Low Democracy teams with leaders that are geared to consider lots of ideas from lots of people throughout an organization (not just the most senior people), and then make a well-informed, well-communicated go-forward decision.

Of course not all ideas are useable. However, the learning in discussing why some input was incorporated and others were deferred is invaluable and tends to yield improved ideas over time. Most importantly, the ability to regularly contribute is critical to keeping Millennials engaged.

Show Appreciation. While it’s probably empirically true that Millennials request or require more recognition for their par-ticipation than their older colleagues, establishing a culture of meaningful appreciation and acknowledgement that reinforces contribution benefits everyone in the workplace.

According to Francesca Gino of Harvard and Adam Grant of Wharton, the power of “Thank You” is large and important. Gratuitous appreciation has no place in the office. However work days are filled with opportunities to thank people – “Thank you for bringing this to my attention,” “I appreciate the effort you put in,” “Thanks for your prompt reply,” etc.

The more we build cultures of appreciation, the more our people (of any generation) will be engaged and excited about their work.

These four concepts will go a long way in helping you harness the energy and enthusiasm your millennial colleagues bring to the party we call work. In the end, all of these steps that work also work well to help engage Boomers and Gen Xers in the workplace. The net effect of taking these steps throughout the day – providing context, providing information, soliciting information and building appreciation – is a productive, inter-generational, future-proof workplace that benefits everyone in it. That’s an exotic animal we can all embrace! LE

Lee Caraher is an entrepreneur, CEO, speaker and author of Millennials & Management: The Essential Guide To Making It Work At Work (Bibliomotion, October 2014)Twitter @LeeCaraherWebsite www.double-forte.comBlog www.rocksarehard.com


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By Linda Reese

Detect, defuse and bring them back into the fold

Identifying Your New Leader’s Rivals

You’ve made a great hire, recruiting a top candidate away from your biggest competitor. As an HR partner supporting this high-level leader, you are making it a priority to see that their onboarding is smooth and thorough. As you ready a place for the leader, taking care of many arrangements and details, don’t forget to do one very important thing: identify the person(s) who could be this new leader’s undoing.

When we prepare our clients for new leader transitions, one of the most important questions we ask hiring managers and HR partners is, “who might be considered a rival of the new leader?” More often than not, they tell us that because the best

candidate was chosen there is no real rival for the role. By that strict, logical definition they may be correct, but it is most often the emotional impact of hiring decisions that spawns true rivals.In many cases, there is someone close to the new leader who is unhappy about the hire – whether they were interviewed but not chosen, or not even considered for the role at all. Unhappiness with the new leader can also emanate from those who held the interim role but weren’t selected for the permanent position, or those strongly aligned with the former incumbent.

In any of these scenarios, the rival may hold perceptions not based in logic, and it is crucial for the HR partners of new leaders


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to be aware of the often subtle emotional dynamics of rivalry. It is the rare rival who overtly takes on, or tries to undermine, the new leader. The hidden toll of rivalry is actually more insidious – for rivals often reveal themselves more by what they don’t do. Undetected, the rival’s failure to support the new leader can have multiple negative impacts on their target’s effectiveness – some-times to the point of unseating the newcomer from their role.

One of the primary emotions behind some instances of rivalry is envy. In the article Envy at Work, Tanya Menon and Leigh Thompson cite results from a recent 10-year study of execu-tives that examined the impact of envy in the workplace. These researchers note that those who direct jealousy at another can generate a host of problems by becoming distant to or acting disinterested in the focus of their envy, introducing negativity to the team, and damaging relationships – all which impede success. In addition, those experiencing this strong emotional reaction are likely to lose focus on their objectives and thus become ineffective. The research also indicates that some may even become obsessed with the productivity and activity of their target – a very disruptive misuse of energy.

As destructive as rivals can be, we must also realize that they are important to success of your new leaders in many ways. Potential rivals understand the culture, other leaders, and often know “where the bodies are buried.” They also have key histori-cal, functional, and technical knowledge. Failure to bring rivals into the fold can result in missteps and missed opportunities, as well as incomplete or fragmented team formation. Strained relationships can lead to increased misunderstanding and misat-tribution of motive, and block essential communication. The Costs of Rivalry

While some think of rivalries as a normal part of office politics, they can be corrosive. Some of the costs include:• Failed initiatives• Undermined trust• Lack, or distortion, of communication • Insufficient knowledge transfer• Decreased team morale/engagement and overall effectiveness• Reduced risk-taking and innovation• Lost potential for collaboration• Derailed leaders – if not attended to properly, rivals can

unseat new leaders.Workplace warfare – whether open or veiled – is destructive in

ways that defy calculation. The good news is that there are steps you can take in detecting, and even heading-off, the negative impacts of rivalry with your newly-placed leaders.8 Steps to Detect and Defuse Rivalry – Bringing Rivals into the Fold

The most important thing to remember here is that emotion, not logic, carries the day. The people around the new leader who feel injured by the appointment may not have openly expressed interest in the role, but feel hurt, nonetheless. The path to moving beyond those emotions may not be obvious, but it does exist:

1) Develop an understanding of the impact of the rivalry. Once you have a sense of the causes and consequences of rivalry, identify your role in defusing or preventing potential conflict. You may want to tackle the issues directly with the rival, or work behind the scenes with the new leader. Whichever way you handle it, focusing on detachment and logic will be a useful approach.

2) Identify individuals who may wish they had gotten the role (or strongly regret the departure of the former leader). If they say they didn’t want the role, consider that they may be trying to hide their disappointment.

3) Look for unusual behavior – either behaving too aggressively toward the new leader, or acting in a way that is disrespectful or challenging.

