by Donald on January 12, 2010
What’s the state of leadership, particularly as former icons have been brought down in sectors like financial services?
It, too, is evolving, but the good news is we seem to be getting past the leader-as-guru, leader-as-god, phenomenon. That doesn’t do anyone any good.
As the nature of the work force changes, from an industrial worker to a service worker to a knowledge worker, the leadership paradigm has had to shift from command and control to participatory leadership. And now it is all about herding cats, and what it takes to herd cats well.
As I suggested, what causes change is some kind of attractive future that people are drawn into, or something about their present that scares the heck out of them. Part of getting people to engage in the act of change is helping them figure out what that balance is for them, in their company and their industry. Then they realize that “I don’t like being demoralized and upset,” and so “I would rather find a way to get ahead of the curve.”
What’s the toughest thing you had to learn?
That business is much less rational than anyone really believes.
I have studied many situations where the answer seemed obvious, but the answer that emerged had a lot more to do with the dynamics of the people involved.
by Donald on January 11, 2010
We are always projecting status. How and where we stand. How we end a spoken sentence. What we do with our arms and hands. How we hold our head. Where do our eyes look while speaking. Is there a difference between looking down to the left or right? Distance from the other person. All these things create the perceived status to the other person. The most fascinating thing I have discovered in teaching status in leadership classes is the blind spot some people have about their own status as perceived by others.
All social interactions require a see saw of high and low status for a conversation to continue. Think about the following. “Mike, we really had a great business day today.” Mike: ” This was not as good as yesterday, how can you say that?” “Yes, I guess your are right.” “You know I am right.” What if Mike had taken low status and said “yes it was”. Conversation over! I often have people role play in class taking high and low. In any conversation lasting more than a minute, I have seen people who could not take or stay “low”. They would swear they were low and the class would shout them down. After many attempts and coaching, they simply could not hold low status in a conversation.
How would you like to work with or for this person? Does this person even realize what they are doing? NO! Can they be trained to stop doing this? Yes, if they really want to change. This individuals parting comment was “why should I take low status when I am almost always right when dealing with my boss”. Last I heard, he was no longer working for that company, or boss.
by Donald on January 9, 2010
Interesting email this week. Client was really justifiably proud of six of seven days of zero waste from a step in their process. This was really an outstanding accomplishment that was not achieved without some serious work using Six Sigma tools. The previous months had seen most days of 25%+ scrap rate. The material that was being scrapped was one of the more expensive additions to the product and also a differentiators from our competitors. Obviously, I asked “what have you done to celebrate this and is your control plan in place”. I almost always assure that the people doing the job have a celebration so they remember when we do the job this way, it feels good!
As I looked at the additional data being tracked I noticed that fully 50% of the parts in this department were “reworked to acceptable quality standards”. We have cash flow issues as almost all businesses are experiencing. Material cost is 5X labor cost for our product, so this sounds like a good deal and everyone is pleased with our “world class rework procedures”. We congratulate ourselves on our ingenuity to salvage this material. Our job classifications pay the highest rate to our “reworkers”.
Does this part cost us more than the part that was made right the first time? How many hours of OT do we pay while remaking this part right? When do we say we are putting no more time ($) into reworking this part? Is our selling price for the product adjusted to show this additional cost?
Would our customer prefer to buy a product built with “world class reworked parts” or one with all the parts made right the first time???
