It’s difficult enough for a manager to align, streamline, and make efficient those business operations under his or her direct control; adding one or more other work groups to a process’s execution exponentially increases this challenge. Consequently, organizations stand to gain substantial productivity benefits through better cross-functional process execution.
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Have you noticed the shift in human focus and concentration?
Sitting in the lobby of the Public Hotel in Chicago, there are about 50 people sitting and milling around, engaged in some form of interaction – primarily WITH THEMSELVES.
Oh, there are others with them, but these people are head down on their phones. I’m sure you have both seen them and been one of them.
Maybe you’re even reading this on your mobile device right now!
Guidelines of phone use have significantly changed because of technology availability. Five years ago (before the launch of the game-changing iPhone), all you could do on a phone was send and receive calls – and painfully text. Remember your early texts – a-b-c-(oh crap)-2. That was a technological EON ago.
Cellular phones are smart these days. Most of the time, they’re smarter than their user. They are as much ‘app’ driven, as they are talk and text. If you include email and the Internet in general, your calendar, Facebook and other social media apps, Google and other search engines, news and other of-the-moment information, Instagram and other photo apps, your camera, music, movies, Angry Birds (I’m currently playing RIO HD), Scrabble, and other games, Foursquare, Paypal, and of course the ubiquitous Amazon (where you can buy anything in a heartbeat, and read any book ever written), you at once realize your phone or tablet has become your dominant communication device – and it’s only an infant in its evolution.
Voice recognition is the next big breakthrough.
Most people are not masters of their own phone. They use programs they need, and rarely explore new ones, unless recommended by a friend. (Think about how you found many of the apps you use.)
If you’re seeking mastery of your device, here are the fundamental how-tos:
How to use it mechanically. (Not just on and off.) Your phone holds technological mysteries and magic that can make your hours pay higher dividends once you master them.
How to use it mannerly. The ‘when’ and ‘how loud’ are vital to your perceived image. See some more rules and guidelines below.
How to use it to enhance communication. Texting is the new black. Data transmission now exceeds voice transmission – by a lot. Emailing a customer? How do they perceive you when they read it? Is it “C U L8r” or “See you later”? Is it “LMK” or “let me know”? You tell me. I don’t abbreviate. My mother would have never approved.
How to use it to master social media. Tweet value messages on the go. Facebook is inevitable, and now that Instagram is linked, you’ll need an hour a day to post and keep current. RULE OF BUSINESS: Whatever time you allot to personal Facebook, invest the same amount of time to your business (like) page. Post and communicate to customers.
How to use it to allocate your time. Use your stopwatch feature to measure the total amount of time you spend on your phone. You can easily hit start-stop-memory each time you use it. Your total at the end of the day will shock you – but not as much as multiplying the total by 365.
Here are the rules, guidelines, and options to understand the proper time and place for use:
When you’re alone and no one is around. The world is your oyster. Be aware of time. If left to your own device, minutes become hours.
When you’re by yourself, but others are within hearing distance. Speak at half-volume, and keep it brief.
In an informal group. Ask permission first. Use your judgment as to what to ignore. Be respectful of the time and attention paid to the people you’re with.
In a business meeting. Never. Just never.
In a one-on-one sales meeting. Beyond never. Rude.
Flight attendants scream at you to ‘power down,’ whatever that means – not as loud as is you if you referred to them as a ‘stewardess,’ but close.
AIRPLANE HUMOR:
Plane lands and the entire plane is on their phone or staring at their phone, and walk off the plane like lemmings marching to the sea in a robotic stare.
REALITY: People are walking into walls, tripping, bumping into other people, and crashing their cars while looking at and using their phones.
A classic cartoon in The New Yorker magazine a few weeks ago showed a picture of a woman on her phone saying, “I’ve invited a bunch of my friends over to stare at their phones.”
The smart phone is here to stay – they’re cheap to use and application options are expanding every day. Your challenge is to harness it, master it, and bank it.
Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.
About the Author
Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/JeffreyGitomer.jpg218156StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2012-04-30 06:44:552016-08-07 20:52:10The phone is smart. How smart is the user?