4) Monitor the extent to which those around the new leader are actively supporting the transition – educating the new leader about culture, work processes, performance expectations and ways to get things done. Of special importance is the detection of those who are failing to support the new leader. It’s often not what they do, but what they don’t do that gives rivals away.

5) Encourage the new leader to seek out and act on feedback in a way that will give them insight into the concerns of their colleagues/rivals. Mentors can be especially helpful here.

6) Support the new leader in taking actions that will include and engage the rivals in the important work of the team. You may choose to not directly identify the rivals for the new leader, but instead ask for their appraisal of their key stakeholders (includ-ing what motivates them, how to most effectively engage them).

7) Use feedback from your talent management process to help the new leader support the development and promotability of those aspiring to different or higher-level roles. Knowing that someone is actively focused on their development, and gaining actionable insight into the reason(s) they didn’t get selected for the desired role can go a long way to soothing the hurt feelings of the passed-over.

8) Stay connected to the new leader and their team, monitor behavioral changes over time, and adjust your strategy as needed.

As a key partner to the leader transitioning into a new role, you have the opportunity to help them set the course to rapid ramp-up and high performance. Recognizing and attending to the challenges brought by rivalry not only benefits the new leader, but also supports your talent management process – and it proves to be a preventative measure against future employee relations issues. LE

Linda Reese is the Managing Partner of Leader OnBoarding, a management consulting and coaching firm specializing in fostering the success of newly-placed executives. She has professional training in Industrial and Organiza-tional Psychology, and is a member of the Executive Education faculty at The Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business. She is certified in a number of assessment tools and consulting methodologies.Email [email protected]

Envy at Work

Identifying Your Rivals: It’s Not Who You Think It is - Part 1

Rivals Part 2: Bringing Them into the Fold


Identifying Your New Leader’s Rivals


http://hbr.org/2010/04/envy-at-work/ar/1

http://www.leaderonboarding.blogspot.in/2013/12/identifying-your-rivals-its-not-who-you.html

http://www.leaderonboarding.blogspot.com/2014/01/rivals-part-2-bringing-them-in-to-fold.html


Creating Mental BreakthroughsUncomfortable conversations can initiate positive change

By Marcia Reynolds

The following case study looks at how the leader initiating the conversation was able to break through well-established defense routines that were keeping her manager from making changes or handling situations in the most productive way. Background:

The senior manager, Martin, had been transferred to the region six months prior to the conversation. He had worked successfully as a manager in three other parts of the world and had worked for the company for fifteen years. In casual conver-sations, Martin was warm and amusing. When asked what type of leader he thought he was, he said he was definitely a people person and attributed much of his past success to his ability to connect with people.

The problem emerged not long after Martin arrived in his new position. Performance measures were mediocre in the region. People got their work done and not much more. He described the problem as cultural. The work ethic was low. Loyalty to the company was non-existent. All they cared about was punching the clock and going to the pub before dinner. Theme and patterns:

Confusing task management with leadership is common with even experienced, caring managers. Being a people person because you are approachable and an easy conversationalist is not enough. Outgoing managers often assume their direct reports will come to them with problems and will be naturally motivated to give their best efforts because they create a pleas-ant work environment, attempt to know something about their employees’ personal lives, and they are patient when doling out goals and directions.

What’s missing from this picture? Martin showed no curios-ity about what his people need to feel inspired to give more time and energy to their work. Focusing only on finding ways to make it more enjoyable for people to work avoids the core of the problem – no one wants to work harder. You can’t solve emotional and motivational issues by politely giving direction, bestowing praise, and knowing whose kids play soccer and whose play baseball. Nice managers can still entrench the lieutenant and his plebes mentality.

The pattern for this Discomfort Zone conversation starts with the manager either asking for support from his or her leader to exchange the old for new people or trying to get the leader to agree that the problem is unsolvable because of cultural or situational factors. It is possible the manager hopes the leader will provide a magical solution that will resolve the problem, but usually the manager wants acknowledgment for doing everything right in a bad situation. This is the presenting situation whether the manger is a people person or an efficiency expert. The assumption is that the people are wrong and the manager, who has tried everything, is right. If there is a solution, though the manager doubts one exists, it is external to the manager. If only the people worked harder and cared more, everything would be okay.

Challenge for the leader holding the conversation:The desired outcome is always owned by the person in front

of you, not by anyone else. The stated request was to find ways to motivate unmotivated employees. Yet the cynicism in the manager’s voice reflects surety that the situation is cultural and impermeable with the current work team. Regardless if this is true or not, the leader needs to listen for the block to success as the manager tells the story. The focus of the conversation should not be on the manager’s employees; it should be on the manager’s blind spots. Therefore the reflection and exploration would focus on what the manager is doing, who he thinks he is in the situation in terms of his role, and what he might be doing to actually intensify, not alleviate, the resistance the workers are demonstrating. Otherwise, no solution will produce significant and long-lasting results.

Allow the person to vent to help create safety. Even if you have seen this problem a hundred times before, you need to acknowledge the disappointment and anger your manager feels. The truth about what is creating the difficulty will surface inside the complaints. Often a good dose of reflection—allowing the manager to hear his own words—will shine a light on what is wrong with his approach. Then you can address the conflict in how his current approach contradicts how he wants to be seen by his direct reports.

In this situation, as the manager described the work habits of his people, his disdain grew. The angrier he got, the more he revealed his pattern for constantly giving directions and expla-nations about how work should get done, which also implied that many of his conversations with his reports were focused on what people were doing wrong. He wasn’t the light-hearted, praise-giving person he described himself to be.

When you sense anger and frustration, listen with your heart. When explaining the situation, the manager expressed both disappointment and frustration because his direct reports didn’t appreciate what he thought he was doing for them. In turn, the hearts of his employees were hardened from neglect. The questions that emerge from listening with your heart could provide the key to what the manager needs to shift the situation.

