Workplace & Leadership: This I Believe

In my work with organizations both as an employee and external consultant, I have learned (and continue to learn) many things over the years. Many of these have evolved or been entirely reversed, which is indicative of the fact that we are living at a very dynamic time.

For example, in a recent article in Harvard Business Review magazine, Michael J. Mauboussin writes about how organizations are so often using the wrong metrics to measure success. The continual focus on earnings per share instead of other metrics and statistics prevents these companies from fully understanding their business. It’s time for business leaders to adapt their thinking.

In this blog post, I thought I would simply state some of what I believe with regard to the workplace and leadership. Although these statements are likely to continue evolving over time, I believe they will retain a kernel of truth that should remain constant.

I am indebted to many great business leaders and theorists for these ideas and I apologize in advance for a lack of attribution.

• Most people want to do their very best at work.

• More autonomy for how the work gets done leads to greater employee satisfaction and higher productivity.

• Great companies don’t hire skilled people and motivate them. They hire motivated people and inspire them.

• Character traits like zest, grit, self-control, social intelligence, gratitude, optimism and curiosity are common among great employees, yet are rarely advertised for or even looked for when seeking and interviewing candidates.

• Emotional intelligence may not get you the job, but it will undoubtedly keep you in the job and help you get promoted.

• Getting the right people focused on the right task is the most important objective for any organization to reach its goals.

• Focusing on employees first is what will make customers happy and this leads to happy shareholders.

• The role of a great leader is not to come up with great ideas. Instead, a great leader should create an environment in which great ideas can happen.

• Everyone has the capacity for leadership no matter the position.

• Leadership development should not be restricted to executives, but implemented throughout every level of the organization.

• Most of the billions of dollars companies invest in leadership development fall short of success because the programs are so heavily focused on data and assessment gathering and very little on people and processes.

• A high level of trust in the workplace is directly related to greater productivity, higher profitability and more engaged employees.

• Building trust and accountability are the most important things a manager should work on in order to get the most out his or her people.

• Praising workers in a meaningful way is a simple, yet highly effective means of raising employee satisfaction and overall productivity.

I welcome your thoughts and comments as well as other statements with regard to what you believe in order to extend the conversation.

Corporate Values and Goldman Sachs

Corporate values are often what attract and keep many of us at the fine companies we work for. They are above and beyond the paycheck that give our working lives meaning. Corporate values are what attracted Greg Smith to Goldman Sachs 12 years ago.

The values Smith describes at Goldman were “teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients.” Beginning as a summer intern while at Stanford, he ultimately reached the position of head of United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Smith recently left Goldman Sachs and wrote a scathing editorial in the New York Times as to why.

“I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity,” writes Smith. “And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.”

“Leadership used to be about ideas,” he continues. “Setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.”

Goldman leaders immediately responded to this with an open letter to employees on their website. However, other than reporting that 89 percent of employees say the firm provides “exceptional service” to clients and that for the third consecutive year, the firm was the highest paid financial services company, I read no real challenge to the assertions Smith made regarding values and integrity in his opinion piece.

It reminds me of the importance of things that do not necessarily show up on financial quarterly reports and are therefore less likely to be reported in the mainstream press. Corporate values like integrity, teamwork and doing the right thing are what attract and keep the best employees and ultimately what wins and keeps customers.

Earlier in my career, I remember working for start-up software companies where customers were treated as the top priority and employees a close second. When some of these companies filed for an initial public offering, shareholders replaced employees in second place and, in some companies, were even prioritized over customers.

When short term profits take precedence over corporate values, a company is in great trouble. Trust and ethical behavior outweigh financial performance if not in the short term then certainly over the long run.

I have had an increasing number of clients during the past several years complaining about unethical behavior, lack of honesty and bullying by their immediate supervisor. This leads to a stressful work environment and a depreciation of corporate values.

The old adage that people join a company based on its reputation and leave because of a manager is truer than ever. When managers engage in unethical behavior, they damage not only their own careers and those around them, but also the entire company.

Earning and keeping customer trust takes a long time; losing it can happen overnight. Goldman Sachs is 143 years old and surely they won’t sacrifice that trust easily.