As I write this on April 5, 2012, the Dow is above 13,000 and all indications point to signs of recovery. Notice the disclaimer, ‘As I write this.’ If we have learned nothing else in the past four years, let us remember that a stable, predictable economy may be a thing of the past. We cautiously celebrate signs of recovery while we simultaneously prepare for more change.
In today’s fast-paced, unprecedented, and unpredictable economy, many executives simply don’t know what to do. Conventional methods-which many never entirely understood in the first place-often don’t work during economic upheaval. Executives, especially CEOs, need something better. They need a guide that identifies the roadblocks and points out the landmines. In her more than 30 years of working with hundreds of executives, Dr. Linda Henman has observed the critical elements of success, both for the new leader and the one who aspires to the next level of success. In Landing in the Executive Chair, you’ll learn how to:
Avoid the pitfalls and identify a clear plan for personal and organizational stress.
Leverage the first months in a new executive position- that time of transition that promises opportunity and challenge, but also brings a period of great vulnerability.
Create a competitive advantage, set the right tone, make effective decisions, keep talent inside your doors, and establish credibility-all while navigating unfamiliar and turbulent waters.
As organizations expand and grow, the skills that led to success often won’t sustain further development in a more complex, high-stakes environment. Present and future executives need more. They need Landing in the Executive Chair.
The continuing economic challenges – both domestic and international – require practical approaches for maintaining a high level of employee commitment and performance. But these challenges demand something else – a new approach to leadership – the kind of leadership that puts the shoulder of good judgment up against the door of immediate rewards and keeps pushing until it shoves it wide open for the possibilities of long-range, future gains. During difficult, changing times, conventional wisdom proves neither conventional nor wise. We need something new, something that will equip us to face future challenges. The F2 Leadership Model does just that.
The F2 Leadership Model explains the behaviors – not skills, talents, attitudes, or preferences – executives need to display to be effective. F2 leaders have a balanced concern for task accomplishment and people issues. They are firm but fair leaders whom others trust, leaders who commit themselves to both relationship behavior and task accomplishment.
The model sets tension between opposing forces – firmness and fairness – to provide understanding and direction. In other words, it challenges us to ask ourselves how to have both a clear task orientation and an appreciation for the people who achieve the results.
This model is truly more follower-driven than leader-driven. It keeps the leader’s focus on those who count – the people in the organization who will define success. It helps leaders figure out whether they are losing balance, tending to act like Genghis Khan or Mr. Rogers.
The four-quadrant model is both prescriptive and descriptive. It allows leaders to understand their own behavior relative to their direct reports, but by its nature, it implies a preferred way of behaving. In other words, the model explains what leaders should do to be effective instead of merely describing what they tend to do or prefer to do. It explores two key dimensions of leadership: relationship behaviors, like fairness, and task behaviors, like firmness.
When leaders lose the balance between fairness and firmness, they lose their effectiveness and compromise that of their direct reports. The model helps them analyze what they’re doing and then make choices to move toward F2 behavior. Keep in mind, the model addresses behavior and represents an ideal, so no person fits into one quadrant all the time. Leaders who want to be more effective strive for F2 behavior, but they occasionally drift into one of the other quadrants. When this happens, problems occur, but awareness offers the first step toward remedy.
When I ask people what they think it takes to be a great leader, their first response is usually, ‘vision’. Without question, effective leadership requires a strategic focus, but remember, people in mental institutions have visions, too. Seeing into the future is not enough; successful leadership in the new economy requires more. These leaders understand they must lead better than their competitors, and they need to inspire loyalty through firm but fair leadership. Even though their personalities and management styles may differ, executives who make it to the top and stay there, share some common traits: they have a sense of proportion in their leadership styles and lives; they possess a high degree of self-awareness and self-regulation; and they maintain a long-term focus for themselves and those who depend on them.
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.
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3. Create corporate mission & values that employees are aligned with.
The foundational material — mission and values — of a company can be critical to the overall success of the organization – but they’re often forgotten. The corporate mission and values are created by the senior leadership team, captured on posters, and strategically tacked up around the building. Meanwhile, how does a corporate citizen react to this phenomenon? They see it as ‘Horse manure!’ Whatever is in the mission or values statement is not seen as relevant to the organization’s day-to-day operations. In other words, the organization’s behavior is not congruent with its declaration of ideals.