As a result, Martin realized that his employees did not see him as a caring leader. If he wanted them to listen, he first had to listen to them. He committed to meeting with each of his team members to talk about the significance of their work and what they hoped for in their careers. He also clarified the new mindset he would use while having these conversations. LE

Adapted from The Discomfort Zone: How Leaders Turn Difficult Conversa-tions Into Breakthroughs (Berrett-Koehler, October 2014).

Dr. Marcia Reynolds works with clients around the world who seek to develop effective leaders. She understands organizational cultures, what blocks communication and innovation, and what is needed to bring people together for better results. She is the author of The Discomfort Zone: How Leaders Turn Difficult Conversations Into Breakthroughs (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, October 2014).


http://outsmartyourbrain.com/about-marcia/

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Avoiding Difficult ConversationsIt is a rip off

By Marlene Chism

I’m reading Raising the Bar on Service Excellence by Kristin Baird, CEO of Baird Group Consulting, and came upon an in-teresting sub-chapter entitled “Don’t Pass The Trash.” Baird says that passing the trash is health-care’s dirty little secret. Passing the trash (to paraphrase Baird) is when as a manager you pass off their low performing employees to other managers, or other departments. It’s not only a dirty secret in health-care organiza-tions it’s probably happening in your organization.

The real reason passing trash happens is because no one wants to have a difficult conversation

“But I’ve tried,” I can hear you saying. OK, fair enough. You’ve heard the saying, “Talk is cheap?” Once you have a difficult con-versation the bridge piece is to provide the support in the way of coaching, training, mentoring, or some sort measurement to provide accountability. Most of us are aware that a conversation alone never does the trick.Let me give you three different scenarios and see if you recognize any of them:Scenario #1 Overcompensating

This is when you continue to do the work for the other person. You do this for many reasons. Perhaps you are a control freak and you just don’t trust him to do it like you do. Perhaps he is unwilling to do the work and you would rather avoid the conversation. Maybe the wrong person was hired and you don’t want the hassle of firing, or hiring.

Leader: I have a director not doing her job and I’m covering for him.

Me: Why don’t you talk to him?Leader: I’ve tried, but he just won’t change.

Scenario #2 ShufflingThis is when you shuffle a negative person around so you don’t

have to live in their energy. Again, you do this for many reasons: You feel sorry for the person. Their work product is good so it’s not worth talking about their attitude. You don’t want to get sucked into a long conversation about their problems. You want to be liked, and it’s just easier to avoid than to confront.

Leader: There is a negative Nellie in our department that totally drains everyone’s energy.

Me: What are you going to do?Leader: I’m going to try to move him to another area so we

can contain the negativity.Scenario #3 Protecting and Pleasing

This one is where you know something needs to be done but you protect the dysfunctional person. The reasons include your belief about their special skills, or your unwillingness to imple-ment succession planning and cross training because it would be seen as threatening to the person you are protecting.

Leader: We have a problem with a Queen Bee. She’s a high performer but she’s rude and damages morale.

Me: Why is she allowed to get by with it?

Leader: We can’t afford to lose her. She is the only one who can do what she does.

Let me scream this loud and clear: WHEN YOU AVOID DIFFICULT CONVERSATIONS YOU RIP OFF YOUR EM-PLOYEE, YOUR COWORKERS, YOUR COMPANY AND YOURSELF!!!! (Did I get your attention?) OK..take a breath, and I’ll tell you why.• You rip off your employee when you don’t challenge the

disruptive behavior and give him an opportunity to course-correct and grow into his potential.• You rip off other managers by dropping a problem in their

pristine park.• You rip off yourself when you choose comfort over growth.• You rip off your company because you didn’t solve the

problem. You just moved it to another area.Here’s the truth: A simple talking-to hardly ever works. Most

of the time to course-correct a negative, ineffective or disruptive employee you need some coaching, some training, or a personal improvement plan that includes feedback and accountability. It takes time, that’s for sure. You have two productive choices: One is to let the other person go to find work that is a better fit. If she or he is worth saving, then ask yourself what is needed for their improvement.

Enlightenment requires us to see the big picture, to ask better questions and to hold courageous conversations. The old ques-tions include: How can I be comfortable? And, what can I do to make it easy for myself? If you are in a leadership position and you are allowing disruptive or unproductive behaviors, you must course-correct and do what is necessary to gain control.Questions for the Enlightened Leader• What can I learn from this?• How have I contributed to this unwanted situation?• How has this situation impacted the entire organization?• What has to happen for me to grow?• What kind of personal improvement plan is needed to help

this person become successful.

Marlene Chism is a consultant, speaker, author and founder of The Stop Your Drama Methodology, an eight-part empowerment process to increase clarity and improve productivity and personal effectiveness. She is a dynamic business and motivational speaker who has the unique ability to speak across the boundaries of many types of audiences: from the fortune 500 execu-tives to prisoners searching for ways to reinvent, from the spiritually-based entrepreneurs to bottom-line business owners, professionals and employees on the front lines.Call 1|417|8311799 Visit www.stopworkplacedrama.com or www.marlenechism.com

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Upcoming Virtual Events & HR.com Webcasts

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The Leadership CornucopiaSucceed with an abundance mentality

By Richard J. Bryan

Have you ever worked with someone who had a scarcity mentality? In other words, they believed that if someone else was successful then there was less opportunity for them? Their whole belief system was one of winning at all costs even at the expense of friends, colleagues, customers and even family members. They had a win:lose outlook on business and life in general.

Typically, this sort of approach is less successful in the long-run, as it is not conducive to building long term relationships. Other people become turned off by this compulsive will to win regardless of who loses in the process.

