Strategy: Sharpening Your Focus

Recently, Pascal Dennis wrote a post that really resonated with me about strategy deployment. His point is that strategy is not about doing the important things but rather the process of choosing, the responsibility of leaders to grasp the situation and decide the plan forward.  I always tell others that strategy deployment is a focusing mechanism. This is about sharpening your focus by selecting the vital few breakthrough objectives.

The strategy deployment process identifies and concentrates resources on the vital few stretch achievements that support the vision. It separates those performance issues that require dramatic improvement from the many incremental improvements that can achieved at the local level. All the changes that the leadership believes to be incremental are skimmed out of the strategic plan and addressed through quality in daily work. The remaining category of contribution – the vital few breakthrough achievements – becomes the heart of the strategy deployment process.

One of the hardest parts of being a leader is making critical decisions when multiple tasks are competing for attention. When individuals and teams are confronted by multiple issues, they often try to take them all on… at once. Because they are overwhelmed, they make progress on none of them. The result: inertia and a lack of change.

The job of management is to steer the focus of their organization towards those few vital priorities that will keep or bring the organization into alignment with the demands of its customers. Once these are identified, employees can then pinpoint the group, division, factory, department, or project gaps that must be closed to stay aligned with the strategic direction of your organization.

Leadership must articulate a vision and goals describing what they believe want to accomplish. They must provide a clear charge to all layers of management and process improvement team members to work towards this vision, making sure that everyone understands the vision. Leaders work with others to set specific goals and a manageable scope for each action. Focus on defining the attributes needed for success and empower the team to develop efficient and effective approaches to accomplish them.

Strategy deployment is the system for setting management’s compass toward True North. It is a tool to align people, activities, and performance metrics with strategic priorities. It can be used to communicate direction, coordinate activity, and monitor progress. It enables members of the organization to work together in the most creative way to define and achieve the strategic intent.

If I had to take one lesson from my business experience it is without focus you are lost.  Infinity is not available to us in this life.  Time and money are limited and as such we must utilize these limited resources effectively.  I can see no way to achieve our objectives other than to utilize discretion, prioritization and selection.  For after all, some things are simply more critical and more important. 

Lean Quote: Be More Proactive To Reach Your Goals

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

"I believe that everyone chooses how to approach life. If you’re proactive, you focus on preparing. If you’re reactive, you end up focusing on repairing."   —  John C. Maxwell

Reactive people wait for a problem to take over, then scramble for a way to fix it. Reactive people don’t plan or take steps toward their goals. Instead, they hope they’ll work on it someday when life is stress-free and they’re brimming with motivation, intelligence, and free time. You don’t wait for the “perfect” time because it doesn’t exist.

An influential leader has the confidence to take ownership of their actions. Especially when they make mistakes, they don’t blame others or deny what happened. Instead, they learn from it and move on to the next step. It’s such an admirable and exceptional quality to have.

Being proactive is about focusing on the things you can control in life and letting the rest go. Besides, you can’t do anything about those things anyway. But if you don’t take responsibility for the things you do, you’ll struggle to do anything worthwhile.

Always keep in mind that if you mess up, it’s okay. Every person you admire has made a mountain of mistakes. But they learned from them and used them to move up in their field. So, if you slip up, don’t worry about it. Instead, learn from it and use it to improve. Otherwise, you might hit the same wall repeatedly until you stop trying.

If you there’s an obstacle on the horizon, plan how you’ll conquer it beforehand. If that method doesn’t work, try something else. Keep trying different strategies until you make it through.

Every simplistic bit of effort will bring you closer to fulfilling your dream, and there’s no one to blame but yourself if you deny yourself that.

After all, no one else can reach your goals for you.

No doubt, being more action-oriented will boosts your productivity and success levels. It’ll make every day more enjoyable.

How to Develop Consistent Communication Across Global Teams

Image Source: Pixabay

Developing strong communication on a global team isn't easy. Different cultures, time zones, and languages can make it challenging to stay on the same page. However, staying focused and connected is essential to success. In this article, we'll discuss how administration teams can train their global employees to develop consistent and intentional communication with each other in support of the business's long-term goals.

Define Clear Goals and Objectives

One of the biggest reasons communication can break down is the lack of clearly outlined business objectives. When working with global teams, it's essential to be as specific as possible when communicating the expectations of the organization and how employees should interact with one another to achieve them. Start by defining the end goal first, and then break down each task into smaller pieces.

Knowing precisely what will result in success is essential so that everyone stays on track with their duties. Next, use straightforward language to outline goals and objectives so that people from other cultures can clearly understand what you mean. When employees can realize the benefits of effective communication, they'll have greater respect for the process. This will inevitably lead to them better understanding of their roles and responsibilities as well as how to accomplish them.

