Recommended: Lead Well and Prosper

Nick McCormick’s Lead Well and Prosper: 15 Successful Strategies for Becoming a Good Manager ($14.95) gets it. This is a great addition to the library if you want people to want to work with/for you. From those individuals who run households to the CEOs of the largest companies, this is a book to be kept by the bedside. The book is simple, clean, and compact. Nick McCormick provides you with light examples and plenty of easy to use supplementary documents. The only thing keeping this book from being a best seller is people not knowing about it.

In addition to the strategies which are laid out well, the book provides a Manager’s Test, Dos and Don’ts, and a number of other helpful tools. All in all this is a book that will show you how to be type of person people want to be around, hire, or recommend.

Buy

EPIC Change by Timothy R. Clark

EPIC Change outlines patterns of and steps required for large-scale organizational change through the EPIC methodology:

• Evaluate
• Prepare
• Implement
• Consolidate

Part I: The EPIC Methodology

The four spheres of leadership literacy:

1. Personal: Leaders must have self-awareness and personal understanding. They must seek their own truth and accept feedback. Key Point: Leaders must first become intentional self-learners.
2. Organizational: Leaders must have organizational understanding. This requires an understanding of an organization’s operational, financial, and cultural performance.
3. Market: Organizations that understand the topography of their specific markets are able to spot trends, threats, and opportunities. Opportunities include finding solutions for inefficiencies or unmet needs in the market.
4. Global: Continued innovation occurs in an environment where leaders understand the macro-level trends occurring in the world.

In today’s global age, lack of certainty in the market is a fact. Change leadership has become a necessary competency for survival and success. The EPIC Methodology explains this approach from a systems-level perspective.

Six consistent pattern form the basis of the EPIC Methodology:

Pattern 1: Change requires more work and creates more stress.

Types of change:

1. Performance: Requires people and organizations to behave, work, and perform at a higher level (includes: department restructuring, creating a new product line, acquiring another company, or outsourcing a function.
2. Compliance: Requires people to comply with something that is new but does not require performance at a higher level. It is often a change in policy or procedure and not often directly felt or seen.

Pattern 2: There are four stages of a successful change process.

• Evaluation: Leaders evaluate competitive reality, international performance, and alternatives for change.
• Preparation: This stage requires more work and additional stress than does evaluation. Shifting resource allocation signals the preparation stage and is the beginning of the break from the stability of the status quo. In this stage, organizations experiment, model, test, and trial options before making a final decision to pursue change.
• Implementation: Organizations execute the tasks that were planned during preparation. Key Point: This is the stage where resistance is the strongest.
• Consolidation: Happens after achieving sustained results; motivation increases and gradually becomes stronger than the resistance that may have originally opposed it.

Leaders must deliberately navigate through each stage for successful change to happen.

Pattern 3: The discretionary efforts of people drive change.

Organizational change is dependent on people. Factors that affect the success or failure are:

• “Hard” or technical: Consist of inanimate and inter resources.
• Human or “Soft”: Deal with people, thoughts, feelings, and behavior.

Pattern 4: Leaders provide the energy.

The change process begins with people, time, resources, and a plan. Large amounts of energy motivate people involved in the change process. Without energy, there is no change. Leaders must create and replenish that energy throughout the process.

Pattern 5: The power curve of change can absorb stress.

Organizations consume energy that is roughly equal to the amount of work performed and stress absorbed. Leaders who understand the power curve can help sustain different energy requirements for employees in the different stages to prevent the change process from faltering.

Pattern 6: The seven primary energy sources in the change process. (I’ve placed the stage which you mostly find the source)

• Agility (Evaluate)
• Urgency (Prepare)
• Credibility (Prepare)
• Coalition (Prepare)
• Vision (Prepare)
• Early results (Implement)
• Sustained results Consolidate)

Part II: Evaluate

The first stage. Agility is the primary energy source used during this stage. Different types of agility are necessary for use in varying stages. There are three main categories:

1. Intellectual: Organizations must be prepared to initiate change at any time. Leaders who can understand the nature of competitive advantage are inclined to evaluate a situation first. This means being in a constant state of readiness, and acknowledging change.
2. Emotional: This is to understand, accept, and commit to the nature of leadership. There is tension between leaders to who maintain the status quo - doing “operational work” - and those who disrupt the status quo, which is called change work. It is critical that both work is performed so that the current strategies are being executed and preparation is being doin to execute the future strategy by altering some aspects of the culture, systems, processes, structures, and tools, in order to meet an adaptive challenge and create value tomorrow. Change work requires different competencies in a leader than operational work. The transition is more emotional and psychological than intellectual.
3. Physical: Agility is also physical. Continually going back and forth between change and operational work can be physically taxing. In general, the new physical requirement for agility is flexibility and stamina in an intense environment.