I am sure Smith’s assertions have some basis in fact, but with 30,000 employees I’m equally certain there are many contrary opinions.

Regardless, the lesson should be that respecting customers and employees should be paramount in any company. Maintaining corporate values that attract employees and customers should always be more important than higher short terms profits.

Mindfulness in Leadership Development

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.”
–Shunryu Suzuki

In a recent Harvard Business Review blog, Polly LaBarre wrote about the wisdom of developing mindful leaders.

Much of the billions of dollars companies invest in leadership development fall short of success because the programs are so heavily focused on data/assessment gathering and so little on people and processes.

“What if, instead of stuffing people with curricula, models, and competencies, we focused on deepening their sense of purpose, expanding their capability to navigate difficulty and complexity, and enriching their emotional resilience?” ponders LaBarre.

“What if, instead of trying to fix people, we assumed that they were already full of potential and created an environment that promoted their long-term well-being?”

LaBarre cites the Personal Excellence Program (PEP) developed at biotechnology company Genentech in 2002 by CIO Todd Pierce and his coach, Pamella Weiss.

PEP begins with the premise that people are whole, not broken. By fully integrating the intellectual (head), emotional (heart) and somatic (body) intelligence, PEP is able to tap into people’s wholehearted engagement, helps them cultivate self-awareness, and supports them to develop mastery through embodied practice.

More than 800 Genentech employees have so far completed this program (primarily in the IT department) and it has dramatically improved employee engagement.

This includes:

• 10-20% increase in employee satisfaction;

• 12% increase in customer satisfaction;

• 50% percent improvement in employee communication, collaboration, conflict management and coaching; and

• 77% of PEP participants reported “significant measurable business impact” as a result of participating in PEP. This is almost three times the norm (25–30%), compared to dozens of similar programs studied.

In terms of a return on investment, evaluators found the program conservatively produced an estimated $1.50 to $2 for every dollar spent to deliver PEP.

“I thought PEP might be a strategy for people to develop a skill or quality,” said Pierce. “But what I see is that it is a strategy to help them be life-long learners and to increase their capacity for personal development and personal satisfaction in every area of their life.”

The PEP program takes place over a ten month period and includes three large group workshops, eight facilitated small group meetings, three individual coaching sessions and monthly peer coaching.

Participants choose a topic to focus on that is important to them, observe them selves in real time to gain insight and self-awareness, and then practice new behaviors to establish new habits and develop mastery.

Deliberate practice is the most significant indicator of success and this requires steady, consistent repetition over time, until new behaviors take root in the body as a new habit.

Mindfulness is about paying attention. It is about learning to observe one self in the context of day-to-day life to enable new insights and begin seeing yourself more clearly. The result is you can then make wiser choices. Increasing this self-awareness helps you cultivate the ability to act rather than react, enabling you to become response-able—even in the midst of high-stress situations.

“I think what makes PEP so successful is less about what we do than it is about the attitude we bring to how we do it,” says Weiss. “When we start from a place of beginner’s mind, and add a big dose of curiosity, patience and appreciation, learning happens because as human beings we are wired to learn and grow. In many ways, it comes down to doing less and trusting more in our innate capacities and vast potential.”

Leadership development programs should provide tangible, long lasting results and a program like PEP that engages the heart, mind and body is an example of one that appears to work.

Rather than seek a one-off, one-day solution for developing leaders in your organization, look for a longer term program with dynamic involvement that includes mindfulness and disciplined practice for changing behavior. Only then will you have a significant return on investment measured not only in dollars, but also in more engaged human capital.

Joe Paterno, Penn State and Leadership

What do recent events at Penn State and the firing of legendary football coach Joe Paterno say about the state of leadership today?

Many of the leaders at Penn State failed in various ways by failing to stop the heinous crime of child molestation. Assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky is the guiltiest, of course, but other leaders share in the blame.

Sandusky was arrested last Saturday on 21 felony counts, including seven counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse. These counts involve alleged abuse of eight young boys over a period of 15 years, including several incidents that allegedly took place at the university’s athletic facilities.

