Key Strategic Action Questions

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Leaders can sometimes get sidelined and stuck in a rut by focusing too much on tactics rather than strategies, and on what happened yesterday rather than what needs to happen tomorrow and the many tomorrows to come. Here are some questions to answer when you are thinking about Strategic Action. You might want to rate yourself on the questions including – how often and how well do you ask yourself and your people these questions?

Questions to Answer

1. Mission – the organization’s core work; reason/purpose for being

  • Why does this organization exist?
  • Whom does it serve?
  • What distinguishes it from other organizations?
  • What do you do that gives the organization meaning?

2. Vision – an inspiring, passionate, image of what the organization needs to and will become; a mental, even visual, model of the future; what success looks like

  • What kind of organization do you want to become?
  • What legacy do you want to leave?
  • How do you want to be perceived in the world? Be known for?
  • What does your ideal world look like?
  • What’s organizational culture do you want to create and how do you expect that culture will help you achieve your vision and strategic goals?

3. Values – the behaviors and actions that create the culture in the organization, the beliefs that drive decisions about people and work

  • What are the principles that guide your decision-making?
  • What can your stakeholders rely on in terms of the quality of programs/services/products delivered?
  • What do you stand for and how do you show that to each other?

When MVV are established and clear, you can begin to align people and work in significant and meaningful ways. Everything you do should align with your Mission, advance you toward your Vision, and be in harmony with your Values.

4. Strategies – These FEW BIG things will define how the organization will get where it wants to go. The overarching approach that will significantly advance the Vision and stay true to the Mission and Values.

5. Tactics – Those actions/activities/work, that when accomplished, will align with and advance the Strategies

  • What are the specific areas of work you want to address?
  • What do you want to have completed and by when in these various areas?
  • How will your goals advance your desired strategic outcomes?

6. Objectives – Fall within the Tactics. This is the work each person’s can identify with personally and can link to the organizational strategy, vision and mission

  • What specifically is the work that will advance the strategy and tactics?
  • Who are the right people to have this objective on their ‘plate?’
  • Who’s responsible for making it happen?
  • What are the deliverables, milestones, and time lines?
  • What resources (people, time, money, space, other) are required to make this happen and happen well?
  • What processes need to be in place (i.e. project management, change process, structure) to ensure a positive outcome?

Remember, it IS the leaders’ job to establish the mission and vision. Values should be developed with input and buy in from those who must live by them.

A vision is only a true vision when it has longevity, is not person dependent, and can stand the test of time.

Organizations need a FEW SIGNIFICANT and CLEAR, MEASUREABLE strategies to help advance the larger Vision.

About the Author

Roxi HewertsonLeadership authority Roxana (Roxi) Hewertson is a no-nonsense business veteran revered for her nuts-and-bolts, tell-it-like-it-is approach and practical, out-of-the-box insights that help both emerging and expert managers, executives and owners boost quantifiable job performance in various mission critical facets of business. Through AskRoxi.com, Roxi — “the Dear Abby of Leadership” — imparts invaluable free advice to managers and leaders at all levels, from the bullpen to the boardroom, to help them solve problems, become more effective and realize a higher measure of business and career success.

How can you make the leadership leap gracefully? Well, learning and practicing effective leadership skills is a good place to begin. When you read Roxi’s book you’ll be well on your way! Click here to learn more.

Lead Like it Matters… Because it Does, part 4 of 4

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Lead Like it Matters… Because it DoesWe asked Roxi Hewertson about the 8 overarching leadership insights that kick off her new book Lead Like it Matters…Because it Does hitting the stores in just a few weeks. She agreed to share them with us as a four-part series. This is Part 4 of 4.

Insight 7: Most Change Efforts Fail and They Don’t Have To

Charles Darwin did not say “It’s all about survival of the fittest.” Someone else decided to interpret his words and really screwed things up for a lot of us, including having people use that phrase to justify a lot of bad behavior. And that’s not how life truly works. What Darwin actually said is, “It’s not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

People are naturally inclined to resist change. The irony is… what you resist will persist. When change is ‘top-down’ and those impacted feel they have no voice, people resist it even more. The wasted human energy and other resources that go down the big black sink-hole of most change initiatives is truly astounding.

