Golden Insights Blog Archive

There’s a secret to creating culture. It’s not a magic technique, but a proper perspective. Cultures are created naturally whether it’s in a department, an organization or a whole country. The questions are, what kind of culture is being created and who is guiding its creation.

Coaching can be incredibly beneficial for individuals and organizations, but you can only lead a horse to water, you can't make it drink. For coaching to be successful, the coach, coachee and organization must understand what coaching can do and what it can’t.

Years ago, I worked for a large corporation where annually we would implement succession planning exercises that cascaded from the top of the organization to the frontline management level. This was a labor-intensive process for Human Resources (HR), and the management team and managers complained about having to complete these exercises when, particularly at the lower levels of the organization, we never really implemented the plan if a vacancy occurred. After several years of completing the exercises, the HR team decided to only complete succession planning activities at the top level and talent planning exercises for the rest of the organization.

Training and development is not just a nice benefit for your employees, but key for an organization’s short- and long-term health. Organizations are composed of human beings, which are the essential resource. The better the quality of that resource the better off the organization is as a whole.

Organizations are continuously faced with the challenge of retaining top talent. Establishing a mentoring program is one value-add that can extend the longevity – and loyalty – of employees. A mentoring program ensures a win-win-win: The mentee wins. The mentor wins. The organization wins. As I see it, there is no downside to hosting a mentoring program in your organization…only an upside.

Mentoring has been formalized into programs, policies and initiatives; repackaged as one of many silver bullets. While there are no silver bullets, mentoring really is crucial for individuals and organizations.

One of the most frequent questions that I am asked as a coach is, “What is the difference between a coach and a mentor?” While the skills required are similar, and both are used as professional development tools, the structure and the outcome are quite different.

Is teamwork really that important or is it just another buzzword? Sometimes the best way to determine the true value of something is to recognize what would happen if it were lost.

​Originally introduced in the 1950’s, the concept of Management by Objectives (MBO) encouraged the involvement of employees in the company’s goal setting process to increase engagement and improve results. By the 1980’s practically every modern Fortune 500 Company had implemented a goal setting process as part of their overall performance management practice. By setting goals, the organization could focus performance on those activities that would yield the greatest results.

​Gone are the days when managers were just managers. More managers today are encouraged, even expected, to develop themselves as leaders and acquire coaching skills to more effectively manage their teams. Not only does coaching allow you to grow as a leader, it also makes you more attractive when interviewing for a new position. Add the skill of coach to your professional portfolio and you rise to the top of the list of candidates.

Everyone seems to agree that performance management is a good thing, but few companies are effectively implementing performance management programs. So where’s the disconnect? What’s keeping so many companies from reaping the benefits of something as simple as a performance management program? In short, the answer is leadership.

​Most successful organizations have transitioned from the traditional employee appraisal process to the more enterprising performance management process that ties employee performance to organizational performance through its mission, vision and values. Management teams have discovered that when they do not deploy cascading goals from the executive suite to divisions, departments and individual employees, the organization experiences a misalignment with their overall goals. This misalignment results in unclear goals at the department and employee level. 

On-boarding, beyond being helpful for the new hire, is essential for talent retention and employee engagement, which translate directly into efficient productivity. Talent retention has become a hot topic in the human resource (HR) community because of the looming talent shortage as baby boomers leave the workforce. The research is showing that employees more often quit working for their managers, not for their organization, so first impressions for the managers are important.

Today we hear a great deal about including job competencies in our job descriptions. One question I hear often from students and practitioners in my SHRM certification course is: “exactly what are job competencies and how do they differ from job skills?” This is a great question and the confusion lies in the fact that competencies are, in fact, skills.

It seems to be part of human nature to save things; just in case. We want something in reserve that we can fall back on. We like the security. Inventory can serve such a purpose in our workplaces. When we see work in process, we might feel encouraged that there is work to do. We might also feel a bit intimidated or overwhelmed.

There is a lot of discussion in the industrial arena about Lean Enterprise and Six Sigma. Many times, it appears that authors promote their focus on one of these best practice approaches, and discuss the other as if it were a competing or opposing view. If we take a deeper look, however, we should see there is great synergy and value in appropriately combining these powerful approaches.

