|
Peak-performance cultures maintain a sense of urgency. Urgency is when your people believe not only that something specific needs to be accomplished, but also that that specific something must be accomplished within a specific time frame or significant negative consequences will result.
All other things being equal, the leaders of these companies have mastered the art of establishing and maintaining this sense of urgency. People in organizations where there is a palpable and appropriate sense of urgency tend to:
- assume a "whatever it takes" attitude;
- do what is needed versus what is wanted;
- ignore distractions;
- be intolerant of wasting time and non-value-added activity;
- get to the point;
- resist gossip; and
- work quickly.
When you as a leader establish and maintain an appropriate sense of urgency, people stop fretting over the trivial -- they don't make small issues big issues. They tend to use what they have in innovative ways. They have a bias toward action, are intolerant of planning loops, and tend to keep the main thing the main thing -- whatever that is. Most of all, they shift from a reactionary response to proactive planning and morale goes up.
Leaders of these peak performance companies are constantly sensing the degree of urgency in themselves and their key personnel.
They manage the level of urgency by making sure key personnel are aligned on 1) a deep and truthful assessment of the current operating environment of the company and/or project, 2) the specific intended outcomes, and 3) the fewest, most important things that must be accomplished to close the gap between "a" and "b."
Key personnel have a deep and clear shared understanding of the consequences and implications of failing to achieve the desired state in the time frame that has been identified. The more real and personal these consequences feel to the people, at both an emotional and financial level, the deeper the feeling of urgency will be.
Here are the questions I would ask to determine my organization's sense of urgency:
- How would you describe the current operating environment of this company? What are its specific constraints to growth and its primary levers of growth? What parts of the company are in most need of enhanced performance? What is happening in your operating environment that requires careful monitoring?
- What specifically are you and your teammates trying to do in the marketplace? What is your current intention regarding customers? What are you trying to build or accomplish and by when? What is your vision for the company?
- What are the fewest, most critical initiatives that are being implemented, and do you have any concerns about how they are going? Are they the right ones? Are the right people working them? What is making it hard to accomplish them on time? Are roles clear?
- What is really at stake, for the company and for you personally, should you and your team fail to achieve these initiatives?
To what degree would each person have well thought out answers to these critical questions? To what degree would the answers be aligned with their peers? Where are the areas of deepest shared alignment?
Where do their answers vary the most? Answers that vary considerably are NOT good.
Ask yourself, "What would I have to do to get myself and my people into deep alignment around truthful and well thought our answers to these questions?" Do that.
Their deep alignment around these focusing questions is your source of both creative tension and urgency. And ensuring appropriate relative tension and urgency is a fundamental responsibility of leadership.
|
Who doesn't love pizza?
That's the question Dan Ariely implies in his upcoming book Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations. In the book, Ariely, a behavioral economist, recounts a week-long experiment in which employees working at a semiconductor factory were promised one of three things if they were able to assemble a certain number of chips per day:
- A cash bonus of approximately $30
- A voucher for a free pizza
- A complimentary text message of "Well done!" from the boss
A fourth group, serving as the control, received nothing.
Interestingly, a number of major outlets have reported on this study, correctly pointing out that pizza was the top motivator on day one--increasing productivity by 6.7 percent over the control group. This is somewhat surprising considering the cash only motivated a 4.9 percent increase...and actually resulted in a 6.5 percent drop in productivity for the week overall.
But what caught my attention was what turned out to be the biggest motivator of the week:
It was the compliment.
When you commend and praise members of your team, you satisfy a basic human craving and provide motivation as a byproduct--as was highlighted in Ariely's experiment.
And just think: If the promise of a simple text message from the boss can increase productivity, can you imagine what real, sincere and authentic praise would do?
To be clear, I never encourage flattery--or praise that you don't really mean.
But everyone deserves praise for something; as a leader, it's your job to figure out what. To look for the good, to see the potential, and to bring out the best in them.
Your employees will value that a heckuva lot more than pizza.
I guarantee it.
|
For every company wrestling with evolutions in its strategy, success depends as much on matching the operating model to those evolutions as it does on the soundness of the strategy itself. An “operating model” — how a company organizes and manages its resources to achieve its strategic ambitions — is the bridge between strategy and execution. The idea that organizational structure follows strategy is not new — business historian Alfred Chandler laid this out in 1962 in his book Strategy & Structure. But exactly how do today’s companies create or update an operating model to match adaptations or wholesale changes in strategy?
We believe redesigning your operating model must start with a blueprint based on a few basic principles. First among them: Agree on what really matters to deliver your strategy. Agreeing up front on the capabilities that truly matter turns what can be a very subjective and emotionally charged discussion among your leadership team into a fact-based dialogue.
Across industries and countries, effective principles share three characteristics.
- First, they’re grounded in facts in order to bring that needed objectivity. Principles informed by a fact-based strategy encourage impartiality, highlighting gaps, and forcing difficult choices.
- Second, they’re specific enough to help senior management make trade-offs.
- Third, effective principles stay brief. The best sets of principles fit on one page.
Once the blueprint is developed, we find that the best CEOs focus not only on the capabilities that matter, but on the individuals and teams that matter. For individuals, they make sure that difference-making talent is in mission critical positions. They make sure that the most important battles are entrusted to agile, cross-functional teams with real authority and support.
Finally, we urge companies not to lose sight of an essential goal of good organizational design: constructive conflict. The CEOs we know who have built effective operating models have a real intuition about designing creative conflict into their operating models, as well as the means for efficiently and effectively resolving that conflict. The result is often inspired outcomes for their customers, employees and other stakeholders.
If your company’s operating model can’t deliver on your strategy, or needs to be upgraded to match the evolution of that strategy, start the redesign with your leadership team not by digging into the details, but by pulling up and agreeing on a few basic principles. Clarity and simplicity are the watchwords here.
|
If you’re anything like me—a class A overachiever—you’ve probably been advised more than once to slow down. Relax, take a breath, just enjoy your latest success for a bit before worrying about the next one.
Organizational psychologist Adam Grant, the bestselling author and Wharton professor, has a short-term fix for overachievers. “After I finished writing Originals, a friend asked me how I was planning to celebrate my second book. It hadn’t even occurred to me: I was already mapping out the third one,” he writes.
Once aware of his behavior, Grant attempted various slow-down strategies. The one that stuck was what he refers to as the time machine. “I turned the dial back five years,” he explains. “If I had known then that I would write a second book, would I have been happy? No, I would’ve been delirious.”
This mental time-travel, Grant promises, allows you to view your achievements in the context of past expectations. “And for a few minutes, before you’re jolted back to the present, you’ll feel contented. Maybe even proud.”
The trick works because it takes you out of what Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck would call a fixed mindset, which assumes that things like character, intelligence, and creative ability are static—and that any success we have is an affirmation of those traits, while failure is a denial of them. With a growth mindset, on the other hand, you believe that traits like intelligence and creativity can be cultivated through experience, regardless of whether the learning comes from a success or a failure.
No comments:
Post a Comment