Conscious Leadership

Self-Reflect Before Leading Change in the New Year

Leadership matters. And as W. Warner Burke says, "Leadership is personal. The process concerns the use of self, how to be persuasive, how to deal with resistance, and how to be political, in the best sense of the phrase: how to embody the vision of where one wants the organization to go. It is important, therefore, for the leader who is about to begin a significant change effort to take some time at the outset to reflect."

Burke has useful suggestions for leadership reflection in three categories: self-awareness, motives and values. Here are some of his ideas for "self-awareness" in preparation for leading large-scale change or transformation:

There is growing evidence that self-awareness is related to performance; that is, high performers tend to have a greater overlap between how they see themselves and how others see them than do moderate and low performers. It behooves leaders who want to bring about a successful change effort to be as cognizant as possible about themselves in personal domains such as the following:

• Tolerance for ambiguity: The courses that organization change will take are not exactly predictable; being able to live with this kind of ambiguity is important.
• Need for control: It is difficult to be a "control freak" and lead change effectively. Organization change is messy, sometimes chaotic, and seemingly out of control; thus being clear about what you can control and need to control and what you're not likely to be able to control is critical.
• Understanding how feelings affect behavior: What is your typical reaction when others disagree or challenge or resist the change that you, as a leader, feel strongly about? Knowing yourself in these ways help you to manage yourself more effectively, especially in trying circumstances.
• Personal dispositions: Most people know whether their preference is extroversion or introversion, but what about other dimensions, such as the need for closure and intuition compared with sensing? (These are components of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), based on Carl Jung's personality theory). There is some evidence, for example, that intuition (trusting one's hunches, future orientation, and conceptual tendency) is more related to leader behaviors than is sensing (being fact-based, concrete, and practical).
• Decision making: It is highly valuable to understand the differences between times when as a leader you need to take the reins and decide, and times when you need to loosen control and involve others as a part of self-knowledge.

Our experience is that successful major change or transformation takes both leadership skills (visionary, persuasive communication, tolerance for ambiguity, ability to share power and control, etc.) and management skills (practical, concrete thinking, need to control, etc.) - i.e., leaders who can manage the "status quo" to make sure the trains run on time so to speak, while letting those with true change leadership abilities lead the change.

Cultivating individual (and collective executive team) self-awareness is a key ingredient for making major organization change work. It's all about positioning yourself and your players: with self-awareness, the best leaders properly position each executive in whichever camp best plays to individual and team strengths, mitigating weaknesses so the organization wins.

2009 Copyright © Moore & Associates

Government Leaders' Opportunity to Improve Organizational Performance

The US federal government lags well behind the private sector in a number of important organizational performance measures, particularly in fostering employee engagement, talent management, and accountability says a recent McKinsey & Company survey. But according to the survey, the federal government enjoys relative strengths in the elements that deal with the heart of the organization. In fact, government managers - more so than their private-sector counterparts - understand and embrace the direction and vision of their organizations and are motivated to make a difference.

We've found similar strengths and opportunities for improvement in state and local government and encourage agency leaders to consider the three areas of focus recommended for federal agencies:

• Engage the workforce to gain their input, earn their commitment, and ensure an open and trusting environment.
• Strengthen talent management practices to attract, develop, and retain human capital.
• Improve accountability measures by introducing more rigorous operating metrics and performance management systems, and by clarifying roles and objectives.

For more information on the McKinsey survey go to: http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Improving_worker_performance_in_the_US_government_2471

2009 Copyright © Moore & Associates

A Tsunami-sized "Guiding Coalition" Won't Overcome an Unaligned Executive Team

It's accepted dogma that successful organizational transformation requires involvement and buy-in of a critical mass of people at all levels of an organization. It's false (and foolhardy) to believe a massive outreach for all-hands participation on a transformation's "guiding coalition" can substitute for the specific work that only top leadership can do.

Transformational change requires inclusive involvement of all employees. However, casting a wide net of  "participation and excitement" by broadening the guiding coalition to include all levels of an organization cannot take the place of first doing the exclusive (and difficult) work of aligning the executive team around the transformation.