Do we learn from our mistakes? Sometimes – but too often not a lot, and nearly always, not enough. Leader need to be able to lead change – there’s no getting around it. How well you do that part of your job will make or break your organization and maybe even you.

Here are 4 suggestions to lead change initiatives that go well and actually stick instead of being dead on arrival:

  • Have and USE a change process
  • Empower and engage those affected by the change process
  • PULL don’t PUSH change
  • Communicate, communicate, then do it again and again

Insight 8: Leaders Create and Destroy Cultures!

I love this quote from John Mackey of Whole Foods, “If you are lucky enough to be someone’s employer, then you have a moral obligation to make sure people DO look forward to coming to work in the morning.”

Indeed, you have responsibility for your workplace culture wherever your ‘responsibility pond’ may be, wherever your sphere of influence resides. It is your number one role to create, model, and support a workplace culture where the intended culture will thrive and the desired results will occur. It can take a lot of work to build and sustain a positive and productive workplace. And it can take a ‘heartbeat’ for one ineffective, bad, or lousy leader to destroy it. This IS your ecosystem and how healthy or toxic it is matters and you are the keeper of your ‘responsibility pond’ no matter how big or small it may be.

The leadership revolution I want to see happen in my lifetime would mean that we each are committed to building healthy ecosystems within our workplaces for generations to come.

Here are 4 suggestions you can do to help make that happen:

  • Know that the culture in your ‘pond’ IS your responsibility
  • Articulate your mission, values, and vision
  • Assess, correct, assess
  • Celebrate your people and your success

About the Author

Roxi HewertsonLeadership authority Roxana (Roxi) Hewertson is a no-nonsense business veteran revered for her nuts-and-bolts, tell-it-like-it-is approach and practical, out-of-the-box insights that help both emerging and expert managers, executives and owners boost quantifiable job performance in various mission critical facets of business. Through AskRoxi.com, Roxi — “the Dear Abby of Leadership” — imparts invaluable free advice to managers and leaders at all levels, from the bullpen to the boardroom, to help them solve problems, become more effective and realize a higher measure of business and career success.

How can you make the leadership leap gracefully? Well, learning and practicing effective leadership skills is a good place to begin. When you read Roxi’s book you’ll be well on your way! Click here to learn more.

The StrategyDriven website was created to provide members of our community with insights to the actions that help create the shared vision, focus, and commitment needed to improve organizational alignment and accountability for the achievement of superior results. We look forward to answering your strategic planning and tactical business execution questions. Please email your questions to [email protected].

Human Feedback is the Greatest Path to Efficiency

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Feedback, at its core, is simply information about the results of past action that can improve the results of future actions. An airplane’s navigation system, the thermostat in your home’s heating unit, and a flashing electronic sign that displays your car’s speed are all examples of feedback that drives improvement. The plane adjusts its course, the heat turns off in the warm afternoon, and you slow down to the speed limit. Each time an adjustment is made, a ‘feedback loop’ is completed.

It’s not happening in the workplace
This is so not the way information flows between human beings in the workplace. Although employees receive massive amounts of information via electronic sources, feedback from their boss – information that could help them improve performance – dribbles in at a very slow pace or not at all.

Why is this?

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About the Author

Anna Carroll, MSSW, is an organization development consultant, facilitator, coach, and speaker. She designs and leads training and group planning experiences and creates learning tools and assessments to speed up group success. Most recently, Anna has focused on how leaders and team members can overcome their barriers to exchanging valuable feedback in the workplace. Her book, The Feedback Imperative: How to Give Everyday Feedback to Speed Up Your Team’s Success, was published in July 2014 by River Grove Press.

Want to learn more? Visit Anna’s website: www.EverydayFeedback.com or contact her by email at [email protected].