Athletic director Tim Curley and university administer Gary Schultz not only allegedly failed to report the sexual abuse of the children by coach Sandusky, but also made false statements about it to a grand jury.

Penn State university president, Graham Spanier, according to a grand jury report, stated he not only was made aware of the allegations, but approved Curley’s approach in dealing with it. Spanier, one of the longest-serving college presidents in the nation, then pledged his “unconditional support” to Curley and Schultz two days prior to when they both resigned.

Then there is assistant coach Mike McQueary, who was a graduate assistant when he personally witnessed Sandusky raping one of the victims and reported it to Paterno the following day back in March 2002. Curley told McQueary that Sandusky’s locker room keys would be taken away, but McQueary told no one else and took no further action.

Finally, Joe Paterno, the winningest head coach in college football, failed in his leadership because although he apparently reported the news to his boss, he never went to the police, never confronted Sandusky and never followed up to ensure it didn’t happen again.

True leadership requires ensuring that corrections are made when a crisis like this first comes to light. It’s not enough for a coach to simply report the crime to his superior. Eight young boys were victimized and these five Penn State leaders all played a role in contributing to the delay of Sandusky being charged and repeating his crimes.

Leadership requires stepping up to such ethical dilemmas and making tough decisions even when it may reflect poorly on oneself and/or one’s institution. Courageous leadership requires that controversial action is taken when it is the right thing to do, even if it is not in the best interests of the institution.

Imagine if our elected officials in congress could be this courageous. Here at this especially critical time for decisive action we have partisan bickering and an inability to do what is in the best interest of the American people.

Whether it is heinous crimes within a prestigious college football program, insider trading in a multinational corporation, or sexual harassment by a presidential candidate, it appears that the larger or more powerful the person or institution, the more courageous leadership is required.

Powerful forces will always attempt to quell potential damage and that is why it takes so much courage and persistence by victims, witnesses and those who learn of the atrocity to come forward and see that justice is done. No matter where these people are in the organizational chart, they are the ones who can demonstrate such strong leadership.

And when those in true leadership positions fail to act, they must be removed.

Courageous Leadership Requires Vulnerability

“Make it thy business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world.” — Miguel De Cervantes

Great leaders have many attributes. Among them are clarity, vision, humility and courage. When we see these traits in our leaders we are inspired to follow.

By courage I mean more than the ability to make hard business decisions, give difficult feedback or even to fire someone. It also has to do with the ability to truly see ourselves as others see us, even when others’ perceptions don’t match our own.

In a recent Harvard Business Review article titled “The First Requirement for Becoming a Great Boss,” authors Linda Hill and Kent Lineback say that the courage to see oneself as others see them is vitally important.

Ironically, this type of courage may seem counter to the stoic image we have of what a strong leader looks like. This is because it requires the vulnerability to open oneself to other’s perceptions of them. It means accepting these perceptions as more data in order to learn and grow as a leader.

While all these perceptions may not necessarily be accurate or helpful, many of them are extremely useful in terms of determining whether the perception you have of your management style is shared by those you lead.

Getting this feedback, however, may be difficult for two reasons: One, the people you lead may not believe you really want critical information, and even if you do, it may negatively impact their near or long term employment. Two, critical information is hard to receive and your immediate reaction may make you defensive and/or emotionally weakend.

If you already are a leader who can be trusted by your people then you should be able to address the first concern. Ask yourself: are you able to hear negative or critical information about things and accept them with grace? Or do you overreact by looking to place blame rather than find sustainable solutions?

It may take time to foster the kind of trust that enables your people to deliver the kind of critical feedback you as a leader needs in order to see yourself clearly. It is possible that only your spouse or a trusted friend can convey this kind of information to you now. But these people probably don’t work with you and therefore cannot accurately assess and inform you of your shortcomings in the workplace.

You may choose to use anonymous surveys as a way of gathering this data where there is less fear of personal reprisals. Building a trusted work environment where your people feel comfortable delivering this critical feedback directly would be preferable, however, because it can happen more frequently and strengthen communication and productivity.