Invest in the Right Collaboration Tools

One of the first things that remote working teams need to prioritize is investing in the right collaboration tools. Whether it's providing a centralized hub for remote employees to share documents or manage communication, or setting up video conferencing tools, these tools can make a big difference in building a solid team. Investing in the “right” tools for your business, however, means taking a harder look at how your business actually operates and which technologies will best contribute to its growth.

For example, while virtual tools like Zoom and Aspyr can be great tools for remote collaboration, they don't always meet the needs of a larger organization. Other tools that help companies manage projects, including Basecamp, Asana, or Wrike, may be better suited for smaller or mid-sized organizations growing quickly. Regardless of the collaboration tools you choose to use, it's essential to institute best practices around their use. If everyone uses these tools differently, it can create a fragmented experience that doesn't help the team accomplish their goals.

Set Up Regular Meetings

Another important way to stay connected with your global team is to set up regular meetings. These meetings can be with individual team members on a one-on-one basis or formatted for a larger audience with a regular cadence schedule. Either way, team meetings can be an excellent way for your remote employees to connect and build relationships with each other. It's also essential to ensure that remote employees feel included in in-person meetings. For example, you could consist of project-related information in some of the team's meetings or make it a point to ensure that some team members are included in specific team meetings.

Meetings are an important way to create a cohesive remote team. You can plan these meetings around goals and objectives or topics specific to the project. The key is to be clear about the meeting ahead of time. Ensure everyone participates when appropriate and always concludes with the following steps so you know where and how your team is heading next. Creating agendas and documenting action items (what people are supposed to do after the meeting) will help you stay organized and ensure all participants are getting maximum value from every discussion.

Find Ways to Show Appreciation for Remote Working Employees

While you should be setting up regular meetings and using collaboration tools to stay connected with your global team, you should also be showing appreciation for the work that they're doing. This could be as simple as sending employees a thank you note or flowers once in a while or offering them some time off work for some R&R. A small and simple gesture can significantly affect productivity and morale.

Employees engaged with their jobs are more likely to show up for work every day, stay late at the office, or even come into the office on weekends when necessary. Help build loyalty by offering incentives for high performance or thanking employees for all of the hard work they're doing on behalf of your company. Doing this can help your team build consistent and positive communication regardless of location.

Conclusion

Fostering communication across your remote team is essential for creating a cohesive and productive work environment. Without proper communication and collaboration, your team won't be able to function as efficiently or productively as in a traditional office setting. Therefore, when planning your virtual communication strategy, it's vital to lay out your team's most effective communication protocols. This can help ensure that everyone is on the same page and always working toward one goal — success.

About the Author: Luke Smith is a writer and researcher turned blogger. Since finishing college he is trying his hand at being a freelance writer. He enjoys writing on a variety of topics but technology and business topics are his favorite. When he isn't writing you can find him traveling, hiking, or gaming.

4 Ideas to Get Management Buy-In

A couple of weeks ago Art Byrne shared his tried-and-true strategies that leaders can deploy to encourage everyone to adopt Lean. This got me thinking about management buy-in itself. Management commitment is a “must” to any initiative. The employees of the organization will not care, if the management themselves do not show the attitude to follow the right path.

Getting executives in your company to want to support and then adopt Lean Thinking may be difficult but not impossible. We would all like to work at a company where the top people in the organization don’t just do Lean but live Lean but many of us work at a place where they don’t even necessarily do Lean. Since every company culture is different the way to get executive buy-in will be different. Here is a list of ideas to help you convince your management to start thinking Lean:

1. Show benefits

If you can demonstrate how the approach will help the organization and the kind of benefits you can obtain, then you will catch the attention of your Senior Managers. To do this, Deployment Champions run a few improvement projects under no name in particular. They can then calculate the benefits using the finance community to validate them. Some benchmarking can also be done, showing what has been achieved in other similar organizations. Lastly you can highlight where your current problems are and then explain how Lean will help to address these issues.

2. Explain the concept and how to ensure success

If you understand the concepts, then you have the knowledge to explain how Lean can benefit a company and how to set up for success. If you don't, then you could ask an expert to come and talk to your Senior Management group.

3. Understand where it can help

Identifying where to run your projects is vital in any deployment and even more so in the early stages. You must pick projects which are not so easy that any attention would have solved them, or projects which are so big it would be like solving world hunger. If you pick a meaningful project which brings great results both monitory and other wise then you can usually gain the attention of Senior Management and then move to a full deployment in your organization. Another problem we have been encountering is that businesses don't really know where there real problems are. They work on solving symptoms and putting out fires, they don't actually know where the root causes are. In this instance then, we would suggest obtaining a diagnostic of your business which would then tell you where to start in your program deployment.

