"...keeping you great"
HEADLINES:
| "The individual who wants to reach the top in business must appreciate the might of the force of habit and must understand that practices are what create habits. He must be quick to break those habits that can break him and hasten to adopt those practices that will become the habits that help him achieve the success he desires." | |
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J. Paul Getty 1892-1976, American Oil Tycoon |
Slightly Boring CEOs More Effective -- David Brooks, one
of my favorite columnists in the NY Times, penned an excellent summary
of some recent research on CEO effectiveness this week. Seems people skills are
overrated and execution/persistence more important -- it's been my experience as
well. Take three minutes and read this important column -- and he ties it to Jim Collins
work -- hopefully you picked up a copy of Jim's new book that came out on
Tuesday -- I'm just now reading it
Execution and Organizational
Skills -- and my favorite paragraph in the article "What mattered, it
turned out, were execution and organizational skills. The traits that correlated
most powerfully with success were attention to detail, persistence, efficiency,
analytic thoroughness and the ability to work long hours."
Clear
Direction and Incremental Efficiency Gains -- Brook's continues "The
market seems to want C.E.O.'s to offer a clear direction for their companies.
There's a tension between being resolute and being flexible. The research
suggests it's more important to be resolute, even at the cost of some
flexibility. The second thing the market seems to want from leaders is a
relentless and somewhat mind-numbing commitment to incremental efficiency
gains." Remember, this is for big company CEOs, who are more likely hired-guns
vs. the original entrepreneur -- keep this in perspective. Smaller firms often
have to be nicer to people in order to attract and keep top talent -- and
entrepreneurs often hire CEOs/Presidents to fulfill the above functions as the
company gets bigger -- it depends on your own ability to follow habits of
success.
How to Engage Your Entire Organization in Driving
Business Results -- in an article entitled the same, Gazelles coach Kevin Lawrence
shares how Victorian Epicure
(blended spices), founded by Sylvie Rochette in 1991, uses Quarterly Themes to
provide clear direction and drive incremental efficiency gains -- one of the
reasons why she runs one of the largest woman-owned companies in Canada helping
5000 women across Canada to run their own businesses.
In &
Out in 72 -- one of their quarterly themes focused on a serious issue
customers were having in getting their orders just before Christmas. In order to
drive home the need to deliver orders in less than three days, they called the
theme "In & Out in 72." And to counterbalance the concern that increased
delivery speed (Process) might hurt accuracy (effecting customer satisfaction --
People), they also declared that delivery accuracy would need to be at least
97%. This is why there are two Critical Numbers listed on the new One-Page
Strategic Plan, one that impacts the people/reputation side of the business and
one that counterbalances and impacts the process/productivity side of the
business.
Bold Move -- as a way to drive home the theme
and put some visible heat on the company to meet these new aggressive delivery
goals, the team created a series of ads which they sent to their external sales
consultants -- here's a link
to these clever ads. The final ad entitled "Period5" ran after the end of
the quarter to acknowledge accomplishment of the goal. Again, read Kevin's short
article to get an excellent example of using Critical Numbers
and a Quarterly Theme to drive performance.
Pixability's
Discipline (and Outstanding Home Videos) -- and this note from Bettina
Hein, Founder & CEO of Pixability who's firm takes
amateur home videos and makes them into stunning custom home videos -- check out
these before
and after videos. Notes Hein "We've been using the Daily Huddle for 2 months
now and have integrated it not only with our Quarterly Themes/Goals but also
with a management methodology called Agile that was originally designed for
software development teams. We're not developing software at Pixability but
we've found the methodology works wonders for us."
Iterate More
Quickly -- continues Hein, "Agile involves:
| 1) creating a 'backlog' of 'stories' (things that need to get done) | |
| 2) dividing the quarter into 2-week sprints | |
| 3) deciding in a 2-weekly planning meeting what everyone will be working on (2hrs.) | |
| 4) all those stories go up on our "Scrum Board" | |
| 5) every day we meet in front of the Scrum Board for Huddle to discuss numbers, progress and bottlenecks/blockages | |
| 6) at the end of the 2-week sprint we have a retrospective meeting (max 1hr.) to measure our 'velocity' (how many stories we got done) and to discuss learnings. |
This
process has made us so much more productive and connected. It has also helped us
correct mistakes earlier and iterate more quickly. It makes my job as a manager
much easier because everyone's stories/tasks are in plain view for all to see
and everyone sees how they progress on the board. The group is the manager and
the group feels much more responsible for getting everything
done."
What a Beautiful Thing -- Kelly Freeman, co-owner
of Network People, a
Microsoft Solution Provider and IT Services firm, adds to the importance of
Quarterly Priorities and Daily Huddles. In a recent note to me, Freeman notes
"To our daily huddles, this morning we posted scoreboards for our Quarterly
Priorities around our meeting room (Baseball theme- if we make the goal we are
taking the team to dinner and a Tampa Bay Rays Game). Just before receiving your
e-newsletter about daily huddles I asked the guys to rate the helpfulness of our
daily meetings on a scale of 1 -- 10. Average score was a 7, but all agreed that
it was helpful for the company as a whole. Later in the day I overheard the guys
discussing between themselves the real goal behind our metrics. An hour later I
had a phone call with a team member letting me know about an accomplishment
toward our quarterly priority. And later I found 3 team members working together
on accomplishing another.
What a beautiful thing it is to see
alignment...for the first time in 10+ years."
Quarterly Themes
and Daily Huddles -- a powerful way to drive incremental improvement
and discipline -- just like the best CEOs of large companies! Keep implementing
the Rockefeller Habits.
thank you for such amazing information... if you love videos just like me....please check out the
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http://staysharpwithvideos.blogspot.com
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Posted by: carrol | May 22, 2009 at 02:25 AM