The second reason has to do with the inherent resistance we have to hearing negative information about ourselves. Few of us welcome hearing about our shortcomings, and this is where the courage is necessary.

In the same way having a difficult conversation with a friend or loved one can make us vulnerable and leave us emotionally raw, a courageous leader needs to be open to hearing difficult personal information as a way to learn and grow.

Most leaders had to learn to accept critical feedback in order to reach the position they are in. Performance reviews and 360 feedback reports has helped leaders to handle difficult personal information.

However, when it comes to asking for and receiving critical information from those who report to you outside of these formal channels, it may be much harder to do.

The courage to do this is to remind yourself that emotional growth is critical to your continued success and development as a leader. It has to do with emotional intelligence. It means accepting that being emotionally vulnerable is not a weakness, but a strength and it demonstrates your humanity.

The more you as a leader are able to embrace this notion of courageous vulnerability, the more you will grow and develop as a leader.

What CEOs Look for When Hiring

Earlier in my career I was fortunate to work for a CEO who I admired and respected. When he first interviewed me, he said he was looking for two qualities in the people he hired. These were integrity and a sense of urgency. Since that time, I worked for many companies with employees who demonstrated one but not the other, and I discovered how important these both were to me.

Legendary investor and philanthropist Warren Buffett says he looks for three things when hiring people: 1) integrity, 2) intelligence, and 3) a high energy level. But, he says, if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you.

In a new book by New York Times columnist Adam Bryant titled “The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons From CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed,” Bryant interviewed more than 70 CEOs and other leaders to uncover what he calls five essentials for success, qualities that most leaders share and look for in people they hire.

These five qualities are 1) passionate curiosity, 2) battled-hardened confidence, 3) team smarts, 4) a simple mind-set, and 5) fearlessness.

What Bryant discovered is that these traits are not something we’re born with, but they can be developed through the right attitude, habit and discipline. He contends that these qualities will make you stand out and make you a better manager or leader; they will also help you move your career forward like nothing else.

Passionate Curiosity
All CEOs are expected to have the right answers and be decisive in how they execute their strategy. However, asking the right questions may be more important than anything else. This curiosity may not show up in the usual public forums for the boss, but behind the scenes, this can be a natural way of being. It is about showing a genuine interest in the people around you as well as questioning the way and the why things are done. CEOs look for this quality when considering leadership positions.

Battle-Hardened Confidence
Failure is too often hidden in job interviews. Top CEOs are not looking for those who avoided failure throughout their careers, but those who have overcome adversity and learned from it. It demonstrates that you are capable of owning a problem rather than passing the buck. Many of the stories in Bryant’s book bring to life the concept of a “locus of control,” which refers to people’s outlook and belief about what leads to success and failure in their life. These are the folks who take on any assignment without question and get it done. They can be relied upon when the going gets tough.

Team Smarts
Team smarts refers to the ability to recognize the players a team needs and how to bring them together toward a common goal. “I need people who are going to be able to build a team, manage a team, recruit well and work well with their peers,” says Susan Lyne, chairman of the Gilt Groupe. “The people who truly succeed in business are the ones who actually have figured out how to mobilize people who are not their direct reports.”

A Simple Mind-Set
Senior executives want people who can present concisely, get to the point, and make things simple. Yet few people can deliver the simplicity that CEOs are looking for. All too often, unfocused thinking leads to lengthy and exhausting details. Demonstrating how much you know about a particular topic is not nearly as important to an executive as conveying the critical information and a clear strategy for moving forward. In the Internet age, with the ability to easily gather information, there is now a premium on the ability to synthesize, connect the dots in new ways, and ask smart questions that lead to answers and opportunities.

Fearlessness
CEOs are looking for people to do things, but not only what they’re told to do. Calculated and informed risk-taking is also important. “One of the things that I characterize as fearlessness is seeing an opportunity, even though things are not broken,” said Ursula M. Burns, C.E.O. of Xerox. It is risky to shake up the status quo, of course. But if you operate with the best interests of the organization in mind, you can open up new opportunities for yourself and your company. This is what separates those who follow directions and do things right from those who lead and do the right things.