Lead Like it Matters… Because it Does, part 3 of 4

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Lead Like it Matters… Because it DoesWe asked Roxi Hewertson about the 8 overarching leadership insights that kick off her new book Lead Like it Matters…Because it Does hitting the stores in just a few weeks. She agreed to share them with us as a four-part series. This is Part 3 of 4.

Insight #5: Leading is All About Relationships

Let’s get to the heart of the matter. If no one is following you, you aren’t leading. Period. You can manage all kinds of tasks that might involve schedules, money, projects, budgets, and so on, and yet everything you do with your staff and other stakeholders involves relationships. How well those relationships work has a lot to do with how much TRUST is at the center of them. Susan Scott, author of Fierce Conversations, sums it up well. “When the conversation stops, the relationship stops.”

The question is not IF we will have relationships at work; the question is what will the quality of those relationships be? Each leader plays a critical role within her and his ecosystem in what I call your ‘responsibility pond.’ This is where your leadership ripples are most strongly felt, no matter how big or small your ‘pond’ may be.

As a leader, informal or formal, you contribute to – often create, model, and nurture the norms, culture, and environment that everyone who lives and works in your ‘pond’ will experience. You can sustain and strengthen the culture or you can weaken and sicken it. Are you part of the solution or part of the problem? Understanding this reality is often a huge wake-up call, and in my opinion, not a moment too soon.

I’m sure you know that it is not enough to be really, really, smart. Emotional intelligence matters a heck of a lot – more even than IQ, particularly if you want to have healthy and productive relationships. Bad and ineffective leaders can create a lot of damage. Good and effective leaders can accomplish incredible feats with their followers.

I believe most of us would choose the latter as our legacy.

Here are 4 suggestions about what you can do to pay attention to those important relationships:

  • Create a healthy culture
  • Build trust on purpose and often
  • Walk around a LOT
  • Model how you would like others to behave

Insight #6: Learning the ‘Soft Skills’ is Hard!

I’ve noticed that adults tend to resist learning or re-learning good interpersonal and social management skills. These involve thinking about relationships, behaviors, and even emotions. This is very different than an impersonal or technical task – and still it is a task – just a human one.

This IS hard work. Most of us know that we need to engage and energize employees, build trust, and communicate so that people understand us and know where the organization is going. They want and need to know what part they can play in getting there. We will not get all that good stuff from our people without doing all the hard soft stuff. It’s really that simple.

Mastering leadership skills is not rocket science. It is a lot harder, precisely because it is far more qualitative than quantitative, and because we are leading people, not machines.

Building trust is one of the key outcomes of mastering interpersonal skills. Try to resist the urge to say, ‘Oh, no, not the touchy-feely stuff!‘ Because, really, you can’t get far in life without knowing how to communicate so people understand, how to have tough conversations, or how to transform conflicts into solutions.

While it does take determination, practice, and feedback, nothing is beyond you when you are committed to learning or honing your interpersonal skills. And I know I’m not telling you anything new; I’m just reminding you to pay attention and grow your emotional intelligence competencies to improve your effectiveness. When you do this… your teams will thrive and of course all of this flows directly to your bottom line.

Here are 4 suggestions about where to focus some of your attention:

  • Listen more than you talk
  • Increase staff engagement at every opportunity
  • Make improving your dialogue skills a priority
  • Take or revisit what you learned in a good leadership course

About the Author

Roxi HewertsonLeadership authority Roxana (Roxi) Hewertson is a no-nonsense business veteran revered for her nuts-and-bolts, tell-it-like-it-is approach and practical, out-of-the-box insights that help both emerging and expert managers, executives and owners boost quantifiable job performance in various mission critical facets of business. Through AskRoxi.com, Roxi — “the Dear Abby of Leadership” — imparts invaluable free advice to managers and leaders at all levels, from the bullpen to the boardroom, to help them solve problems, become more effective and realize a higher measure of business and career success.