4. Understand what motivates your Managers

If you understand the motivations of your management team then you will know what buttons to press to get the concepts accepted. This might require some work and research and would include things like how they are measured, how their bonuses are made up, where they wish to take the company, what they believe the current issues are, what they know about the concepts and what they have tried in the past. If you work on these areas, your pitch to your Managers will be considered, have the right detail and will have a chance of working.

Gaining senior management buy-in is really about finding the right balance between the soft skills (knowing how to listen to them, how to anticipate their reactions) and hard skills (rock solid analysis, irrefutable facts, etc.). You may have to try different approaches and borrow from what has worked in other organizations or disciplines. It is the key to the survival of your role in the organization as ultimately without that buy-in, you will be limited in your tasks and responsibilities. At the end of the day, you run little risk in applying principles highlighted above so... go for it!

Lean Quote: Never Give Up!

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

"Before you say you can’t do something…TRY IT."   —  Sakichi Toyoda

When you’re pursuing a worthwhile goal it’s almost inevitable that at some point you’ll think one or more of the following:

• “This is harder than I thought it would be.”
• “Why is this taking so long?”
• “I’m getting nowhere with this.”
• “I keep failing at this goal.”
• “I can’t do this. What was I thinking?”

And when you do have one—or more—of these thoughts, it’s very likely that you’ll want to give up.

Not giving up is a mindset. And it’s a mindset that you can adopt. What you do need is to constantly tell yourself the following:

• I persist when things get tough.
• I will either find a way or make one.
• Every problem has a solution, and I have the perfect ability to find it.
• Every day I gain more knowledge and insight about what works and what doesn’t, which means I’m getting stronger and wiser.
• Setbacks are temporary.
• I will find a way through this.
• Think! What’s the best thing to do now?

Having an “I won’t quit” mindset will make it much easier for you to persist—and refuse to give up—until you achieve your goal.

When you feel like quitting, look at all your reasons why your goal is so important to you. If need be, add even more reasons why. The greater the quantity of reasons—and the stronger the reasons—that you have to keep going, the more likely it is that you won’t quit.

Refusing to give up doesn’t mean that you should simply keep doing the same thing over and over again. If the approach that you’re currently using isn’t working, try a different approach. Continue in this way until you find a method, technique, or strategy that does work.

When you want to quit, push yourself to keep taking consistent action toward the achievement of your goal. Even if you haven’t seen results yet, you never know what may be happening underneath the surface.

Just because you can’t see anything yet, although you’ve been working on your goal for awhile, this doesn’t mean that nothing is happening. You may be closer to achieving your dream than you think. Don’t give up, when you could be just moments away from succeeding. Keep chipping away.

Achieving large, hairy goals isn’t easy. Somewhere along the way it’s very likely that you’ll want to quit. But when you feel like quitting, don’t give up. Live your best life by refusing to quit.

5 Incredible Ways Recognition Enhances Employee Engagement

Business organizations are keener than ever before to find answers to the complex challenges of employee engagement. In fact, businesses are happy to try every possible trick to boost employee engagement. This is for the simple reason that more businesses are now acknowledging the business benefits of cultivating engagement.

Needless to say, there could be countless ways in which organizations can approach employee engagement. However, sometimes, boosting engagement can be as simple as offering thoughtful recognition to your employees. As a business leader, you need to look at the massive scope for higher engagement that employee recognition has to offer.

In this blog, we effectively highlight some exceptional ways in which employee recognition can enhance engagement. So, let us get started without further ado.

How recognition adds to employee engagement

1. It promotes a sense of workplace belonging

Recognition is a direct measure of value and acceptance. When you recognize the effort and achievements of your employees, you inspire the feeling of acceptance and allegiance in them. Simply put, even the smallest acts of employee recognition promote a great sense of workplace belonging among employees.

Having said that, when employees are confident that they belong in the workplace, they respond with greater commitment and zeal. They then feel a strong urge to raise the bar of their performance in an incremental way as they feel empowered. To substantiate, as per Deloitte, a strong sense of workplace belonging can enhance employees’ performance by 56 percent. Isn’t that amazing?

On the contrary, if there is no recognition for employees’ efforts, they will soon disengage. They will never be able to blend into the environment to be able to make positive differences.

2. It fosters high optimism in the workplace

When leaders or managers recognize and appreciate their employees, there is high motivation and optimism in the workplace. Needless to say, all of us crave motivation to keep giving our best in a consistent manner. Besides, when we fail to find motivation, our productivity starts withering away.