It is far more productive all around if, as a leader, you can promote an abundance mentality in the workplace. This helps you and others find creative solutions to problem solving, and is far more motivational for employees and ultimately leads to business growth. How do you do this? Try adopting the follow-ing four simple steps in your business: 1) Become a Coach and Mentor

Don’t be so quick to criticize members of your team if they get something wrong or fail at a particular task, but rather view it as a coaching opportunity. If you can become more of a coach and mentor instead of a task-oriented leader, you create an op-portunity to grow your people and let them learn from their mistakes. This also makes the team of people working for you more self-sufficient and stronger, thus enabling you to focus on other strategic priorities.2) Seek Creative Solutions

Encourage your people to come up with creative solutions to business issues. This will empower them to discover new and better ways of doing things that can directly impact the bottom line.

As an example, Peter, a long-time owner of a car dealership, was amazed at how much money was saved when his employees offered to paint the white lines that marked out the 500 car spaces that they had on site. Normally, this simple task would have cost thousands of dollars each year by employing outside contractors to come and paint the lines every six months. However, with his own employees doing the job, not only was it done for half the cost, but they also did a far better job because they had more pride in the task at hand and cared about the work.3) Encourage Risk-Taking

Encourage your team to take calculated risks and learn from their mistakes. By doing this you send a signal that you want them to think bigger and help to grow the business rather than just sticking with the status-quo.

Not only can this deliver results, but it also creates a culture where looking for new and better ways of doing things is not only encouraged but also rewarded.

You must remember that the first attempt at doing this may not necessarily result in the best solution, but this approach does encourage outside-the-box thinking rather than worrying about

being “right” and playing it safe. Allow time for both the leader and the team to get accustomed to this approach.4) Give Praise and Recognition

It is amazing how something as simple as giving regular praise and recognition can be so effective as a strategy for growing your business. What is even more amazing is how few organizations do this well!

Bob was the General Manager for a large and very success-ful retail store and he had more than 50 sales people working for him. He maintained that his team was more motivated by winning “Sales Person of the Month” not because of the financial bonus they received, but because of the peer recognition and praise they received from their managers and colleagues. “It is a huge motivator for our team. I am sure that they would like it to be Sales person of the Week so that they could get more recognition!” he said. “I can’t understand why anyone with a team of people working for them wouldn’t do something like this to recognize their top performers.”

So ask yourself what you can do to find ways to give genuine praise and recognition to your own people?The Bottom Line

A CEO of a multi-billion dollar software company based out of Chicago put it best when asked about the many things that his organization had achieved during the past ten years. He was quick to praise his management team and said, “We take it as a given that you need to have the skills and the experience to come and work as part of our team. Then we look to hire those who have a positive outlook and an attitude of abundance. This is what helped us to grow revenues and profits even during the tough times of the recent economic downturn.”

These four steps are simple, yet can have a profound effect on your business when you apply them consistently.

If you can lead in a way that encourages collaboration then you will build an “abundance mentality” which promotes team-work and what is best for the organization and its customers. More creative ways of doing things are discovered and a win:win philosophy becomes the norm.

So how about you? Are you leading with an abundance men-tality? LE

Richard J. Bryan is an international speaker, executive coach and author of the recently released book, Being Frank: Real Life Lessons to Grow Your Busi-ness and Yourself. Through his experiences as the 4th Generation CEO in a family-owned business, Richard gained a wealth of knowledge and developed into a true leader. Richard uses creative strategies to help organizations make powerful transformations by hiring the right people and forging dynamic teams to dramatically improve performance. Website www.richardjbryan.com


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Forecasting Fundamentals5 best predictors of forecasting acumen

By Robert Sher

In an effort to grow your organization, it is not enough to have a marketplace ready to buy, and a great team that can get the job done. We also must predict the future with enough specificity to plan in detail so we have what we need when we need it. When you’re gunning for growth, it isn’t safe to spend according to plan if the plan itself is flawed.

Forecasting is difficult. Most of the time, projects take longer than we expect them to, cost more, and are full of surprises. That’s life. Not accounting for life is bad forecasting. Even if the project exceeds forecast, and sales are higher than expected, unplanned success can bring its own set of problems such as working capital stress, materials shortages, a suboptimal customer experience, and a management team that doesn’t have the skills to run a bigger business.

Effective forecasting provides the opportunity to strike bargains with the external parties we will need for success. That can include investors, public markets, suppliers, and contract manufacturers. If you want to gain their trust and access their resources the next time you come to the table—and, of course, you do—you must deliver on your promises and hit your targets.

If you are likely to miss your forecast, you must reserve more cash to handle the surprises—enough to make a second try. So what are the best predictors of forecasting acumen? Here are five:

1. Past performance. If your company previously has been suc-cessful at forecasting, there is a strong likelihood it has acquired that competency—providing that most of the people who were successful before are still on board. Also, look to the kind of forecasts they suc-ceeded in making. Forecasts for a line extension or even a new product can be difficult. But they’re not nearly as complex as those needed for ambitious growth initiatives such as a large acquisition or developing a new business unit in an adjacent market. And if the past forecasting performance of your company is poor, you should put your growth plans on hold until you figure out why.

2. Past performance of the CFO. While many people will provide input for your forecast, there is one person who drives it. In a midsized company, that’s usually the CFO. That person’s track record is crucial. It takes experience for a CFO to learn where slippage usually occurs. Experience tells the CFO where the surprises lurk. Additionally, and most importantly, experience teaches the CFO to include the costs and items that inevitably make an impact on the forecast but are often overlooked.

