Tag Archives | accountability pays

Employee Engagement — Structures that Inspire ‘A’ Teams

By on March 9, 2012 in Business, Employee Engagement, Perspectives, strategy, Trust, Uncategorized, Values

I have said previously that ‘A’ Players like to be measured because they want to know when they have met or exceeded expectations, their own and yours.

Different teams require different structures, so for example sales teams require CRM.  That should be obvious, but for some organization it isn’t.  They probably aren’t reading this blog, because they have fallen behind in their technology savvy.

Today there is no excuse for not capturing sales data.  If you experience resistance from your sales management or a sales team member, you may be getting feedback from someone who doesn’t want to be measured, which suggests that person isn’t an ‘A’ player.  Look more deeply.

Senior executive teams need meetings with one another on a regular basis, and I do not mean meetings that get put off when there’s an emergency.  Consider that there are emergencies because you aren’t strategically thinking together regularly.

‘A’ teams need a leader who challenges them to think their best thoughts, be on their best behavior as a leader.  Challenging conversations are a structure.  They need report cards, theirs from you and theirs to you the CEO/President/Founder/Grand Poo-Bah of any title.  They need off-sites for strategic thinking and planning.  Those are structures.

What else do they need as a structure?  Executives need to be able to count on having conversations that matter deeply, whether they ask for them or not, in part because they need to learn how to hold those conversations with those who report to them.  I recently was asked to help a CEO hire a senior executive.  We used the Harrison Assessment to profile the candidate against the expectations of the position.  His results scared the potential employee off.  The CEO’s executive coach said to me, “Probably a good thing.  If the candidate doesn’t want to delve more transparently into himself then he won’t be a good fit for this team.”

If you need support for generating conversations that matter, on this website you can order senior executive team conversation starters.   And if you want to keep and inspire ‘A’ teams with structures, you will look beyond the obvious ones, which you know with your eyes closed.

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Employee Engagement: Right People in the Right Seats Please

By on March 2, 2012 in Employee Engagement, Executive Excellence, Leadership, Perspectives, Trust, Values

In case you haven’t read the original quote from Jim Collins, Good to Great, here it is:

“When we began the research project, we expected to find that the first step in taking a company from good to great would be to set a new direction, a new vision and strategy for the company, and then to get people committed and aligned behind that new direction.

We found something quite the opposite.

The executives who ignited the transformations from good to great did not first figure out where to drive the bus and then get people to take it there.  No, they first got the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and then figured out where to drive it. They said, in essence, “Look, I don’t really know where we should take this bus.  But I know this much: If we get the right people on the bus, the right people in the right seats, and the wrong people off the bus, then we’ll figure out how to take it someplace great.”

If it were my organization, I think a safer bet would be to know something about where the bus is going so I could get people who are aligned with that vision of the future.  Probably that future isn’t sealed in absolutes with the business plan written, but the future is in the mind’s eye of the founder or the current leader and can be elucidated.

Dr. Peter Drucker said, “The ability to make good decisions regarding people represents one of the last reliable sources of competitive advantage since very few organizations are very good at it.”

I can tell whether human resources (the people) in an organization are valued by two indicators:  1) the senior human resources executive is a member of the strategic executive team or not, and 2) to whom the human resources department reports.  In a company of any size where human resources is a department, if the senior executive of that department does not report to the CEO, how likely is it that the key leverage of an organization — its people — is under-valued?

Pretty high.  So that is the first seat that I would get right, and the rest of the people equation will begin to foster success that should drop to the bottom line.

What is the scenario at your organization?  Comments?  Observations?

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A Gift of Insight into Leadership from Laurie Taylor, and more

By on October 30, 2010 in Business, Leadership Books, Perspectives, strategic planning, strategy, Uncategorized


Laurie Taylor is a petite woman with a big message. In addition to her own life experience as a CEO, she works with James Fischer, author of Navigating the Growth Curve, and researcher behind the Seven Stages of Growth, outlined on Laurie’s website at http://www.igniteyourbiz.com/7-stages-of-growth.shtml.

In that same weekend I heard Dick Bruso talk about the importance of the congruence of your brand with your authentic self (Heard Above the Noise), and Carol Desmond talk about the Alphabet Soup of Trademarks (see my prior blog), and Steve Cohen, author of Mess Management; Lessons from a Corporate Hit Man talk about what he does as a corporate hit man, which is extract businesses from their messy people problems.  I got to see Tom Hill interview Peter Strople, a powerful force for good.  Peter and his wife have started a foster care agency for children, Refuge House Foster Care and Adoption Agency.  At our November gathering, Larry and I had dinner with Peter — what a delightful man with a very big heart.

Tom Hill, the magician who created these great gatherings of people, is a magnet for the likes of Peter, Dick, Steve, Carol and Laurie, and fortunately for me — me!  As I continue to be privileged to garner his support and this group’s support in growing myself and my business, I will continue to share their insights from time to time.

What strikes me is that these committed, educated, outstanding presenters are all leaders in their lives who have stepped forward to help leaders be better leaders.  Laurie’s experience and insights combined with building on the work of James Fisher is valuable for the perspective that it can bring anyone trying to lead today.  It answers the questions, “What stage are we at in our business growth process?” and “How should I, as the leader, act now?”

A focus of mine with leaders is bench strength, which partners well with Laurie’s focus on growth stages and appropriate actions as a leader, because if you do not have the right people in the right seat on the bus, and the wrong people off the bus (Good to Great, Jim Collins) you (leader) are not going to take that bus too darned far or fast! I will have the pleasure of pleasure of presenting that emphasis at the next conference in February. Can’t wait!

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