These five qualities help determine who may be chosen for more responsibility and promotions, which then requires more learning through trial and error. And that continual learning, I believe, is another essential element of leadership.

Integrity and a sense of urgency are very important qualities for employees throughout most organizations. But to become a successful leader, the five essential qualities above can often be the difference between who the CEO sees as a leader versus another good manager.

Statistically Significant: Effective Managers use Soft Skills

In 2009 Google, Inc. began an internal initiative called Project Oxygen in order to better understand what makes an effective Google manager.

They analyzed more than 10,000 observations about managers, including 100 variables on things like performance reviews, feedback surveys and nominations for top-manager awards. They correlated phrases, words, praise and complaints.

This data-driven method for improving managers was based on the premise that Google workers are different from other workers.

In the end, Project Oxygen’s statisticians came up with eight directives that separate good managers from bad managers. These include such common sense things like:

“Have a clear vision and strategy for the team.”

“Help your employees with career development.”

“Don’t be a sissy: Be productive and results-oriented.”

What Google found in its research is that employees most valued managers with people skills, not technical ones. Rather than being told what to do, employees want to be helped through figuring out problems for themselves.

“Although people are always looking for the next new thing in leadership,” says D. Scott DeRue, a management professor at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. “Google’s data suggest that not much has changed in terms of what makes for an effective leader.”

According to a recent article in the The New York Times, Google’s “people operations” group, led by Laszlo Bock, “found that technical expertise—the ability, say, to write computer code in your sleep—ranked dead last” among the list of Google’s eight main habits of effective managers.

Bock admitted they had assumed managers needed to have deep technical knowledge in order to effectively manage other engineers. Turns out this is the least important of the top eight qualities.

Project Oxygen discovered that two of the most important things managers can do is make time for their people and be consistent. It turns out these two things are more important than doing all of the other things.

This is not unique to Google, of course. Today’s workers need to connect with their teams and especially their immediate supervisors. It’s not that we are especially insecure and need constant feedback on what we do, but we are often isolated from the end product or bigger picture and it’s hard to know whether or not we’re doing a good job and whether we matter.

Connecting with the people who work for you and giving feedback more often than an annual performance review can be a powerful motivator.

Research suggests that employees join a company due to its reputation and they leave a company primarily due to their manager. Google’s data confirmed that managers have a much greater impact on employees’ performance and how they feel about their job than any other factor.

Soft skills, the very things that are so difficult to quantify and aren’t easily recognizable on resumes, really do make a difference in how people manage others.

As I wrote in a previous post with regard to what employees say they want from their managers, the first three are all in the category of soft skills. These are:

1. Full appreciation for work done
2. Feeling ‘part’ of things
3. Sympathetic help on personal issues

Many managers reading this may find these are not at all consistent with their own employees who surely want more tangible things like good wages, job security and promotions. But these results have been consistent over the last thirty years.

Google has grown incredibly fast since its founding in 1998. They expertly navigated this growth by hiring smart technical people and let them figure out how best to get things done. Now they need to shift the focus on replicating the people skills of their most effective managers so they can continue this growth.

President Obama and Effective Change Leadership

Nearly two years after Barack Obama was elected President of the United States on the promise of hope and change, many Americans are reportedly disappointed that hope and change hasn’t yet reached them.

Fair or unfair in this assessment of his first 20 months in office, I believe there are lessons to be learned in terms of effective change management. And though this is not meant to be a political blog, I believe there is much to be learned in the politics of business and the business of politics.

According to John Kotter, Harvard Business School professor, best-selling author and widely regarded as an authority on leadership and change, “great leaders help people get in touch with their own aspirations and then help them forge those aspirations into a personal vision.”

In Kotter’s 1996 book “Leading Change,” the author provides a step by step process for successful change initiatives. Though our government is not run the same as a business, there are definitely lessons that can be learned from the business world with regard to implementing effective change.

