results

06 Aug 2019
Sticky Post By Posted in Organizational Effectiveness, Process, Strategy, Success, Vision Permalink

Why You Need a Productivity Plan in a Changing World

Sticky Post By On August 6, 2019

Spoiler Alert: You Can Be Busy But Not Productive

It’s always interesting to try to imagine what the future will bring. 

The Jetsons cartoon show, based in the year 2062, envisioned a future where robots do all the housework, cars fold up to the size of a briefcase, and much of what we need is automated. 

We’ve got forty more years to see how that turns out. The movie Bladerunner, set in 2019, envisioned a future where rogue replicants were virtually indistinguishable from humans. 

Back to the Future II, set in 2015, predicted hover cars, self-lacing Nikes, and food rehydrators. The film 2001: A Space Odyssey predicted a colonized moon by 2001. 

While predictions of the future are often wrong, what we know is that the present will change dramatically in a short period of time.

The more technology advances, the more the business environment must advance with it. If you aren’t paying attention, you may just get left behind. Learn about Kamau Bobb Google‘s research on educational disparities.

You need a productivity plan. 

Consider this list of things that didn’t exist fifteen years ago: 

  • iPhone
  • Facebook
  • YouTube
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • iPad
  • Netflix streaming
  • Google Maps
  • Snapchat
  • Spotify
  • Android
  • Uber
  • Lyft
  • Alexa
  • Airbnb
  • App Store
  • Google Chrome
  • WhatsApp
  • Fitbit
  • Waze
  • Slack
  • Square
  • Dropbox
  • Pinterest
  • Venmo
  • Bitcoin
  • Hulu
  • Kindle

The lesson for an InSPIRED leader is this: change is inevitable and you can either get left behind or develop a plan for growth that puts you in the best place for success.

Stand still and you’ll be outpaced rather quickly. But if you’re nimble enough to move wisely with the changing times, you are in a position to grow with them. 

But this lesson comes with a warning. 

Tyranny of the Urgent vs. a Productivity Plan

There’s a mistaken notion that being busy is the same thing as being productive. It’s the tyranny of the urgent in action. 

By responding to the urgent, we tend to neglect the really important things in life—production capacity, personal growth, striving to make a difference, living a life of adventure, building a family, or crafting a leadership legacy. 

In the movie The Shawshank Redemption, Red, “the guy who can get anything,” says, “Get busy living, or get busy dying.” 

In a counterintuitive way, busyness may seem productive, but it can actually be a distraction that slows you down. When you don’t invest time to put first things first, you’ll fall behind faster and struggle to catch up.

The truth is many people don’t know how to adapt when things change, so they remain still, embracing the madness they know. However, nothing in life remains still. 

If you’re not intentionally growing, developing, and moving, you’re not standing still—you’re getting left behind. That’s why you need a productivity plan. 

No One Gets Productive by Accident

I’ve spent my fair share of time in airports around the world. Have you ever paid attention to what happens when you step on one of the “moving sidewalks” between concourses?

These giant conveyor belts run silently in the floor, moving people along at about 1.4 miles per hour. The average person walking briskly (as you might expect in an airport) moves at about 3 miles per hour. 

airport-walking-sidewalk

So, if a person walks onto a moving sidewalk and continues a normal stride, he or she can go farther, faster. 

But consider this. Suppose you and a friend are walking through the concourse together at a steady 3 miles an hour clip trying to make a connecting flight.

Your friend jumps on the moving sidewalk and keeps walking at his normal pace. You stop to find something in your carry-on, figuring you’ll just catch up in a minute. But when you look up, you can’t even see your friends in the crowd ahead. He’s gone, and you’ve been left behind. 

Unfortunately, many people make this same mistake in leadership. 

They set aside intentional development and think they can just catch up later. But when you stop, you stagnate. Stagnate long enough and you’ll die. There is no standing still in life. 

You’re either moving forward or falling behind.

Spend Your Time Where You Want to Reap Results

So if you shouldn’t stay still, but you shouldn’t hop on the hamster wheel just for the sake of moving, what’s the answer?

It comes down to your priorities. Your to-do list is broken. 