Creating the forecast is only the first step. Staying on forecast re-quires an active financial manager who not only monitors what has happened but projects what is going to happen in the near future. Having such a CFO on the team (or hiring one) significantly increases the accuracy of your forecasting, provided this person is not overruled too often by the CEO or sidelined to irrelevancy.

3. Past CEO commitment to hitting forecasts. Companies often miss forecasts because the CEO gets “creative” and goes off plan. Maybe the CEO decides that the company’s priorities have shifted. Maybe the CEO panics when things go off the rails and starts looking for other solutions. In some cases, the CEO just does not like the

discipline of sticking to plan.It is true that circumstances sometime call for change. Yet this implies

that the management team was unable to foresee that possibility when the forecast was created and failed to budget for it. This can be just as bad as undisciplined spending or insufficient sales. Wall Street certainly punishes public firms for missing forecasts, whatever the root cause.

A CEO can singlehandedly cause the company to miss its forecast. Looking at past behavior in this area is critical to assessing the prob-ability of hitting the next one.

4. The number and clarity of fallback plans. It is naïve to think that the path to hitting a forecast is a straight line. Management usually must make course corrections along the way. In a midsized firm, those adjustments must come early, before too much damage (overspending, missing critical milestones) has been done. Good forecasters identify the areas of risk up front and create triggers that kick off backup plans to stay on target. The presence of triggers—written and understood by all—increases the likelihood of staying on forecast.

5. Understanding the consequences. The stock market swiftly punishes public companies that fail to meet forecast. As a result, these companies pour time and effort into setting realistic benchmarks, and they fight hard to achieve them. Yet in many private midsized companies, missed forecasts are met with a shrug of the shoulders. There are no consequences for poor forecasters.

In fact, in midsized companies there is often more pressure to agree to an overly optimistic forecast than there is to achieving it. This is a mistake of great consequence. Pressure to perform is a critical factor in all business operations. Setting the expectation that missed forecasts will be considered failures and delineating serious consequences for those failures will increase your likelihood of designing and hitting achievable forecasts. And if you have confidence in your forecast, you can gun for growth and spend more money more aggressively. If you do not, you must hold more cash in reserve so that you can recover from surprises.

Spending too much too fast can leave a company dead in the water, with no money for a second chance at success and a track record that won’t impress any new funding sources. On the other hand, spend-ing too cautiously when a strong growth opportunity exists often surrenders that opportunity to competitors.

Before you make a significant bet on growth, invest the time and effort necessary to understand your market thoroughly. Evaluate your team’s ability to execute realistically, and assess its forecasting acumen rigorously. Then decide on what your spending velocity should be, and what level of risk you can assume prudently.

Doing otherwise can only be deemed reckless. LEAdapted with permission from MIGHTY MIDSIZED COMPANIES: How Leaders

Overcome 7 Silent Growth Killers, by Robert Sher (Bibliomotion, September 2014).

Robert Sher is the founder of CEO to CEO and the author of MIGHTY MIDSIZED COMPANIES: How Leaders Overcome 7 Silent Growth Killers (Bibliomotion, September 2014). A regular columnist on Forbes.com, Sher has worked with executive teams at more than 70 companies to improve the leadership infrastructure of midsized organizations.


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Managing Your BossThe two-way conversation of management

By Prof. Sattar Bawany

Managing Your Boss or commonly known as managing upwards describes the two-way conversation of management, i.e. that subordinates can influence their own workload and their manager’s workload in the same way the manager can. Closely aligned with emotional intelligence, managing upwards requires a relationship of mutual trust and respect, based around a commitment to common goals. The benefits for both parties are significant. The subordinate can significantly relieve the load of the manager, and more effectively meet their needs. The manager can make more effective decisions, and provide better support for the subordinate’s needs and objectives.

Management is a two-way street, and effective managers need to maintain and develop good relationships - not only with their teams, but with their senior managers, too.

As a business leader, you will also need to be able to exert influence upwards - whether directed towards an immediate su-perior, or a wider senior team - to drive and deliver appropriate organizational policies.

As well as influencing direction, effectively managing upwards can help to alleviate pressure on both sides, by managing and aligning expectations, and reducing the incidence of manage-ment by interference.Where do you start?

Form a thorough understanding of the person to be managed or influenced, and their raison d’etre. Appreciating what motivates, disheartens, or even frustrates the individual will help you to un-derstand their priorities. What defines their working style? Under what circumstances are they likely to feel pressured? What are their expectations and scope of their role? Do they have any burning issues?

Put yourself in their shoes and try to get under their skin. Confirm what it is they want as this will bypass common misunderstandings and enable you to successfully meet and surpass their requirements and expectations.

One of the most important things for successfully managing upwards is understanding the context your boss works in, i.e. what are the priorities, pressures, strategic drivers, key measures/performance indicators, etc. that define success (and failure) for your boss. Under-standing these factors allows you to identify the kind of information and action that best supports your boss. When you are proactively meeting your boss at their point of need, this naturally leads to an increase in your credibility. On the one hand, this means being given tasks with more responsibility, and on the other, more attention to the advice that you provide.

You can learn a lot about your boss’ context from watching them interact with others, especially their peers and superiors.Understand yourself

Effective upward management requires a good understanding of the strengths that you bring to the table, and how they complement your boss’ strengths and weaknesses. Do you share a common passion for strategic thinking? Are you able to navigate effective solutions to

challenging relational problems? Knowing your abilities allows you to identify and contribute to the issues and challenges facing your boss.

Be aware of your own strengths and weaknesses, as how you behave in the relationship is just as important as what makes your manager tick - it is also the part over which you exercise greatest control. Contemplate your personal style of management and gauge whether you have any obstructive personality traits. Conversely, you may have attributes that will smooth the path of the relationship, so identify them and utilise them fully.Relationship building

Having acquired an understanding of your manager and yourself, it is time to develop the practical side of the relationship. This should extend to being fully conversant with and sensitive to their timetable. Don’t, for instance, present your best ideas 24 hours before a board meeting, as they will be preoccupied with the next day’s agenda.