People that are viewed as good problem solvers are valued. We know they can help. They just seem to have a knack for figuring things out. In truth, we all have different abilities and skills, and some people ARE better at getting to the crux of the problem. But, how do they do it? Is problem solving a learned or innate skill?

An effective continual improvement program needs to include involvement from everyone in the organization. Achieving this level of cultural awareness takes time and must be nurtured employee by employee. One of the first questions that employees ask is, “What do you want me to do?” If we can’t define the roles we want employees to play when it comes to improving processes, how can we expect a cultural transformation to take place?

DMAIC comes to us from the Six Sigma community and PDCA comes out of the Lean community. 8D (Eight Disciplines) was developed by Ford Motor Company to solve problems. All three are valid roadmaps on which you can hang any of the tools for analyzing processes.

As I mentioned in my last article, project management has become a critical skill for efficiently and effectively aligning valuable resources to achieve an organization’s important operational, strategic and sales projects. In this article, I’d like to address something that all three of these categories of projects have in common. They are all constrained by three elements – Time, Cost and Requirements.

Today more than ever, organizations are faced with the challenge to reduce costs and increase capacities while delivering increasingly better products and services. Facing global competition in the marketplace, organizations are struggling to be competitive, struggling to be profitable, and most importantly, struggling to survive. Dr. W. Edwards Deming once commented, “It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.” With the reality of going out of business, organizations in all industries are asking, “How do we change our approach to business to keep us relevant in our industry?” 

As a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt, I’ve been known to think differently than others and my family has noticed. And many people have no idea what it is or what it means. “Martial arts? When did you do that? And what does Lean Six Sigma mean?” Ugh! They’ll never understand. Or, maybe this is the perfect opportunity to let them see me in action and they might just gain some insight into, “What is Six Sigma?”

In any organization, work can be broken down into two categories – operations and projects. Operations are the organization’s on-going, repetitive activities, such as manufacturing, staffing or accounting. These activities are primarily focused on keeping things running. On the other hand, project work is temporary in nature, having defined start and end dates; project work produces unique outputs. Though both categories of work have some things in common (people, resources, goals), they require different sets of skills and tools.

Can you answer yes to the following question? At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day? According the author Tom Rath in the book Strengths Finder 2.0, those who answered yes to this question are six times more likely to be engaged in their work and three times more likely to have a better quality of life in general. According to this study by the Gallup organization of over 10 million people, only a third of them “strongly agreed” with this statement.

​Say the phrase, “We need to hold people more accountable” to your team and most of them will likely have a negative reaction. Why? Because for many, the connotation of the word “accountability” was created by an unpleasant experience involving blame, coercion, criticism and more work. What we say we mean versus what they perceive is often contradictory.

Asking for permission to have a conflict conversation? Ned, I thought you were nuts when you suggested we get in a circle for our meetings, now I know you are.

Providing difficult feedback to an employee is one of the most challenging tasks for a supervisor. Nobody likes having to tell someone that they are not doing a good job. And certainly nobody wants to hear it. Employee defensiveness, even complete denial of the situation, can often be a typical employee response. 

As we approach another end to the business year and, hopefully, are planning for the coming business year, I genuinely encourage you all to reflect upon the past year’s successes and failures to determine where that one extra degree of effort either made the difference or could have made the difference in your businesses.

In my last article, I wrote about two of the common traps decision makers can fall into. In this article, I’d like to share two key questions that must be addressed when making a decision – who should make the decision and who should be in involved in the decision. The answer to the first question is pretty straightforward – generally it’s the individual who is in charge. But the decision maker has some options when it comes to the second question. Let’s explore them.

Gather in a circle? Ned, are you crazy? This is a workplace not some hand holding kumbaya love fest! No I am not crazy and you don’t have to be part of a kumbaya love fest to pull this off. The circle is the most prevalent geometric shape natural to nature. Everything you see has a circular shape to it; the moon, earth, sun, clouds, trees, animals, (some of us are a little more circular than others) and so on.

