Managing a project to an on-time, on-budget completion has become increasingly difficult in the ‘do more with less’ reality of today’s business world. But what many project managers fail to realize is that their project is doomed from the start. Activities associated with a project’s roll-out and needed organizational change management often go unscoped and unfunded because they don’t directly contribute to the creation of the produce or service being developed. The cost of these activities is very real in terms of personnel and financial resources and the project’s ultimate success relies on their performance.
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Seldom do leaders assign work to individuals based on the corporate goal of achieving something.
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Every day, I see businesses struggling to achieve high levels of long-term performance. Upon scrutiny I often find that they have – on paper – excellent and well thought out strategic plans. Their shortcomings are normally in the applications of the strategic plan and I find they usually fall into one of three areas; I call them gaps:
As they seek to improve on their year to year performance, I find many firms ardently working on the focus and alignment gap. Yet the improvement in their results do not seem to mirror their efforts – not at all. First, since the advent of Hoshin Kanri (HK) planning firms have found an excellent model to achieve focus and alignment both vertically and horizontally, throughout their entire firm. HK planning can be a very effective technique, even if not practiced fully as taught by Yoji Akao. Second, by any objective measure, the greatest opportunity to improve results is achieved by closing the Engagement Gap. Typical engagement levels across the US are in the 30% range and for manufacturing they are even lower, around 25%. Since most firms are in the 25-30% range and world class is 75% engagement, the gulf between what is typical and what is attainable is huge. The engagement gap is the target rich environment for improvement that firms need to exploit if they wish to attain long-term, strong performance.
What Is The Engagement Profile?
Gallup has defined 3 categories of engagement: the “engaged”; the “not-engaged”; and the “actively disengaged”. The engaged are those people who are moving & shaking, making improvements, and genuinely care about what goes on at the business. This is around 30% of the entire work population. The “not-engaged” are doing what is necessary, they follow all the rules – but not much else. They are often working in a fog and seem to be sleep-walking their way through the day. They comprise around 52% of the work population. Then there are the “actively disengaged”. These are the people who might be fighting to stay on the payroll – or not. Regardless they are resistive, contrary and fighting the system at every turn in the road. They comprise 18% of the workforce.
Just What Is Engagement?
There are two commonly held management paradigms about engagement which are widely held, but unfortunately, they are both wrong:
Engagement is equal to hard working and
Engagement is a “worker thing”
Engaged workers have three very salient qualities. First, they are physically committed, so they are hard working. They have body commitment. Second, they are intellectually committed so they are actively working to make improvements to the process and the product. They have head commitment. Third, they are interested in the business and care that it succeeds. They have heart commitment. Being engaged in the workplace encompasses hard work but it goes well beyond that.
As for engagement being only a worker thing – as if the supervisors, managers and denizens of the C-suite were naturally engaged – is a myth. Although management engagement is somewhat higher, at 35% it is nowhere near world class levels. In most firms, there is ample improvement room for everyone.
What’s The Appropriate Response?
With your business in need of an infusion of “whatever it takes to succeed” you need look no further than improving your engagement. With 70% either not-engaged or actively disengaged, you clearly have a target rich environment. And just how do you capture that? The answer is technically simple but operationally has proven to be a major problem to many. To get employees engaged it is as simple as management making sure that all people:
1. Know what to do
2. Know how to do it
3. Have the resources to do it
And 4, that management focus on creating an environment where it is possible for people to perform.
Sounds Simple? Think You Are Already Doing This?
If you believe you and your firm are accomplishing this simple list of 4 items above, then why is your firm not attaining long-term, strong performance? If you take a cold, hard, dispassionate and introspective look at that deficiency, it is virtually impossible to not find needed improvement in one or more of the categories above.
Give the 4 items above your management attention and you’ll have not only a healthy, happy and productive workforce, but strong long-term performance as well.