Kotter’s Eight-Stage Process

1. Establishing a sense of urgency
2. Creating the guiding coalition
3. Developing a vision and strategy
4. Communicating the change vision
5. Empowering employees for broad-based action
6. Generating short-term wins
7. Consolidating gains in producing more change
8. Anchoring new approaches in the culture

The central challenge in every one of Kotter’s eight steps is in changing people’s behavior: what people do and the need for significant shift in what people do. Changing this behavior is not a matter of more analysis to influence their thoughts as it is helping them see a truth to influence their feelings.

“People change what they do less because they are given analysis that shifts their thinking than because they are shown a truth that influences their feelings,” says Kotter.

President Obama is often perceived as overly cerebral and perhaps that explains why he primarily focuses on analysis in order to shift thinking. Unlike his predecessors Bill Clinton and especially Ronald Reagan, I believe Obama has been less successful in presenting truths to influence the kind of feelings necessary to accelerate change.

In spite of the deep domestic recession and two unpopular wars he inherited, Obama has made significant changes in financial regulation, health care and troop removal from Iraq. Republican resistance to these changes has focused on their belief that the first two of these changes are too far reaching and expensive.

The rising popularity of talk radio and sensational television news programs rely heavily on emotion with little hard facts or balanced analysis to support what may or may not be a truth. Regardless, the feelings provoked are what motivate change and that change may now mean a dramatic shift in congress with the upcoming mid-term elections.

In Kotter’s eight stages, it seems there are steps Obama may have skipped. What Obama did so well during his campaign was in developing a vision, but the strategy is where he may have fallen short once elected. Communicating a vision for hope and change—which he also did well during the campaign—seems to have little resonance after nearly two years in office.

One could certainly make an argument that Obama should also have established some shorter term wins than financial regulation and health care reform but, of course, he needed to play the hand he was dealt and that included some unpopular decisions during a crisis and in a very divisive environment.

In Kotter’s later book “The Heart of Change: Real-Life Stories of How People Change Their Organizations,” he states that successful change leaders need to employ the see-feel-change method.

See – Identify the problem or solution to a problem and enable others to visualize this in a way that creates a change in behavior.

Feel – Dramatize and make a compelling image that catches people’s attention, and ensure that this results in feelings that include passion, faith, trust, pride, hope, excitement, enthusiasm, urgency and/or fear to necessitate needed change. Emotions that can undermine change include anger, false pride, pessimism, arrogance, cynicism, panic, exhaustion, insecurity and anxiety.

Change – Different feelings—a change of heart—are what transform behavior. “The feelings change behavior,” says Kotter. “And with this change people are able to move through the eight necessary stages of large-scale change despite often huge difficulties.”

Obama was so effective at the see and feel parts during his presidential campaign, but navigating the challenges of governing with a fiercely divided congress during a time of war and recession has proved especially difficult. Perhaps revisiting Kotter’s eight stage process as a guide, Obama can then reclaim his leadership skills to affect the kind of change this country so desperately needs.

Leadership & Effective Change Initiatives

Change management initiatives are necessary for organizations to remain competitive in our rapidly evolving economic climate. These initiatives are extremely important, yet the majority of them are considered failures.

Recent surveys of chief executives from major corporations say up to 75 percent of their organizational change efforts do not deliver promised results. Overall, a full two-thirds of change management initiatives fail all together.

Since the pace of change in organizations is increasing daily, there is no better time to understand how organizational change initiatives can become more effective. The short answer is stronger leadership.

According to leadership expert and author John P. Kotter in his book “Leading Change,” there are eight common errors firms make when implementing change:

1. Allowing too much complacency
2. Failing to create a sufficiently powerful guiding coalition
3. Underestimating the power of vision
4. Undercommunicating the vision by a factor of 10 or more
5. Permitting obstacles to block the new vision
6. Failing to create short-term wins
7. Declaring victory too soon
8. Neglecting to anchor changes firmly in the corporate culture

None of these errors alone would be all that consequential in a slower-paced, less competitive environment, but since the speed of change will only continue to increase addressing these concerns is of extreme importance.

All of these reasons for failure can be summarized by a lack of strong leadership. In fact, “ineffective change sponsorship or leadership” at the executive level was cited as the primary reason for failure in numerous research reports by Prosci, Harvard Business Review, McKinsey Quarterly and others throughout the past decade.