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Since working for his family’s boating business to founding his company CMI (Crusading, Marauding Interveners), Bruce Hodes has dedicated himself to helping companies grow by developing executive leadership teams, business leaders and executives into powerful performers. Bruce’s adaptable Breakthrough Strategic Business Planning methodology has been specifically designed for small-to-mid-sized companies and is especially valuable for family company challenges. In February of 2012 Bruce published his first book Front Line Heroes: How to Battle the Business Tsunami by Developing Performance Oriented Cultures. With a background in psychotherapy, Hodes also has an MBA from Northwestern University and a Masters in Clinical Social Work. Contact Bruce via email at [email protected] or phone at 800-883-7995. Visit his website at www.cmiteamwork.com.
Alona Banai, CMI’s office manager, wears many hats. She works behind the scenes managing the client process. Alona is the KeyneLink System Administrator for many of CMI’s clients and manages CMI’s Online Marketing including the Company Website, Newsletter, and Social Media.
Alona has been with CMI since February 2011. She has a MS in Plant Biology and Conservation from Northwestern University and a BS in Environmental Science and Hebrew from Washington University in St. Louis. She is also an avid and enthusiastic 5K to 1/2 Marathon participant.
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https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/IndividualValue.jpg247486StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2012-04-24 06:03:402019-08-18 21:28:53Talent Management Best Practice 3 – Know the Organizational Value of Each Employee
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Tactical Execution – Improving Cross-Functional Performance
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The phone is smart. How smart is the user?
/in Practices for Professionals/by Jeffrey GitomerHave you noticed the shift in human focus and concentration?
Sitting in the lobby of the Public Hotel in Chicago, there are about 50 people sitting and milling around, engaged in some form of interaction – primarily WITH THEMSELVES.
Oh, there are others with them, but these people are head down on their phones. I’m sure you have both seen them and been one of them.
Maybe you’re even reading this on your mobile device right now!
Guidelines of phone use have significantly changed because of technology availability. Five years ago (before the launch of the game-changing iPhone), all you could do on a phone was send and receive calls – and painfully text. Remember your early texts – a-b-c-(oh crap)-2. That was a technological EON ago.
Cellular phones are smart these days. Most of the time, they’re smarter than their user. They are as much ‘app’ driven, as they are talk and text. If you include email and the Internet in general, your calendar, Facebook and other social media apps, Google and other search engines, news and other of-the-moment information, Instagram and other photo apps, your camera, music, movies, Angry Birds (I’m currently playing RIO HD), Scrabble, and other games, Foursquare, Paypal, and of course the ubiquitous Amazon (where you can buy anything in a heartbeat, and read any book ever written), you at once realize your phone or tablet has become your dominant communication device – and it’s only an infant in its evolution.
Voice recognition is the next big breakthrough.
Most people are not masters of their own phone. They use programs they need, and rarely explore new ones, unless recommended by a friend. (Think about how you found many of the apps you use.)
If you’re seeking mastery of your device, here are the fundamental how-tos:
Here are the rules, guidelines, and options to understand the proper time and place for use:
Flight attendants scream at you to ‘power down,’ whatever that means – not as loud as is you if you referred to them as a ‘stewardess,’ but close.
AIRPLANE HUMOR:
Plane lands and the entire plane is on their phone or staring at their phone, and walk off the plane like lemmings marching to the sea in a robotic stare.
REALITY: People are walking into walls, tripping, bumping into other people, and crashing their cars while looking at and using their phones.
A classic cartoon in The New Yorker magazine a few weeks ago showed a picture of a woman on her phone saying, “I’ve invited a bunch of my friends over to stare at their phones.”
The smart phone is here to stay – they’re cheap to use and application options are expanding every day. Your challenge is to harness it, master it, and bank it.
Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.