You should also have determined whether your boss is a ‘reader’ or a ‘listener’ (management guru Peter Drucker claims all managers fall into these two categories). Readers prefer information presented to them in report form, so they can study it methodically, while listeners would rather have the information presented orally.

Create an environment of mutual respect, where if you know they have weaknesses, or even dislike certain aspects of their job, you can offer to take on or share those duties. Above all, keep the lines of communication between you open and lively to ensure you stay on side and share priorities.

In brief, managing your boss really means “managing the relation-ship” you have with your boss. You can’t control his actions; all you can control are your own actions. When there is a conflict in a boss-employee relationship, the best employees usually are the first to leave. But if you can’t leave right away, develop coping skills. Try to deal skillfully with the situation and avoid career-limiting moves like setting up a crisis situation between you and your boss or lying to your boss or deliberately withholding important information from him. LE

Prof Sattar Bawany is the CEO & C-Suite Master Executive Coach of Centre for Executive Education (CEE Global). CEE is a premier network for established human resource development and consulting firms around the globe which partners with our client to design solutions for leaders at all levels who will navigate the firm through tomorrow’s business challenges. Email [email protected] www.cee-global.com



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Activating Communicative LeadershipWhere’s the verb?

By Sheila E. Murphy

When asked “What needs work” to make our organizations function, the inevitable answer is that all-purpose word “com-munication.” What does this really mean? Those of us whose lives are spent navigating the various hurdles faced hourly, know the value of translating that all-purpose word into something actionable, recognizable, and in fact realistic.

Equally important is the fact that leadership is needed at all levels of the organization. It is not simply the privilege of the lofty “top spot.” The most senior level of the organization remains the clearest point of advantage, as well as the most vulnerable. That said, the work group or project level readily reveals any gap in clarity, progression of tasks, or related areas that must be connected. I tell clients at all levels that highly activated leadership talent is in the “need to do,” rather than “nice to do” category. The most memorable presences in organizational life are those who initiate, maintain, and check back with others to ensure full and complete understanding.

How do you “do” communication? What particular approaches should be targeted? What are some of the key activities to bring this oft’-mentioned process to life? Most of us have seen at least parts of what I propose in action in our organizations. I would submit, however, that communication tends to run in spurts. A solid and present level of consistency tends to be a rare thing in organizational life. Why this is so may pertain to the fractious levels of “busy-ness” constantly interfering with what will always be most important in organizational life: focus.

I recommend that anyone leading a project, a work group, a division or department, or an entire organization, should take proactive notice of several opportunities noted below, to ensure that all parties are invested in performance:

1. Track perspectives. Recognize who knows what and how it affects the big picture. Jot notes that keep you clear on the status of thinking proposed and clarified by others. Stay current and keep the conversation going.

2. Respond to knowledge as it grows. Share signals that new knowledge sends. What should be done with it? Should we change what we are doing? Make sure that you involve others in this process, rather than single-handedly barging forward as though that wealth of input is “all yours.”

3. Prompt linkages among players, both technical and mana-gerial. Who needs to talk to whom? Make suggestions, ask questions, and enliven the dialogue by listening very carefully to what you hear in response to pertinent questions.

4. Be the anchor for progressive dialogue. Interpret how important points relate to the picture share among performers. Keep the conversation relevant, alive, and clearly growing. What are we missing? What can strengthen what we do?

5. Make decisions and clarify how these relate to work areas and people. Explain the what and why of decision making of all types. Gain progressive feedback on the strategic and tactical elements of what is being decided. Both the intended and un-intended consequences of decisions must be taken into account

in an active manner. 6. Ask questions about customer experience. Among the most

critical and displaced elements of organizational decision making is the effect and even impact of our actions on our customers. What do we know about the response of different types of cus-tomer, in terms of our user base? Are there trends among our top customers, our occasional customers, or other categorizations? The most we are conscious of this array of information, the greater our capability in directing our work toward meeting both current and anticipated needs.

7. Announce “where we are now” on our timeline. Find out if everyone is “on board.” Depending upon what you learn, prompt further dialogue about contingencies relative to what is to happen next on all fronts. Remember that there are multiple viewpoints, multiple concurrent activities, and several ways (even infinite ways) to do things “right.”

8. Tune in all parties to goals, timelines, progress, and key steps to get there. What contingencies exist? Do we need to formulate different or more precise focal approaches to sequencing our work? The documentation and application of what we continue to learn keeps projects and the organization alive and thriving, rather than the unwitting recipient of cascading mistakes. As a final note, there are always “nudge points” or opportuni-ties that need attention in any project or leadership initiative: • What are we missing to reach the customer? Can we watch

our competition and make valid judgments about how various tactical efforts seem to support strategic directions? How do our own approaches compare?• Who on the project feels left out? What can be done

about this? Are we wasting or gaining value from our important resources?• Who needs a clearer role? Could there be a way we assign a

more relevant set of responsibilities to someone whose presence can activate the project more directly?• What results do we expect? To what extent are project

teams and/or leadership throughout the organization attuned to the needs of initiatives?

The best leaders at all levels of the organization bring com-munication to verb status. Things happen, efforts are prompted, and people make things happen, both individually and together. Today’s connected world is an expression activated linkage, in which accomplishments are broadcast. At the same time, some very necessary communication that has the potential to general value, wealth, and customer satisfaction, depends upon ener-getic and committed leadership. Every leader needs to make a conscious commitment to activate the organization’s value by listening, noticing, prompting, and connecting. LE Dr. Sheila E. Murphy has guided leaders and organizations through consult-

ing over the past 21 years.Email [email protected]




The Culture of ConscienceHow will your business thrive in it?