People often talk about organizational change resistance as if it doesn't pertain to senior management. In fact, change resistance is a normal response in everyone, executives included. Intense work with the executive team, especially in the beginning but throughout a transformation is crucial.

Organizations don't change - people do - and it starts at the top. Initial stages of transformation may include months of work sessions with top executives not only to sort out what needs to change, why, and how but to learn about personal and organizational change and increase their own self-awareness and change leadership competency.

The most important foundational work for any major change - most certainly transformational change - is getting the executive leadership team to think, act, and feel as a unified body. Work with this team can be intense and conflict must be surfaced and worked through. Political posturing is normal and should be expected as executives try to maximize their own division's or department's gain from the change. This work is not for the faint-hearted, takes tremendous skill and finesse as a consulting team, and it cannot be skipped or avoided.

After the executive team is aligned with the strategic aspects of the change and are prepared to lead the transformation, you can broaden the executives'  reach by careful selection of a change leadership team, followed by the launch of large-system change initiatives to enlist engagement of the entire organization.

Reaching down into the organization and gathering more people into the change effort before aligning the top team creates a false sense of engagement, urgency, and momentum for the change. If the executive team isn't aligned, you will encounter problems in each ensuing step of the transformation - most notably where the rubber meets the road and the planned changes (and difficult decisions) are actually implemented.

2009 Copyright © Moore & Associates

ROI of Successful Transformation or Large-Scale Change

Calculating projected return on investment (ROI) is common practice in evaluating the cost versus benefit of implementing strategic initiatives of all stripes and scope. But what about major change efforts?

The one critical success factor in any organizational change initiative is how quickly people participate in, accept, and assimilate the transition. Yet how often is this seemingly obvious truth factored into leadership discussions of ROI and risk analysis for large-scale change and transformation?

In essence there are five "people side" factors which contribute to, or limit the value (ROI) a change delivers to an organization. Simply put, anytime a change requires people to do their jobs differently, it's how effectively they master the change that determines the business value the change delivers.

Increase the value (and success) of your transformation by designing, leading, implementing, and sustaining it to deliver high returns in these five "people side" change ROI factors:

1. Acceptance: How many employees believe in the value and benefits of the change, and agree that the change is necessary.

2. Speed of Adoption: How quickly people make the changes required.

3. Utilization: How many people do their work in the new way.

4. Proficiency: How effective each person is once they have adopted the change.

5. Mastery: How effective the organization has become at embedding change leadership and change management competency into the culture, thus making it change-resilient and change-ready. (Change Mastery is the ultimate change ROI - paying dividends well into the future).

2009 Copyright © Moore & Associates

The Enigma of Organizational Transformation Happening One Person at a Time

Sustainable organizational change and transformation happen one person at a time. This is a challenging concept for executives and managers - anything "one at a time" sounds inefficient at best, incompetent at worst.

No question; transformation or large-scale change is complex particularly in the context of major strategic shifts, reorganizations, mergers, or significant IT implementations.

Paradoxically, this complexity must be paired with a simple (not easy) fact which holds a key to successful change...change happens one person at a time.

What do we mean by this? For any change to take hold - whether it's changing something in your personal or professional life, or changing your company strategy, structure, or technology - the change eventually requires you to do things differently. In order to do things differently, a change in perception is generally necessary, and sometimes you need to learn new skills.

Regardless of what the change entails and what you must do differently to live and sustain it, the new change must appeal to your own motivations or it won't hold. Human beings simply don't do things differently unless personally motivated to do so. Mandated change just doesn't work.

Therefore, leaders of large-scale change or transformation need to:

• plan
• generate buy-in
• implement, and
• reinforce

the change in ways that satisfy peoples' existing motivation.

Since people are motivated by different things successful change requires a systematic way to ascertain individual motivations (yes, this can be done with thousands of employees) and design a change management strategy to play to them - thereby transforming your organization and its culture one person at a time.

2009 Copyright © Moore & Associates

Without Good Leadership & Management...

Without good leadership and management working in tandem, an organizational culture can denigrate into a place where all relationships are reduced to transactions; all motivations turn to self-interest; all sense of value is driven by individual choice; and sense of self-worth is primarily attached to personal entitlements.