About the Author
Lonnie Wilson is the author of Sustaining Workforce Engagement: How To Ensure Your Employees Are Healthy, Happy, And Productive and founder of Quality Consultants where clients include firms in manufacturing as well as the fields of education, healthcare and other service sectors. Quality Consultants serves small firms as well as Fortune 500 firms in North, South, Central America, and China.
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What makes a good leader? If tasked with answering this question, some might devise a 10-page list of traits. Leaders need to be visionaries. They must be genuine, hardworking, respectful, and pragmatic. They should connect with employees. They should be story-tellers.
We hold leaders to a high standard, attaching a lengthy list of prerequisites to any governing role. Before starting as CFO, I repeatedly scanned through my leadership qualities, considering how I would present myself to my new colleagues. The night before my first day, a jumble of questions raced around my sleepless mind: “How will I balance openness with authority?” “How do I provide the appropriate amount of guidance to my team?” “How will I know if I am being effective?”
After serving in a variety of leadership roles over the last two decades, I still have a lot to learn. I have, however, worked to chip away at the long list of leadership traits by understanding the key areas where leaders must succeed. In my experience, the myriad of leadership characteristics can be boiled down to the Qs.
IQ (Intellectual Quotient): The first focus area is the most straight-forward. Of course, ascending the organizational ladder requires intellectual horsepower. Most leadership positions demand foresight, complex problem solving, and creativity, that of which requires sharp mental faculty.
Most leaders fulfill this first criterion. Unsurprisingly, cognitive ability is directly linked to job performance. Those with high IQs have dazzled their superiors with high-quality work and valuable insights, using brainpower as jet fuel to soar into top leadership spots. IQ is the first Q of leadership, as it gets your foot in the door.
EQ (Emotional Quotient): While earning my Master of Accounting, one of my colleagues shined as the star of our cohort. She was incredibly gifted with numbers. Following graduation, we both eagerly accepted offers to work in public accounting for Ernst and Young. After a short six months, however, she had moved on to another opportunity. Apparently, after bouncing around due to team conflicts, she had been asked to leave. Neither expertise nor credentials could outweigh the importance of EQ in a team environment.
IQ in isolation does not indicate strong leadership potential. In recent years, the power of EQ, the ability to read others’ emotions (including your own), has been exalted as a key trait in successful leaders. A study of UC Berkeley PhDs discovered that EQ was 40 times more powerful in predicting who achieved success in their fields than IQ (Developing Management Skills). Emotional competencies combined with strong cognitive abilities lays the foundation for an effective leader.
FQ (Financial Quotient): One of the most frequently overlooked requirements of a strong leader is financial intelligence. In a national Harvard study of U.S. managers, the average score on a simple financial literacy test was 38% (Harvard Business Review).
When elevated into leadership positions, it’s often assumed that people understand finance. However, I have encountered even senior leaders who have muddled along with very little knowledge of how to enact and measure value creation activities.
A company is a financial machine created to produce profit and cash flow, therefore leaders with decision-authority (and especially those with P&L responsibility) must understand how they make an impact on the bottom line. For today’s leaders, financial literacy is not an option. Strategy without finance is dead.
SQ (Strategy Quotient): Finally, even the brightest, most emotionally and financially-gifted leaders flounder without strategic direction. SQ is the bow that ties all the other leadership skills together. It puts the other Qs to work. Strategic leaders carve out structure without being rigid. They extend the abilities of the team and lead them into new, unpredictable territories by taking calculated risks. They’re aware of internal and external happenings. Overall, they see the big picture, and guide their team by sharing an inspired vision.
Follow the Qs of leadership to unlock the potential of your talent, maximize the impact of your organization, and escalate your bottom line.
About the Author
Steve Coughran is author of Outsizing: Strategies to Grow your Business, Profits, and Potential, CFO of an international billion-dollar company, and a management consultant. Steve has over two decades of experience driving business excellence. Known for his extensive research and writing on strategic growth and corporate financial management, he challenges conventional wisdom, earning the reputation of an “energetic trailblazer.” He is an expert on strategy and an acclaimed keynote speaker with over twenty years of experience driving corporate excellence.
