Recommended Resource – The Reinventors

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The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change

by Jason Jennings

About the Book

The Reinventors by Jason Jennings provides a step-by-step method for continuously evolving one’s organization such that it remains ever relevant in today’s rapidly changing business environment. Jason examines not only the change methodology to be employed but provides insights to the key leadership and organizational attributes necessary to effectively reinvent a business. He supports his assertions with detailed examples of how well-known organizations achieved the continuous change driving their ongoing marketplace success.

Benefits of Using This Book

StrategyDriven Contributors particularly like The Reinventors for the soundness of its immediately actionable continuous change methodologies. Jason thoroughly examines all aspects of successful change management; leadership, organization/people, and action. Furthermore, his ‘Action Plans’ at the conclusion of each chapter help the reader focus on the important change principles and can be used to guide action plan development.

Underlying each of Jason’s continuous change principles is a focus on organizational alignment and accountability, the hallmark principles on which StrategyDriven is focused. Vivid, real-world examples serve to bring the principles conveyed to life; making them easy to relate to and helping the reader envision how he or she might take action to reinvent their organization.

The Reinventors‘s immediately implementable, real-world change methods that reinforce organizational alignment and accountability makes it a StrategyDriven recommended read.

Leadership Lessons from Zombies

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Sometime in the past two years, perhaps while we were distracted by the vampire craze, zombies started presenting a more menacing presence. Scores of television programs, movies, and books have seemingly sprung from nowhere to teach us to survive a zombie attack. For example, Max Brooks, son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft, has dominated the best seller list with his Zombie Survival Guide, a must-have for every survival-conscious home.

But there’s another must-have for any professional library: A Zombie’s Guide to Getting A Head (sic) in Business. This book will help you take both your leadership and strategy formulation to new heights. No survival guide, this book offers concrete tips about how to excel in the hot seat by acting like a zombie. Using the author’s zombie expertise as a foundation, here’s what I suggest:

  • Stop dithering and start lurching forward. No one has to cajole a zombie to act, which clearly contrasts them to many leadership teams who dither rather than decide. These teams often opt for indecision, failing to recognize that not deciding is a decision – a decision to fall victim to the changing environment and other things you can’t control. You don’t write strategic objectives in stone; you put them in a Word file. When new information surfaces, you can change directions. But not having a clear direction and path for getting there will curse you to rest on your laurels and continue to settle for the success you’ve always had. Or maybe not. Maybe the economy has changed so drastically in your neck of the woods that what you’ve done to get here won’t get you anywhere else.
  • Crash trough the glass ceiling like a zombie breaking through the walls of a farm house. So many leaders embrace limiting ideas. They settle for what they’ve always done, the status quo, sunk costs, and every manner of excuse not to change. A very successful consultant who is in her early fifties recently told me she thinks she’s getting too old to do consulting work. I said, “Are you nuts? You’re barely old enough to do it! Clients value experience.” Her limiting idea is my motivating idea. What limiting ideas hold you back?
  • Turn your weaknesses into strengths – a missing arm or leg never stops a zombie. Some great company changes have started with a failure or weakness. Legend has it that a restaurant owner created fried ravioli, a St. Louis favorite, when he accidentally dropped the ravioli into the French fryer. What opportunities lurk in your organization? The 3M Company, formerly known as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation based in Minnesota. With over 80,000 employees, they produce more than 55,000 products, including: adhesives, abrasives, laminates, passive fire protection, dental products, electronic materials, medical products, car care products. But the company founders didn’t set out to give us Post-It-Notes and Scotch Tape. They originally planned to sell the mineral corundum to manufacturers in the East for making grinding wheels. However, innovation and a willingness to learn from mistakes allowed the company to morph into what it is today.
  • Trust your instincts. In the nocturnal hunt, or any hunt, the first impulse is usually the right one. If you suddenly get the feeling that a swath of swampland is mined against zombie attacks, it probably is. And if the whacky new product seems too good to be true, it probably is. Stick to your mission, vision, and values. These will help you force the tradeoffs that will help you avoid both implosion and explosion.
  • Ignore that which is already dead. An error that many executives make, that no zombie ever makes, is wasting valuable time on sunk costs and things that are no longer priorities. Check the egos at the door. When it comes to setting strategy, only the future counts.
  • ‘Bite once.’ A zombie’s bite transmits everything salient it has to contribute. It immediately ‘infects’ the other with zombie characteristics. No more need for follow-ups, emails, status reports, or ‘circling back.’ Bite and move on.