Do you inspire a higher purpose in your organization? Are you ready to lead and manage to it? Do you have leadership, management, structure, processes, systems and people practices that not only support (and enforce) the day-to-day operations of the company, but also a greater good?

2009 Copyright © Moore & Associates

Drive Results with Honest and Targeted Assessment & Development

Anne M. Mulcahy, Chairwoman and CEO of Xerox, in a recent interview commented on key learnings from running human resources earlier in her career:

"One was that you discover quickly how little honest feedback people get in companies, and how important it is for people to have a sense of candid assessment. It became very much a mantra for me, to kind of influence a culture that assessed people accurately and really dealt with people fairly.

"The other piece is the importance of talent development. Not everyone is created equal, and it's important for companies to identify those high potentials and treat them differently, accelerate their development and pay them more. I think sometimes companies get confused with processes they think are the fairest, and that is not what companies need."

Assessment and constructive feedback is much easier to give and receive when it is against criteria that a company's leadership team has agreed to and which will drive results in their unique business. Leadership for Results  is a 10-step process delivered in collaboration with a client's leadership team - to select, assess ,and develop the behaviors that will deliver company, team, and individual results. Here are the steps:

Step 1: Determine the results required in your organization - drilled down to the two or three levers that if pulled (or pushed) correctly will really deliver results for the company.

Step 2: Create the company's Leadership Profile - through a negotiation and assessment process, key leadership behaviors and practices are agreed upon. The team further agrees that the new Leadership Profile will be ingrained in the team's daily work because to do so will pull the two or three levers that will deliver results.

Step 3: Establish clear expectations for the collective senior team - and the responsibilities and performance measures for each person's individual role.

Step 4: Pinpoint specific behaviors - that while congruent with the company's Leadership Profile - will help each executive deliver results necessary in his or her role.

Step 5: Create a development plan for each leader that will help each person "live" in their day-to-day work, the behaviors agreed to by the team, and deemed critical to driving company, team, and individual success.

Step 6: Provide executive coaching for both performance and behavior.

Step 7: Ensure consequences and rewards are right to motivate and reinforce both development and performance. It would be wise to consider the essence of the second paragraph of Anne Mulcahy's quote above in designing a philosophy for consequences and rewards.

Step 8: Provide on-going coaching and feedback for each executive.

Step 9: Conduct a 360 degree feedback process aligned to the company's Leadership Profile (which, remember, is tied to the two to three levers that drive the organization, and the specific results required by the leadership team and each person).

Step 10: After a period of time refine and further link promotion and pay to both performance and development.

Leadership for Results works because it's a team-building and collaborative process that gets everyone on the same page regarding what results are necessary in your company, and the specific behaviors that will deliver them. Further, those behaviors are pinpointed for each person's unique role. And last but not least, objective assessment, coaching, consequences, and rewards support and reinforce performance company-wide, within the leadership team, and for each individual.

2009 Copyright © Moore & Associates

The Recession's Impact on the Reasons Executive Coaches are Retained

A recent survey of 140 leading executive coaches conducted by Harvard Business Review found that the reasons companies engage coaches have changed. Ten years ago, most companies called coaches in to help fix toxic behavior at the top. Today, most coaching aims to develop the capabilities of top performers. The survey found that the top 3 reasons coaches are engaged are:

Develop high potentials or facilitate transition: 48%

Act as a sounding board: 26%

Address derailing behavior: 12%

The survey statistics are relatively congruent with the executive coaching services within our consulting practice. What is surprising for us, however, is that coaching has increased in our practice in those 3 categories due to the recession, rather than decreasing, as it has for many firms.

While the recession has increased our executive coaching clientele, it has also brought new issues and challenges for clients. Following are 11 areas of added focus our clients are currently seeking our assistance with:

Needing to develop and practically apply solid management and leadership skills - now.

Stress management practices and solutions - both at work and in personal relationships.

Dealing more effectively with ambiguity - individually and in assisting those they manage and lead.

Become more aware of the multiple facets of their own behavior and those they lead - and use that knowledge and wisdom to make better decisions.

Manage the tension of the opposites - operating tactically for short-term results while strategically building for the near and long-term future.

Although painful, stop bargaining and make the hard choices and difficult decisions within their organizations.