Spend time only on the urgent.

So where you spend your time? Are you taking advantage of the “moving sidewalks” or sitting against the wall waiting for the right moment to move. (HINT: you’ll be waiting forever.) 

Where are you growing and where are you letting yourself stagnate? Don’t neglect it. Otherwise, the world will pass you by, and you’ll wonder where everybody went. 

I’m not advocating hustle and grind 24/7 with no rest or relaxation. 

I’m advocating an intentional, holistic productivity plan for developing every day in the midst of executing with excellence. 

We can’t live in either ditch. We need results for today AND results for tomorrow. 

 

21 May 2019
Sticky Post By Posted in Culture, Leadership essentials, leadership roles, Organizational Effectiveness, Real, Team Heath Permalink

The Real Reason Why Your Team Is Falling Short

Sticky Post By On May 21, 2019

How Much Leadership Currency Do You Have?

Trust is the currency of leadership.

It starts when your team can trust you and you can trust your team. It expands when other departments in the organization trust you as a leader and trust your team to execute on its promises and responsibilities.

It expands even further when your external customers trust you as an organization to deliver a solution to their needs and to do so in a valuable and timely manner.


Integration without trust is like a boat without a keel.


The keel is the strong backbone of a ship, made out of wood, metal, or other sturdy material. It juts down into the water beneath the boat like an upside-down shark fin and can weigh tons.

In fact, a keel can make up almost half of the overall weight of a typical sailboat. It needs to be sufficiently heavy to stabilize, while being light enough for agility and adaptation at speed.

You might think that something so heavy would immediately sink the ship. Instead, the weight works as ballast, keeping everything balanced in rough waters.

Trust works in the same way. When you have a team you can trust, through good days and bad, that you may wobble, but you won’t keel over.

Do You Have the Trust You Need?

There are two types of trust—relational and transactional.

When most people think of trust, they think of relational trust, because trust begins and ends on the strength of relationships. Every team has some sort of relationship history and these interconnected relationships either build up or erode trust.

Trust isn’t created in a vacuum. It’s built over hundreds of little moments of interaction between real, complex people with emotions, feelings, and fears. Thus, a powerful component of relational trust is positive intent—choosing to believe the best of team members first, and then doing the necessary research into a problem.

When any team struggles to believe the best of one another, communication breaks down, and growth grinds to a halt. The absence of relational trust makes everything exponentially more difficult to do.

But there’s another sort of trust that is equally necessary.

Transactional trust means you believe that a person or team can execute on your expectations, follow through, and get things done. It differs from relational trust in that you may trust someone to be a good person with the best of intentions, but whether or not they can be trusted to get the job done is another matter entirely.

Do you trust each other to deliver results? If someone promises to get something done, can you believe them?

If you can’t trust people or teams to deliver the results they promise, you’ve both got a big problem.

You may have people on your team whose integrity and ethics are top-notch, but who, unfortunately, lack the skill and competence to complete the task. That’s a breakdown in transactional trust that must be remedied. Also, it’s important to consider the enhanced customer trust a London virtual office postal address can provide. With Virtually There’s London virtual office services, your business appears more established and trustworthy. It’s a subtle yet effective strategy for home-based businesses to boost their reputation.

In a business, transactional trust makes up a large part of the ballast that keeps the ship upright. If you have a person on your team that isn’t getting it done transactionally, that’s a place where you aren’t integrated and something needs to change.

Do you Choose Excuses or Results?

I always say that your team can choose excuses or results. Of course, it’s tempting to keep giving the benefit of the doubt and avoid confrontation, but that doesn’t do anybody any good. To build trust, you’ve got to address the problem and provide the training or guidance necessary to improve the situation.

Mistrust creates isolation and isolation in a team environment always leads to disaster. So, ask yourself:

  • Does my team trust me?
  • Do I trust my team?
  • Do external customers trust us?
  • Do other departments within the organization trust us?
  • Do I know what my team can and can’t do—and how to grow where we are lacking?

The best teams have this awareness in common. They know they can rely on each other to do the job well—and if there are problems, team members will speak up.

So which one will you choose for your team? Excuses or results? Isolation or trustworthy community?