No matter where you want to go, and regardless of the daunting and difficult nature of the journey, a zombie has been through worse and ‘lived’ to tell about it. By incorporating the traits of a zombie, you too can become dynamic, brave, and unstoppable as any member of the legions of the living dead. Inside every zombie and effective executive reside core impulses to harness power. The first quarter of 2012 lies behind us, but the remaining three quarters remain. Arise from the grave of ineffectiveness and get ahead.

About the Author

Dr. Linda Henman, the catalyst for virtuoso organizations, is the author of Landing in the Executive Chair, among other works. She is an expert on setting strategy, planning succession, and developing talent. For more than 30 years she has helped executives and boards in Fortune 500 Companies and privately-held organizations dramatically grow their businesses. She was one of eight succession planning experts who worked directly with John Tyson after his company’s acquisition of International Beef Products. Some of her other clients include Emerson Electric, Avon, Kraft Foods, Edward Jones, and Boeing. She can be reached in St. Louis at www.henmanperformancegroup.com.

Recommended Resource – Building Team Power

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Building Team Power: How to Unleash the Collaborative Genius of Teams for Increased Engagement, Productivity, and Results

by Thomas Kayser

About the Book

Building Team Power by Thomas Kayser examines the structural mechanisms and behavioral traits that combined to create highly collaborative teams. Thomas provides practical, detailed methods for leaders at every level of the organization to foster and enhance the collaboration between team members in six critical areas:

  • Mutual Trust
  • Decision-Making
  • Consensus Building
  • Conflict Management
  • Delegation Effectiveness
  • Team Problem Solving (two scenarios)

Benefits of Using this Book

StrategyDriven Contributors like Building Team Power for its immediately actionable insights into enhancing team collaboration at any level within an organization. We found Thomas’s methods to be deeply insightful, originating from sound academic principle and refined with real world experience during his thirty years at Xerox. Building Team Power is highly prescriptive, complete with process flows and charts that convey to the reader how to implement the team building methods.

If we had one critisism of Building Team Power, it would be that the procedure-like formatting of the methods provided would be impractical to implement in a team setting. That said, we believe the book would make an excellent tool to create management training courses and teamwork checklists and guides.

Building Team Power embodies many of the principles StrategyDriven recommends in building highly aligned and accountable organizations. Additionally, it mirrors many of our decision-making best practices. For these reasons, its academic foundation and real world refinement, and its implementability, Building Team Power is a StrategyDriven recommended read.

Management and Leadership Best Practice 4 – Communicate and Explain the Vision

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From birth, we as human beings have an insatiable desire to understand our surroundings. Regardless of one's background, we tend to group and categorize things so to help establish order in our personal world.

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The Big Picture of Business: The Business Leader as Community Leader

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In eras following downturns and scandals, it is incumbent upon good companies to go the extra distance to be ethical and set good examples. Demonstrating visible caring for communities by company executives is the ultimate form of potlache.

No matter the size of the organization, goodwill must be banked. Every company must make deposits for those inevitable times in which withdrawals will be made.

To say that business and its communities do not affect each other is short-sighted… and will make business the loser every time. Business marries the community that it settles with. The community has to be given a reason to care for the business. Business owes its well-being and livelihood to its communities.

Business leaders have an obligation to serve on community boards and be very visible in the communities in which they do business. If done right, community stewardship builds executives into better leaders, as well as receiving deserved credit for the company. Civic service is the ultimate way to steer heir apparents toward the leadership track.

Communities are clusters of individuals, each with its own agenda. In order to be minimally successful, each company must know the components of its home community intimately. Each company has a business stake for doing its part. Community relations in reality is a function of self-interest, rather than just being a good citizen.