About the Author
Leading Through Volatility
/in Management & Leadership/by Linda HenmanAs I write this on April 5, 2012, the Dow is above 13,000 and all indications point to signs of recovery. Notice the disclaimer, ‘As I write this.’ If we have learned nothing else in the past four years, let us remember that a stable, predictable economy may be a thing of the past. We cautiously celebrate signs of recovery while we simultaneously prepare for more change.
by Linda Henman
In today’s fast-paced, unprecedented, and unpredictable economy, many executives simply don’t know what to do. Conventional methods-which many never entirely understood in the first place-often don’t work during economic upheaval. Executives, especially CEOs, need something better. They need a guide that identifies the roadblocks and points out the landmines. In her more than 30 years of working with hundreds of executives, Dr. Linda Henman has observed the critical elements of success, both for the new leader and the one who aspires to the next level of success. In Landing in the Executive Chair, you’ll learn how to:
As organizations expand and grow, the skills that led to success often won’t sustain further development in a more complex, high-stakes environment. Present and future executives need more. They need Landing in the Executive Chair.
The continuing economic challenges – both domestic and international – require practical approaches for maintaining a high level of employee commitment and performance. But these challenges demand something else – a new approach to leadership – the kind of leadership that puts the shoulder of good judgment up against the door of immediate rewards and keeps pushing until it shoves it wide open for the possibilities of long-range, future gains. During difficult, changing times, conventional wisdom proves neither conventional nor wise. We need something new, something that will equip us to face future challenges. The F2 Leadership Model does just that.
The F2 Leadership Model explains the behaviors – not skills, talents, attitudes, or preferences – executives need to display to be effective. F2 leaders have a balanced concern for task accomplishment and people issues. They are firm but fair leaders whom others trust, leaders who commit themselves to both relationship behavior and task accomplishment.
The model sets tension between opposing forces – firmness and fairness – to provide understanding and direction. In other words, it challenges us to ask ourselves how to have both a clear task orientation and an appreciation for the people who achieve the results.
This model is truly more follower-driven than leader-driven. It keeps the leader’s focus on those who count – the people in the organization who will define success. It helps leaders figure out whether they are losing balance, tending to act like Genghis Khan or Mr. Rogers.
The four-quadrant model is both prescriptive and descriptive. It allows leaders to understand their own behavior relative to their direct reports, but by its nature, it implies a preferred way of behaving. In other words, the model explains what leaders should do to be effective instead of merely describing what they tend to do or prefer to do. It explores two key dimensions of leadership: relationship behaviors, like fairness, and task behaviors, like firmness.
When I ask people what they think it takes to be a great leader, their first response is usually, ‘vision’. Without question, effective leadership requires a strategic focus, but remember, people in mental institutions have visions, too. Seeing into the future is not enough; successful leadership in the new economy requires more. These leaders understand they must lead better than their competitors, and they need to inspire loyalty through firm but fair leadership. Even though their personalities and management styles may differ, executives who make it to the top and stay there, share some common traits: they have a sense of proportion in their leadership styles and lives; they possess a high degree of self-awareness and self-regulation; and they maintain a long-term focus for themselves and those who depend on them.
About the Author
The Four Cornerstones of a High Performance Culture, part 3
/in Corporate Cultures/by Bruce Hodes and Alona Banai3. Create corporate mission & values that employees are aligned with.
The foundational material — mission and values — of a company can be critical to the overall success of the organization – but they’re often forgotten. The corporate mission and values are created by the senior leadership team, captured on posters, and strategically tacked up around the building. Meanwhile, how does a corporate citizen react to this phenomenon? They see it as ‘Horse manure!’ Whatever is in the mission or values statement is not seen as relevant to the organization’s day-to-day operations. In other words, the organization’s behavior is not congruent with its declaration of ideals.
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Subscribing to the Self Guided Program - It's Free!
About the Authors
Alona has been with CMI since February 2011. She has a MS in Plant Biology and Conservation from Northwestern University and a BS in Environmental Science and Hebrew from Washington University in St. Louis. She is also an avid and enthusiastic 5K to 1/2 Marathon participant.
Talent Management Best Practice 3 – Know the Organizational Value of Each Employee
/in Premium, Talent Management/by StrategyDrivenDo you really know the organizational contribution value of each individual working for you?
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Sign-up now for your StrategyDriven Insights Library – Total Access subscription for as low as $15 / month (paid annually).
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Don’t need a subscription? Buy access to Talent Management Best Practice 3 – Know the Organizational Value of Each Employee for just $2!