By Steven Overman

Our interconnectedness has heightened our awareness of the impact we—and the businesses from which we buy, for which we work and in which we invest—have on humanity and our planet. This in turn intensifies the demand for positive agency and meaning, not only in what we do but in all the decisions we make. It’s a clear meta-trend, a mass movement for good, that’s been gaining momentum for forty years.

And now, the movement is reaching its tipping point. Broad awareness of social injustices and environmental risks, concur-rent with emerging technology innovations, has given rise to new rules, expectations, behaviors, participants and structures. And the conflux of forces that are redefining how we live, inter-act, work and play are giving rise to a new global culture. This emergent culture—the Culture of Conscience—is all around us;

indeed, we already inhabit it.A Culture of Conscience is taking hold so broadly that some

might dismiss it as too ubiquitous to characterize as a sociologi-cally momentous event. But with it comes new priorities and accountabilities that are steadily transforming the way we work, live, prosper and measure success. The consequences are not confined to one or two business sectors; every business, large and small, will be affected by it. It’s an epochal cultural shift. The question is, how will your business thrive in it?

The values and assumptions that are fueling a new wave of business innovation are highly distinct from the system that pre-ceded them. The next generation of leaders and managers, those young people who have grown up with high-speed connectivity as a basic utility, and with access to and the ability to manipu-



late media as a basic assumption, already believe it’s possible to catalyze broad and positive change, both as individuals and through their engagement with business. They readily assume the responsibility of their own power to change the world with the casual effortlessness of riding a bicycle.

One of the most indicative aspects of this new culture is the Conscience Culture players, but there is such a wide-ranging and continuously expanding cast of players that it would be impossible to commit a complete list to print. However, they do all have one thing in common—a mission for good. Social Enterprises and Incubators

A hybrid of for-profit commerce and social-impact agenda, it’s been estimated that social enterprises already contribute upward of $200 billion to the U.S. economy. One of the first and most famous social enterprises was the restaurant Fifteen, founded by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. It’s not only a successful restaurant, it’s famous for its apprentice program, which trains young people who, in Oliver’s words, “have faced enormous challenges in their lives,” helping them enter society with both professional skills and dignity. The restaurant donates all of its profits to charity while enhancing the Jamie Oliver brand emblazoned across his for-profit businesses. But the model does generate profit and has inspired a new generation of people to imagine and build enterprises that have positive social impact at their core. Social enterprise harnesses the passion and energy of entrepreneurship as a force for good. Certification Associations

“Green” products—from chocolate to detergent—promote the notion that by buying them, we are minimizing harm to people and the environment. Fair Trade certification—in which companies are audited by Fair Trade USA and earn the right to use the Fair Trade Certified label—has been one of the more successful of these models. It’s widely recognized and well branded, and the term has become part of the general lexicon for many people. But even the Fair Trade model, though in my opinion a laudable advance, is an economically imperfect system, as it arguably manipulates pricing albeit for a humane purpose. Carbon offsetting, the ability to “offset” your “carbon footprint” by funding programs that, through a carefully thought-out calculation, claim to put things right again, sends a good message, but does offsetting really solve the root cause of the problem it highlights?Goodness Marketplaces

Goodness marketplaces, both online and real world, aggregate conscientiously sourced and created products and experiences. Etsy started the online trend and continues to be among the most visible brands, although a 2013 update of its guidelines, downplaying “handmade” products and focusing instead on “unique” products has resulted in an exodus of many of its original vendors. These revised definitions and subsequent terms of service have enabled mass producers of cheap imports, many from Asia, to promote their goods on the site (which are, as you’d imagine, priced considerably lower than the artisanal products upon which Etsy built its initial brand). The controversy is instructive, as it has created opportunities for emerging online marketplaces and communities like Zibbet, Dogoodbuy.us and Fashioning Change.

Goodness marketplaces also include physical retailers com-mitted to selling conscientious goods and services, from farmers markets and small-scale retailers to Whole Foods (I can’t resist noting the irony of their seeming monopoly on the goodness category) to the School of Life. The latter is both an actual store-front in London and an online community that sells learning experiences. These experiences include field trips with experts and Sunday morning “sermons,” which are decidedly secular TED Talk–style lectures from thinkers, artists and philosophers. Democratizing Enablers

Domains of human endeavor that were once inaccessible or reserved only for the elite are becoming available to all. Crowdfunding and microfinancing are modalities for providing direct fiscal support to entrepreneurs as well as causes that we personally believe in. They’re evidence of this desire to enact something, to impact directly rather than relying on secondary or tertiary impact. Out of this desire comes the “frugal tech” movement, with its mission to provide the benefits of computing with extremely low-cost materials. Among the movement’s suc-cesses is Raspberry Pi—developed by the nonprofit Raspberry Pi Foundation—a low-cost single-board computer that empowers children to learn computer programming. Meanwhile, online communities like iFixit are harbingers of an increasing desire to collectively and individually repair and extend the usefulness of the things we already own. Built-In Philanthropy

This arena includes what are currently called “one-for-one businesses,” like Toms Shoes and One Water. You buy a bottle of water and you concurrently give a bottle of water. In the case of One Water, some of the purchase price funds the renovation of a village water pump in sub-Saharan Africa. It’s an easy model for consumers to understand, although TOMS Shoes—which provides a pair of shoes for the poor for every pair you buy, found itself criticized for not addressing the root cause of poverty. The company promptly adjusted its model with TOMS Glasses, which supports and funds vision care in disadvantaged communities rather than providing a straight product-for-product donation.