Some very interesting people attended the leadership skills programs I’ve taught. One was Dan, a recently promoted supervisor who’d spent many years in the Navy. In the program, we talked about the value of having discussions with employees regarding work assignments, upcoming changes and decision making. It was critical, I explained, to listen to employee input and concerns, and then reach consensus on the best way forward.

What is it about someone that makes them a great leader? Is it their status, outgoing personality, likeability, relatability, vision, ability to create a great strategy and execute it? I’ve always been interested in the subject of leadership and what makes some people so good at it, while others (despite all the classes they take, books they read or coaching they receive) are not. As an avid reader on the topic and observer of others, I find that the foundation of great leadership is self-awareness. 

Stripped down to its essentials, business is about one thing: making decisions. Therefore, decision making is an important skill of leaders in all levels of an organization. It’s also one of the toughest and riskiest skills. It is a skill that can be sidetracked by a number of psychological traps that can undermine decisions. These traps can even cause great leaders to make bad decisions at times. Sometimes the cause is bad luck or poor timing, but more often than not bad decisions are the result of biases that as humans we bring into our decision making processes.

Have you ever seen an adult engage in a tantrum usually exhibited by a toddler? Have you ever been the recipient of someone’s silent treatment? Have you ever found yourself doing a favor for someone while wondering how you allowed yourself to be maneuvered into doing something you really didn’t want to do? Most of us have had experience with people who regularly break the rules of polite decorum and who frequently disregard others’ boundaries.

One of the common traits of human behavior is that, when making decisions, we typically evaluate the choices based on our perspectives and emotions at the moment. That results in decisions focused on the “right-now” or a very short-time horizon. You can probably recall impulse purchases that seemed like a great idea at the time, but once you got the item home, you wondered what in the world you were thinking. 

It seems that in every class I teach, I’m asked, “How can I get my direct reports to do what they are supposed to do?” I hear comments like, “I feel like I’m a babysitter” or “No one takes initiative” or “Everyone comes in and dumps their problems on me and expects me to fix them.” These comments are all too common. So how do we get our employees to take initiative and get the job done?

Do you ever wish people would just do what you asked and that you could get people to follow through on their part of the project? Maybe you wish you could get your point across better, or perhaps you have trouble saying no? The solution to all of these situations is learning how to influence others well.

One of the most common questions that is asked during my presentation skills training program is “How can I better think on my feet?” You see, people may feel well prepared to deliver content, yet they feel unprepared to elaborate further on that content or they may fall apart when answering questions. Thinking on your feet spans three important areas that will be covered in this article, including: When presenting information, when elaborating and when answering questions. The key to thinking well on your feet is to decide the best approach to presenting information in a clear, concise and thoughtful way.

By now you have probably heard something about generational differences. The information is everywhere: magazine articles, news media, Internet blogs and corporate training programs. There are research institutions who are devoting entire divisions to studying the Millennial generation. There is even a TV show titled “Survivor: Millennials vs. Gen X.” The question now is not whether you have heard about generational differences. The question is “What have you heard?”

Fifteen years ago twenty-five percent of major business change initiatives impacted less than fifty people and cost less than $100,000. Today, that same twenty-five percent impacts more than 5,000 people and costs more than $10M. This is a one hundred times increase in fifteen years! This growth has been driven by globalization and an increase in technology projects. That means projects have become one hundred times riskier.

Everyone has heard the quote “Less is more” - but few know who said it or what it refers to. Regardless, it perfectly applies to PowerPoint. Most presenters, though, follow the opposite school of thought that “more is more” and stuff their slides with too many words and pictures. The result is summed up in another quote by author, entrepreneur and presentation expert Seth Godin who said, “Almost every PowerPoint sucks rotten eggs.”

Emotions interfere with our ability to identify and maintain focus on the issue during conflict. The reason we are so eloquent after the conversation is over is because emotions have subsided and rational thought is now in command of our thinking. Now we know exactly what we should have said. Sometimes the emotion subsides quickly, allowing us the immediate opportunity to identify the real issue, make amends and resolve the issue. Sometimes the emotion lingers, however, resulting in grudges, plans for evening the score and counter attacks. When this happens, the original issue may be lost in an on-going drama that can last a lifetime.