How can you make the leadership leap gracefully? Well, learning and practicing effective leadership skills is a good place to begin. When you read Roxi’s book you’ll be well on your way! Click here to learn more.

The StrategyDriven website was created to provide members of our community with insights to the actions that help create the shared vision, focus, and commitment needed to improve organizational alignment and accountability for the achievement of superior results. We look forward to answering your strategic planning and tactical business execution questions. Please email your questions to [email protected].

Lead Like it Matters… Because it Does, part 2 of 4

/in , /by

Lead Like it Matters… Because it DoesWe asked Roxi Hewertson about the 8 overarching leadership insights that kick off her new book Lead Like it Matters…Because it Does hitting the stores in just a few weeks. She agreed to share them with us as a four-part series. This is Part 2 of 4.

Insight #3: Leadership Is a Discipline, Not an Accident

We know for sure that highly effective leaders get much better results. There is no debate about this, and you know it’s plain old common sense. Don’t we all want better results? Don’t we want to get more bang for the buck?

Those of you who already lead people (as opposed to technology, science or thought leaders, for example) may think you got to your position because you are a good leader and were recognized as such. “They hired me, didn’t they?” The sad truth is that you, along with the rest of us, probably got your first and even subsequent leadership roles by luck, not by design, and sometimes even by default.

Leaders find themselves responsible for the work lives of other people because their knowledge, performance, and technical skills as an individual contributor were exemplary, or at least pretty good. Learning to become an Olympic athlete, an engineer, a teacher, a scientist, or an opera singer requires one to learn increasingly difficult skills; to practice, practice, practice; and to receive regular feedback on one’s performance again and again.

This is also true for becoming, practicing, and remaining a skilled, effective leader.

Insight #4: Leaders and Individual Contributors Require Opposite Skill Sets and Motivations

From the day we were born, all the applause has been about “what I have done well,” not “what we have done well.” Look at your life and your experiences and then fast-forward to where you are today. I think you’ll agree that for most of your life, your personal performance generated the lion’s share of your positive rewards or negative consequences. It wasn’t a group of people; it was you, you, and more you.

The exception is teamwork within or outside your family. Whether you were on a great team or a lousy team, you probably learned something about leading and teams. Unfortunately, few people integrate those lessons when they become leaders at work. The fallback position for most of us is what we know best and think we can count on the most – and that would be… ‘me.’

The skills, attributes and even motivations required to lead people successfully are entirely opposite from those required to be a successful individual contributor. Consider this: if the roles and skills weren’t so opposite, it would be a walk in the park for someone to move seamlessly from being a great violin player to being a great conductor.

In the first case, the violin player is responsible for his performance. While the conductor is responsible for her skills, her real job is knowing how to get the most out of each person so that everyone’s work will blend well and produce magnificent music. She succeeds only when the entire orchestra succeeds.

Leading others is an emotional and intellectual seismic shift that will quickly separate effective leaders from ineffective ones. Making the transition from being an individual contributor to being a leader can seem as difficult as swimming from New York to London alone, without a life jacket.

About the Author

Roxi HewertsonLeadership authority Roxana (Roxi) Hewertson is a no-nonsense business veteran revered for her nuts-and-bolts, tell-it-like-it-is approach and practical, out-of-the-box insights that help both emerging and expert managers, executives and owners boost quantifiable job performance in various mission critical facets of business. Through AskRoxi.com, Roxi — “the Dear Abby of Leadership” — imparts invaluable free advice to managers and leaders at all levels, from the bullpen to the boardroom, to help them solve problems, become more effective and realize a higher measure of business and career success.

How can you make the leadership leap gracefully? Well, learning and practicing effective leadership skills is a good place to begin. When you read Roxi’s book you’ll be well on your way! Click here to learn more.

The StrategyDriven website was created to provide members of our community with insights to the actions that help create the shared vision, focus, and commitment needed to improve organizational alignment and accountability for the achievement of superior results. We look forward to answering your strategic planning and tactical business execution questions. Please email your questions to [email protected].