If you’re just starting this leadership journey today, have grace with yourself and your team. Trust is built over time with integrity and honesty. Start by being trustworthy yourself. Next, look for ways to give other people a chance to be trustworthy with you.

Where do you see the need for more trust—relational or transactional—in your team? What conversations/steps will you take this week to begin moving back towards effective, efficient, and trusting performance?

 

14 May 2019
Sticky Post By Posted in Integration, Leadership essentials, Organizational Effectiveness Permalink

How to Unleash the Power of a Fully Integrated Team

Sticky Post By On May 14, 2019

The One Thing Leaders Must Do to Get Results

You probably know the pain.

Investing countless hours in redundant meetings only to find out the right hand didn’t know what the left was doing the entire time.

Getting the runaround between departments trying to track down simple information.

Struggling to get leaders on the same page when communication snafus blow up what should have been a quick project.

The unintended results? Wasted time, project delays, budget overruns, and competing expectations. The list could go on and on.

How many times have you thought, It really shouldn’t be this hard to get things done?

When you do, know that you have identified a point of disintegration.

You’re not crazy. It truly isn’t supposed to be this way.

Don’t bury those thoughts. Heed the signal that your team isn’t properly aligned somewhere.

A leader with a disintegrated team is like the emperor with no clothes. Everyone knows about the problem except the leader. If team members believe stress, struggle, and production pain are just “how it’s supposed to be,” they’ll continue to suffer and unintentionally underperform—until disaster strikes.

Thankfully, you can avoid million-dollar mistakes before you lose any more time, sleep, or your most precious resource—people.

3 Levels to Release Remarkable Results

While disintegration is not sustainable, integration changes everything. I’m not talking about perfection, but rather the alignment, understanding, and adaptability of the group for the mission as it unfolds in real time in the real world.

So, what kinds of things need to be integrated? Here are a few examples:

  • Culture and values into hiring, on-boarding, and daily activities
  • Management modeling with daily habits
  • Strategy and strategic approach with marketplace wants, needs, and reality
  • Product and service offerings with customer wants or needs
  • Strategy with organizational capabilities and capacity
  • Strategy and operations with systems and processes at scale
  • People and processes
  • Change appetite with change metabolism

Complete integration requires attention at three levels:

  1. You. The first person you need to integrate is yourself. If you are scattered regarding a vision for your team or dysfunctional when it comes to your own ability to get things done, you can’t expect everyone else to have clarity.

[call out] Leaders set the tone and pace for the team.

So, ask yourself: How am I integrating with coworkers, team members, customers, mentors, other influencers? Where do I need to step up my game?

2. Your team (internal customers). Once you’ve addressed your own integration challenges, consider the integration of your own team with others in the organization. Integrated teams are drawn together holistically on a shared mission. Ask:

  • Do I know the critical people I need to integrate with?
  • Do I intentionally reach out to peers?
  • Do I know what their personality style is and how best to integrate with that style and communicate in their language?
  • Can I trust them to have the know-how and flexibility to either get the job done or to communicate their problems?
  • Do they trust me?

3.  Your external customers. How integrated are you with your external customers? Customer integration means you know your target audience well. You are on the same page with them and understand their problems, pain points, needs and wants. Ask:

  • How accurately am I working to solve real customer problems with my product or service before they even know there is a problem?
  • How easy am I to do business with?
  • How seamless would customers say our interactions are?
  • Do customers come back to us?
  • Do they tell others about us?

When you intentionally integrate fully with yourself, your team, and your customers, everything starts to run more efficiently. Zombies disappear and work gets done.

Integration Begins with YOU

You don’t have to be a military leader or the coach of an underdog sports team. When any team is integrated and functioning properly, the results are truly inspiring.  However, you are responsible for equipping your team to run at an integrated, day-to-day level.

At its core, communication begins with you. Are you talking with your team or at your team? Is communication one way or actual? Integration runs on dialogue.

The most important thing to realize is that integrated teamwork begins and ends with leadership.

Model integration for your team. Make it a priority. And you’ll enjoy plenty of first-place—even come-from-behind—finishes of your own.