It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it. Part of the “how” is nonverbal language. When you deliver a presentation, people observe two things: Your verbal language – the words you use – and your nonverbal language – what your body language says about you. In this article, I will present nonverbal language from two different perspectives: Your own nonverbal language that you use while delivering a presentation to others and the nonverbal language that your audience shows to you while you’re presenting. 

No, I’m not talking about mind control, but something much easier. Follow the below steps and you can greatly increase the probability that your reader will do what you want. First, I believe that people, in general, are helpful (but to a limit). They are willing to spend some (short) time to do what you ask of them. The key is how much time they are willing to spend.

One of the most powerful communication tools you possess is your nonverbal language, or body language. Yet all too often people are too busy to pay attention to what their actions say about them. What others see/feel/experience in action guides their interpretation of your personal style. Be mindful of the delicate interplay between verbal and nonverbal language. The key to successful communication is to ensure that your verbal and nonverbal language are in alignment and consistent.

There are few things in business that aren’t done based on a plan. For anything related to spending, there are budgets. When it comes to employees, there are performance plans. Any significant undertaking is based on a project plan.

Have you ever been frustrated by the detailed answer someone gave you to a simple question? Today’s society values brevity. People send short but frequent text messages to update others on their whereabouts and happenings. Few people listen to an entire State of the Union Address, but instead prefer to be informed later by the summary sound bites provided by the news media. This is not a new phenomenon created by technology, however. 

Typically communicating change within an organization is a one size fits all and a one-way experience. In other words, leaders communicate information about a change that will be occurring the same way they do other general information. Announcements are made by email or the information is shared in a meeting. Rarely are feedback mechanisms in place, messages crafted by audience or sent by the most influential people. I call it “vanilla” messaging - very generic and not really impactful or comforting during times of change.

I don’t know about you, but I often receive emails that are confusing and unclear. After reading them, I still don’t know what the author wants from me. If you have experienced this, or have noticed this in your own writing, then read on for a few tips on streamlining your writing, which can be applied to any form of business writing (emails, reports, proposals, etc.)

Communication is successful when all parties share the same meaning. Shared meaning happens when everyone pictures the information as similarly as possible. 

A problem has been reoccurring for years. Everyone agrees it is time to stop talking about it and finally implement a solution. Yet, every time a solution is presented to decision-makers, the idea is met with resistance and no action is taken. Once this situation has happened a number of times, people who were creative thinkers and enthusiastic problem-solvers have now become complacent and silent.

In almost all business writing and presentations, you are trying to make a point. You hope to communicate something you want your audience to know, do or feel. Many business communicators, unfortunately, don’t do a very good job of making their point. The primary problem is that they bury their point in too many words, making it difficult for their audience to find or recognize it.

If we want to communicate with influence we need to forget the Golden Rule - “Treat others as you would like to be treated.” Of course we all want to be treated with dignity and respect; that is a given. But beyond that, it is important not to approach or communicate with others in the way we like to be treated, but approach them in the way that suits them the best; the Platinum Rule.

Research shows that people would rather talk with someone nice over someone knowledgeable. Think about that for a moment. Can you remember a time in your career that you knew the person who had the answer to the question you had, but they weren’t very nice; so instead you asked around among the people you liked, hoping they had the answer you needed?

Have you ever been frustrated by the detailed answer someone gave you to a simple question? Today’s society values brevity. People send short but frequent text messages to update others on their whereabouts and happenings. Few people listen to an entire State of the Union Address, but instead prefer to be informed later by the summary sound bites provided by the news media. This is not a new phenomenon created by technology, however. 

Most writers fail to take advantage of the one of the most powerful elements of their emails; the Subject line. Well-written Subject lines will greatly increase the chance that your email will not only be opened but get the desired response, and get it more quickly.

Have you ever been around people who say whatever they think without any consideration for the appropriateness of their remarks? Perhaps you finally decided to approach them about their lack of tact, but received the response: “That’s just the way I am. People need to get used to me.”