Lessen the tendency to react, and instead focus on finding new creative opportunities and solutions for their companies.

Overcome a "crisis of confidence" in one's abilities to handle current economic, market, and organizational complexity.

Develop skillsets for leading and managing non-stop change.

Emotionally and intellectually "process" the hopes and expectations that haven't worked out as planned - in order to move forward in a new viable direction.

Learn how to negotiate conflict better - as differences of opinion within senior teams is intensifying resulting in a collective diffusion of resources, nerves, and effectiveness.

2009 Copyright © Moore & Associates

Of Course Your Greatest Strength Can Become a Liability

An article in this month's Harvard Business Review, Stop Overdoing Your Strengths by Robert E. Kaplan and Robert B. Kaiser calls attention to the conventional wisdom in leadership development circles of coaching executives to focus and capitalize on one's strengths versus learning to minimize your weaknesses misses a "newly discovered" point that strengths can be taken too far, thus becoming weaknesses.

Kaplan and Kaiser give examples of some of the common problems of strengths taken too far: "a supportive boss who cuts people too much slack" and "a gifted operational director whose relentless focus on results leads to hypercontrol." The authors aptly point out that we can all see strengths overdone in others, but it's "extremely difficult to see such overkill in yourself." The authors conclude that leadership development tools (particularly 360-degree feedback), their research shows, are failing us because they implicitly ignore strengths overdone.

You've got to be kidding? was our reaction. A good executive coach or leadership development practitioner should help a client identify what strengths are overused (as well as underused), and have become weaknesses by no longer delivering desired results. With the client, the consultant should analyze and interpret leadership assessment data (especially 360-degree feedback) for signs of overuse of strengths as one of the key issues.

Executives and organizations are successful because they have focused on their strengths with persistence and determination (and stay with what works). Yet, who could argue that the systems we work in (now more than ever) demand from each of us: innovate, change, grow, adapt or perish.

Some of the most important work we do with a client is to help them become more conscious of the patterns, beliefs, behaviors, attitudes, systems and skills that are no longer serving him or her, nor their organization.

In a rapidly changing marketplace, every successful leader must regularly ascertain which individual and organizational strengths have worn out their welcome (turned into weaknesses), and need to be dialed back in order to make room for learning new ways of operating -- thus developing new strengths.

2009 Copyright © Moore & Associates

A Quick Organizational Scan to Improve Performance

If performance is lack-luster in your organization, you can do a quick culture scan that'll give you a snapshot of where you and your leadership team need to focus.

Paring down organizational complexity to its simplest terms (note: simple does not imply easy!), in essence there are 4 major buckets or quadrants of "work" senior managers are responsible for to create a high-performance culture:

Planning: Creating a compelling vision for the organization and a strategic direction that includes values (not just the ones you embrace, but telling people what's not accepted in the culture and why); mission; the firm's client/customer and market focus; overarching goals and objectives.

Persuading:  Communicating the strategic direction within the organization to develop followership and commitment to the areas in "Planning". Developing followership ensures every person at every level knows how their role contributes to the company, understands how performance is measured, and receives consistent feedback and coaching from bosses, peers, and other key players on how they're doing and what they need to do better.

Achieving:  Operationalizing Planning and Persuading into the day-to-day work of every division, department, and employee that delivers on what you promise to clients/customers, shareholders and stakeholders. Streamlined processes, procedures, and coordinating mechanisms are in place so work flows smoothly and efficiently. People are given the tools they need to do their jobs well. Goals are met and results achieved.

Enforcing:  Following through on Planning, Persuading and Achieving. Performance is managed at all levels. Results are measured, learned from, and adjustments are fed back into the other three quadrants on an on-going basis. Conversations about performance are embedded into the culture. Consequences and rewards directly link all 4 quadrants.

Scan your organization against the 4 quadrants. Regardless of size, sector or industry, organizational cultures develop a preference and aptitude for one or two of the four leadership competencies.

An executive team can improve performance almost immediately by raising its awareness to recognize which quadrant(s) it excels in and which quadrants are weak.

Next, develop the skills or shake up the leadership team so you collectively lead the firm better through excellence in all 4 quadrants.

2009 Copyright © Moore & Associates