According to this research, the top three reasons for failure with change initiatives were:

1. Ineffective change sponsorship or leadership from executives
2. Employee resistance
3. Poor support and alignment with middle managers

Before any organizational change effort is initiated, it is vital for the leader to fully understand the scope of his or her commitment and involvement. Organizational change efforts succeed only when the leader is 100 percent committed and thoroughly embraces the effort required for its success.

Kotter’s eight-stage process for successful change initiatives is a solid blueprint for leaders to model. To succeed the leader must follow each of these stages and stay fully committed and present throughout the process.

A 2002 McKinsey Quarterly study of 40 banks, manufacturers, hospitals and utilities titled “Helping Employees Embrace Change” revealed that of the companies that were successful in their change initiatives, all shared the following attributes:

• All levels of the organization were involved from the very beginning
• Responsibilities were clear
• Reasons for the change were clear to everyone

Change takes time because employees need to move through their own stages of denial, resistance, exploration and finally commitment. Management must therefore be patient and recognize that every employee needs to go through each phase at his or her own pace.

This may seem to contradict the sense of urgency required to bring about change in the first place, but not if everyone is involved from the very beginning. Resistance from employees diminishes in direct proportion to the openness from upper management. By keeping all employees aware of the plan from the start and by giving them a clear and compelling vision of the future, a leader can help bring them on board with the change.

Most of us don’t like change of any kind and it is natural to resist because change often brings on anxiety by disrupting the status quo. This is true in our personal lives as well as our professional lives. However, change is inevitable and therefore we must all find ways to enable effective change to succeed.

Leaders must be extremely vigilant in every step of a change initiative because they most directly determine whether it is successful or not. Their guidance and stewardship throughout the process is more important than anything else.

Mark Craemer       http://www.craemerconsulting.com

Integrity First and Foremost

“I look for three things in hiring people. The first is integrity, the second is intelligence, and the third is a high energy level. But, if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you.” – Warren Buffett

These days the word integrity is thrown around almost as often as the word awesome. And in the same way few things can be accurately described as awesome, I find few of our celebrated leaders demonstrate integrity.

Witness the news of the past few weeks where countless celebrities, sports stars, government officials, and business people demonstrated a lack of integrity in their behavior. Are we expecting too much out of these media-hyped people?

Integrity is defined as an adherence to moral and ethical principles, soundness in moral character or honesty. And unlike other knowledge and skills of leadership, integrity is not something one can learn and experiment with now and then.

We should seriously question the leadership of those who have failed us with a lack of integrity. Leaders in business and elsewhere need to consistently demonstrate integrity or we should reject them. Because without integrity there can be no true leadership. And unlike other qualities of leadership, integrity is either there or it isn’t.

So what does this say about the fallen leaders we honor so highly in our society? Did they delude us or did we delude ourselves?

Identifying integrity in someone is challenging because it is found within a person’s moral fiber or character. It isn’t something they can simply document on a resume or easily demonstrate in an interview. Integrity is proven through consistent behavior over time and verified by the people around them.

“The people with whom a person works, and especially subordinates, know in a few weeks whether he or she has integrity or not,” writer and management consultant Peter Drucker stated in The Daily Drucker. “They may forgive a person for a great deal of incompetence, ignorance, insecurity, or bad manners. But they will not forgive a lack of integrity in that person.”

Many charismatic leaders enjoy lots of media attention, but charisma can only go so far if there isn’t a solid foundation of integrity beneath the surface. We should question the supposedly strong leaders the media presents us with because simply reaching celebrity status does not make for a strong leader. In fact, it could mean just the opposite.

Great leaders model integrity through their honesty and by doing the right thing no matter the circumstances. Those leaders with integrity do what is right for the organization and the people within it—even when he or she may gain nothing from the outcome.

Strong leaders demonstrate an indisputable track record of integrity throughout their career. Look for it and demand it in those you choose to follow. Integrity is not the only quality to look for in a leader, but it may very well be the most vital.

Mark Craemer       www.craemerconsulting.com