These models aren’t easy to sustain, particularly in the FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) category. One Water has struggled to get footing in supermarkets because mass retailers that carry FMCG products force margin down so low that it’s next to impossible to make a profit while delivering the social benefit. But people will pay for brand prestige, and context is everything. Starbucks carries One Water because of the premium and con-scientious message it sends about the Starbucks brand.

Other emergent in-built philanthropy models are experiment-ing with incentives that facilitate automated micro-donations to social or environmental causes. For example, Mogl, a restaurant loyalty app in California, automatically donates a percentage of your restaurant bill to feeding people. You collect “meals donated” instead of points, so that the amount that you give is a new kind of “loyalty” currency. It’s an effortless incentive to use the service and eat out more—and it’s a differentiator for the service provider and the participating restaurants, as well as a braggable for the person using it.Impact Investing and Socially Responsible Investing Vehicles

Impact investing is both a philosophical approach to investing

The Culture of Conscience



and a fast-growing category of financial instruments. Unlike socially responsible investing (SRI), which uses a negative screen to avoid certain investments, this type of investing deploys a proactive approach, a positive screening process, to solve social and environmental problems. Both types are growing, and if you surf the financial and investment press, you’ll quickly see that both are buzzy, even if some of the parameters to describe them are fuzzy.

Here’s what catches my eye, though: although they don’t always deliver a competitive return, these vehicles continue to attract investment, suggesting that some investors value more than personal gain. Research by JP Morgan and the Global Impact Investment Network showed that investor groups had planned to commit $9 billion to this asset class in 2013. In India alone, the impacting investing category has been estimated to be growing by 30 percent annually. According to an article in the Financial Times, it’s difficult to measure the size of the category, but one estimate suggests that impact investing could attract upward of $1 trillion over the next ten years. Socially responsible investing leads the trend; by 2012, more than $3.7 trillion was invested in this category in the U.S. alone, and the growth continues.

In traditional investing, decision factors boiled down to a simple binary truth: “either you make money or you don’t.” In the Conscience Economy, it’s “you make money and make a dif-ference, or you make more money and pass on the real costs to others.” This is an evolution worth watching because it signals a motivational shift among a particularly rigorous and demanding sector of people. Huge gains are not the only investment motiva-tor, which suggests that in the future there might be different kinds of profit. Emotional profit and time profit, for example. It’s been called the next revolution in finance, following on the heels of venture capital as a major driver of innovation and economic transformation. Media

Trade publications like CSRwire and Business Ethics, aimed at CSR professionals and sustainability specialists, have prolif-erated for more than a decade. More recently, new consumer lifestyle media properties like GOOD, SHFT and Upworthy appeal to a young cohort driven by a passion for making a posi-tive difference in the world. TED Talks have become a widely respected forum for Conscience Culture ideas to get airplay. But mainstream media brands regularly report on increasingly conscientious business and social phenomena, too. Not a day goes by when I don’t spot something in the news, in the media or online that expresses a Conscience Culture point of view, whether it’s a story about renewable energy, genetic engineer-ing, food safety and security, social entrepreneurship, ethical (or unethical) business practices, conscientious consumerism, diversity in the boardroom, dilemmas of sensor technology and privacy or debates on financial reform. Role Models

Visionary business leaders and entertainment celebrities per-sonify the status aspirations and lifestyles of the new culture. Although philanthropy as an overt demonstration of wealth goes back generations, there is a renewed glamour associated with making a real difference in the world. Many of our most admired role models now augment their glamour and success

by using it to advocate for and support social good. Whether establishing major foundations, building schools, adopting a virtual Benetton advertisement of diverse children into their families, becoming U.N. Goodwill Ambassadors or speaking out on topical human rights and environmental issues, the world’s most visible and famous people are no longer mere paragons of success, wealth and sex appeal.

Actors Jane Fonda and Paul Newman may have been the forebears of this new kind of fame. Steve Jobs brought rock star status to visionary tech leadership. Today, new entrepreneurs like Lauren Bush Lauren and Blake Mycoskie are heroes among a generation of socially motivated entrepreneurs as they each build ventures that seek to convert consumers into cause-oriented donors and community participants. Edward Snowden, divi-sive among some, is an iconic voice for those concerned about what’s happening with our online data. Even Pope Francis has impressed a new generation of nonreligious people with his media savvy and his leaning toward inclusivity. Perhaps more than ever before, status and celebrity are enmeshed with a call to change the world for the better. Professional Services and Consultancies

A broad range of specialized professional services have been evolving for over a decade. Most were purpose-built to bring professional strategy support, management advice, business reengineering expertise, financial analysis and marketing com-munication support to nonprofit organizations. The expertise is beginning to move in the other direction; knowledge gained in the public and nonprofit sectors is increasingly applicable to for-profit businesses.

This category of service providers includes CSR strategy agen-cies, design firms, sustainability consultancies, social impact practices within the big management consultancies and envi-ronmental and cause marketing agencies.

Obviously, any business needs to be relevant in the wider culture in which it exists. This means operating in sync within the cultural value system, meeting and exceeding cultural expec-tations and being one of its players. The most robust businesses are those that not only function within the culture but drive it forward, so what type of player will your business be? LEAdapted excerpt from THE CONSCIENCE ECONOMY: How a Mass Move-

ment for Good Is Great for Business (Bibliomotion; October 28, 2014) by Steven Overman.

Steven Overman is the author of THE CONSCIENCE ECONOMY: How a Mass Movement for Good Is Great for Business (Bibliomotion; October 28, 2014) and founder and CEO of Match & Candle, a transformation company that equips individuals, organizations and brands to make a mean-ingful difference in the world in order to drive profitable growth. Visit www.matchandcandle.com

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