No matter how much zeal we carry on the inside, we often look for motivation beyond ourselves. Having said that, employees often look up to their seniors for motivation and you can deliver that the best through appreciation. Parallel to workplace motivation, optimism will also be high as working relationships will also improve on the sidelines of recognition.

This increased motivation along with greater optimism in the workplace will lay a perfect foundation for high-performing work culture. It is an undeniable fact that with a highly motivated team, you can even move mountains. However, for sustaining that motivation you need a vibrant system of employee recognition.

3. It boosts employee satisfaction

Employee engagement and satisfaction go hand in hand. In fact, it would not be incorrect to say that satisfaction is the basis of employee engagement. People give their best when they are satisfied with the idea of doing so. This is where business leaders need to realize that employee appreciation and recognition are essential for satisfaction.

Unless employees find their satisfaction, they will often fall into the category of disengaged employees. In fact, the lack of satisfaction can also be the reason why an organization may have to face high turnover.

Now if you ask your employees what satisfies them the most, a large proportion of them would say recognition. In fact, as per HubSpot, 70 percent of employees say that they will work with greater commitment if they receive due recognition from their superiors.

This clearly indicates that employees are more than happy to go the extra mile for their organization if their efforts are acknowledged. Having said that, with recognition, you can unlock extraordinary levels of employee engagement and performance.

4. It fosters trust in the workplace

As a leader, do you ever lay emphasis on the need for cultivating trust in the workplace? Did you know that employees in high-trust organizations are likely to be 76 percent more engaged? Harvard Business Review further states that in companies that thrive with trust, employee productivity levels are 50 percent higher.

As you can see, a small virtue of trust can make such an unthinkable difference. Cultivating trust can be far more advantageous than most employee engagement activities. The question is, how does workplace recognition help in trust-building? Well, when managers and supervisors extend recognition and appreciation it does add incredibly to the process of trust-building.

To explain, recognition empowers employees in the sense that they start to believe that their commitment and achievements will not go unnoticed. Whenever an employee receives recognition, others are also convinced that they can trust the management when it comes to highlighting their accomplishments.

Having said that, this trust will push them to upscale their commitment and contribute to the organization in a more wholesome way.

5. It inspires effective goal setting

When recognition and appreciation become natural virtues in the workplace, it does create a substantial difference in terms of goal setting. In the bid to achieve more and win the appreciation from the management, employees will reassess their goals.

To explain, when they see their colleagues receiving heartwarming recognition, they would want to be at the receiving end of it as well. Hence, they will undertake effective goal setting and will show greater dedication to accomplishing their goals.

All in all, with this optimized goal setting and execution in the workplace, the engagement scenarios will witness a massive hike. As a leader, you can inspire greater reliance, accountability, and excitement among your teams by offering consistent recognition. After all, sharing credits and appreciation with others are true trademarks of greater leadership.

To conclude, we do not always work for recognition but recognition does inspire the best in us for sure. Employee recognition has substantial benefits to offer to business organizations in terms of higher engagement and productivity. As evident above, recognition can amplify employee engagement in some incredible ways. 

About the Author: Jessica Robinson loves to write interesting and knowledgeable blogs regarding business management, education and life to satiate the curiosity of her lovely readers. Currently, she is serving as a content manager at the ‘Speaking Polymath’. Every piece of content that she writes demonstrates her immense love and passion for her profession.

Independence at Work

On July 4, 1776, in a sweltering hall in Philadelphia, 56 men gathered to sign “the unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America.” As we celebrate independence in the US how much independence is there to celebrate in your workplace?

Too many knowledge workers — professionals with immense talent, experience, and drive to do meaningful work — are stifled by managers who misunderstand what effective management means. In misguided attempts to boost productivity and direct innovation, managers can kill both creativity and passion — the intrinsic motivation required to stay deeply engaged in work — by destroying people’s autonomy.

Researchers measured the impact that money had on performance. For basic, non-thinking tasks more money equaled more output. Interestingly, if even a moderate amount of thinking was involved, more money resulted in a decline of performance.

The three top motivators were Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. Autonomy focuses on the freedom to act independently. Employees given this freedom to work on projects or opportunities of interest added greater value to their organization through innovation and customer focus. Mastery is about the opportunity to get really good at something and purpose is a connection to the big picture.

One of the leader’s responsibilities is to continually remind people about purpose – how their work impacts the customer and the greater mission of the organization. It is easy to forget this and work can become a boring chore.

To be truly intrinsically motivated and to gain a sense of achievement when they do make progress, people need to have some say in their own work. What’s more, when employees have freedom in how to do the work, they are more creative.