Companies should support off-duty involvement of employees in pro bono capacities but not take unfair credit. Volunteers are essential to community relations. Companies must show tangible evidence of supporting the community by assigning key executives to high-profile community assignments. Create a formal volunteer guild, and allow employees the latitude and creativity to contribute to the common good. Celebrate and reward their efforts.

Publicity and promotions should support effective community relations and not be the substitute or smokescreen for the process. Recognition is as desirable for the community as for the business. Good news shows progress and encourages others to participate.

The well-rounded community relations program embodies all elements: accessibility of company officials to citizens, participation by the company in business and civic activities, public service promotions, special events, plant communications materials and open houses, grassroots constituency building and good citizenry.

No entity can operate without affecting or being affected by its communities. Business must behave like a guest in its communities, never failing to give potlache or return courtesies. Community acceptance for one project does not mean than the job of community relations has been completed. It is not ‘insurance’ that can be bought overnight. It is tied to the bottom line and must be treated accordingly, with the resources and expertise to do it effectively. It is a bond of trust that, if violated, will haunt the business. If steadily built, the trust can be exponentially parlayed into successful long-term business relationships.

Potlache

Potlache is the ultimate catalyst toward Customer Focused Management. It means extra gifts, beyond value-added, visionary mindset and the ultimate achievement of the organization.

The word ‘potlache’ is a native American expression, meaning ‘to give’. For American Indians, the potlache was an immensely important winter ceremony featuring dancing, food and gift giving. Potlache ceremonies were held to observe major life events. The native Americans would exchange gifts and properties to show wealth and status. Instead of the guests bringing gifts to the family, the family gave gifts to the guests.

Colonists settled and started doing things their own way, without first investigating local customs. They alienated many of the natives. Thus, the cultural differences widened. The more diverse we become, the more we really need to learn from and about others. The practice of doing so creates an understanding that spawns better loyalty.

When one gives ceremonial gifts, one gets extra value because of the spirit of the action. The more you give, the more you ultimately get back in return. Reciprocation becomes an esteemed social ceremony. It elevates the givers to higher levels of esteem in the eyes of the recipients.

Potlache is a higher level of understanding of the business that breeds loyalty and longer-term support. It leads to increased quality, better resource management, higher employee productivity, reduced operating costs, improved cash management, better management overall and enhanced customer loyalty and retention.

Community Relations

The well-rounded community relations program embodies all elements: accessibility of company officials to citizens, participation by the company in business and civic activities, public service promotions, special events, plant communications materials and open houses, grassroots constituency building and good citizenry.

Never stop evaluating. Facts, values, circumstances and community composition are forever changing. The same community relations posture will not last forever. Use research and follow-up techniques to reassess the position, assure continuity and move in a forward motion.

Companies need community relations at all times:

  • Prior to coming into locales.
  • Every year in which they do business there…in good and bad economic times.
  • When they are leaving an area.
  • Even after they have ceased operation in certain communities.

In today’s economy, no business can operate without affecting or being affected by its communities. Business must behave like a guest in its communities… never failing to show or return courtesies.
Community acceptance for one project does not mean than the job of community relations has completed. Programs always shift into other gears… breaking new ground.

Community relations are not ‘insurance’ that can be bought overnight. It is tied to the bottom line and must be treated accordingly… with resources and expertise to do it effectively. It is a bond of trust that, if violated, will haunt the business. If steadily built, the trust can be exponentially parlayed into successful long-term business relationships.

About the Author

Hank Moore has advised 5,000+ client organizations worldwide (including 100 of the Fortune 500, public sector agencies, small businesses and non-profit organizations). He has advised two U.S. Presidents and spoke at five Economic Summits. He guides companies through growth strategies, visioning, strategic planning, executive leadership development, Futurism and Big Picture issues which profoundly affect the business climate. He conducts company evaluations, creates the big ideas and anchors the enterprise to its next tier. The Business Tree™ is his trademarked approach to growing, strengthening and evolving business, while mastering change. To read Hank’s complete biography, click here.