“I don’t know that there’s necessarily a correlation between leadership style and their email writing. I’ve never researched that specific connection.”
“Understood,” my CEO client responded. “Just review what my admin sends you and give me a one-page opinion on each of the four VPs. That’s all I ask.”
This conversation happened early in my career, and frankly, I feared that I might disappoint him in not being able to draw conclusions.
Within a few days, the CEO’s bundle of emails arrived, basically restating what he’d said on the phone. His executive assistant had collected emails from four of his VPs. Specifically, the emails were representative of those the four VPs had sent to 1) peers 2) their direct reports and 3) those higher-ups in the chain (the CEO himself or EVPs).
My mission: To describe their leadership style and general attitudes about their work as reflected in their emails. So I pushed through the pile of VP documents carefully labeled by his assistant.
After submitting my one-page opinions on each, the CEO phoned again. “You’ve pegged them exactly! … Now, I want you to meet with them one on one to debrief them. Tell them what’s apparent in their writing. Give them the details about what you found. See what they might want to change.”
The first three meetings went well. The VPs seemed quite shocked that their writing revealed so much about their personalities, attitudes, and leadership style. But basically, they agreed with my evaluations and the emails discussed as examples.
But the fourth meeting (scheduled last because I dreaded it) didn’t go so smoothly. As I suspected, the SVP reacted quite differently. Mac listened in almost total silence as I delivered my conclusions.
As tactfully as possible, I pointed out that his emails to the executive team sounded friendly, but vague and cavalier. On the other hand, emails to his staff sounded indifferent at best and harsh and dictatorial at worst.
His general response that day: “Not interested in making changes.”
A few months later, I learned that Mac was no longer with the organization. Although I don’t know all that contributed to his termination, I do know that his writing did not add to his credibility, influence, or results with clients, coworkers, or higher-ups.
4 Ways Your Leadership Style Is on Display in Your Email
What can you apply to your own situation?
Unwillingness to Share Reasoning
When Mac presented a recommendation to higher-ups, he supported it with data or at least his reasoning. Not so, with staff. With them, he simply announced his decisions and expected compliance.
An Attempt to Bluff
When answering questions from higher executives about projects, budgets, or problems, Mac often responded with sketchy details. The tone was, “All is well, just trust me, and don’t probe.” A reader easily got the feeling that Mac took offense if the boss asked about any skeletons in the closet.
No Requests for Input
Mac wrote to his staff almost entirely in directives. He requested no opinions or ideas from them. When he informed them of a decision and upcoming action, the tone was, “Make it happen and don’t bother me with questions.” The difference between Mac and a mafia boss? Mac dealt in mortgages. Mafia bosses deal in murder and other mayhem.
Lack of Personal Accountability
Even though I analyzed more than a hundred of Mac’s emails, none contained an “accountability” statement – not even close.
No statements of goals (specific goals would have set him up to explain any shortfall)
No acknowledgement or apology for a mistake or misunderstanding
No ownership for poor outcomes – his or those related to his team’s performance
No feedback or praise to his team or colleagues
Granted, Mac didn’t send his entire email stash for the CEO’s evaluation. But reason would suggest that he’d sent his best – a collection aptly reflecting his leadership style.
Just as Mac’s writing did, your email can alter the trajectory of your career. Leaders master strategies to improve what they say, how they say it, and what NOT to say in email. And in my three decades of experience, I’ve observed that clear communicators become leaders in every industry.
Find out what secrets your own emails reveal about your leadership.
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Managing a project to an on-time, on-budget completion has become increasingly difficult in the ‘do more with less’ reality of today’s business world. But what many project managers fail to realize is that their project is doomed from the start. Activities associated with a project’s roll-out and needed organizational change management often go unscoped and unfunded because they don’t directly contribute to the creation of the produce or service being developed. The cost of these activities is very real in terms of personnel and financial resources and the project’s ultimate success relies on their performance.
Seldom do leaders assign work to individuals based on the corporate goal of achieving something.
Lonnie Wilson is the author of 
Steve Coughran is author of 
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