Part III: Prepare

Moving from evaluate to prepare includes:

• analyzing change alternatives
• selecting a course of action
• planning for implementation

It is here when the rest of the employee population gets involved to do the actual work. The leader must provide vision (”what”) and strategy (”how”) in order to be successful.

This move to implementation creates a disturbance to the organization because people feel destabilized as they are pushed to move out of an environment of inertia. Preparing with urgency jump starts the change process. During this phase, four of the seven energy sources come into play.

• Urgency: Acts as a form of motivation. Three categories of adaptive challenge that affect preparation with urgency: opportunity, threat, and crisis.
• Credibility: The only source derived from within the leader. It is vital to move and inspire people to make change credible. The most enduring energy source.
• Coalition: Is a group of people inside or outside of an organization who together support change. Natural next step after establishment of credibility. Leaders rely on coalitions to continue to replenish energy, for leaders cannot lead change alone. Coalitions offer even more benefits, specifically in terms of what they can do to replenish energy, avoid obstacles, and increase chances of success.
• Vision: People must understand the direction of their organization. Good change leaders can articulate straightforward visions of growth and operational excellence. Simplicity is the key because people need to understand the reason for change at a basic level. They need to understand the vision, the strategy, and the role they play. The vision educates, motivates, and coordinates.

Part IV: Implement

Significant amounts of energy from the first five sources are required to fuel implementations. Large-scale change comes from energy created by early results, which are also known as quick hits or small wins. In the case of large and complex change, results may not come immediately. The way to get early results is to set the right goals. Another challenge facing leaders is predicting problems on the human side: managing resistance. With major change initiatives come many smaller change elements.

That being said, there are four different types of change:

• Discretionary: Requires little organizational preparation as it does not disturb the status quo
• Delightful: Can represent improved performance and release positive energy
• Demanding: Requires significant investment in time, resources, and energy. Solid leadership required.
• Dangerous: Resistance is created and can grow and threaten the initiative.

Part V: Consolidate

The ultimate goal: sustained results. Consolidation is the final stage of the change process, which is about making change solid, strong, and firmly established. From beginning to end, change demands extraordinary fidelity. There are several pitfalls leaders suffer in the consolidation stage. There are three levels of change that take place before reaching consolidation:

1. Structural change: This occurs when the nonbehavioral aspects of change are prepared. Nonbehavioral aspects of change relate to structure, systems, process, technology, and legalities.
2. Behavioral change: Change moves here when individuals begin to behave differently under new conditions, and with the aid of different resources.
3. Cultural change: Change will not last unless it takes hold of the elements of organizational culture. The culture must support change.

Based on the three levels of change, it is clear why so many change initiatives do not achieve consolidation after generating results.

Understanding organizational change and its underlying principles is precisely the challenge leaders are facing in the global age. Leaders who are open, collaborative, and approachable are more likely to generate and replenish the energy required for successful change management.

The One Thing You Need to Know by Marcus Buckingham

In this book, Marcus discusses the theme of leveraging your strengths and gives business students, entrepreneurs, and business professionals a fundamental course in outstanding achievement that captures the essence of great managing, great leading, and career success. The exploration of the “One Thing” exposes counterintuitive, but pivotal, differences, between great managing and great leadership and offers practical insights for acting on them effectively.

Part I: The One Thing You Need to Know About Sustained Organizational Success

Buckingham agrees with the premise that great organizations require great leaders, but stipulates that the importance of the role varies according to the challenges being faced. Although his experience more or less conforms to that of Warren Bennis (a great author on leadership) who says, “Leadership accounts for, at the very least, 15 percent of the success of any organization,” his research contradicts pretty much everything else.

1. He does not believe that leadership and management are interchangeable
2. He contends that it is inaccurate to say that everyone, regardless of his or her place in the organization, must be a leader
3. He believes one’s performance as a leader or manager can be improved through practice, experience, and training, but if core talents are lacking, it will be impossible to excel consistently in either role
4. He believes the most effective leaders are not self-effacing and humble - quite the contrary. “A powerful ego, defined as the need to take grand claims, is one of their most defining characteristics.”

Important Note: The chief responsibility of a great manager is not to enforce quality, ensure customer service, set standards, or to build high-performance teams.

Four Skills Important to not Fail as a Manager

1. Great managers know what talents they seek and know it is imperative to select people who possess these requisite endowments.
2. Defining clear expectations is the second basic skill of good management.
3. The third skill concerns praise and recognition.
4. Great managers show the care for their people by bonding with others deliberately and explicitly.

Key Point: “Discover what is unique about each person and capitalize on it.” Individuals are dissimilar in how they think, build relationships, and learn; and they are unique in how altruistic they are, how patient, how much of an expert they need to be, how prepared they need to feel, what drives the, what challenges them, and what their goals are.

Styles of Learning:

• Analyzing - understand tasks by taking them apart, examining their elements, and reconstructing them piece by piece.
• Doing - learn by being thrown into the middle of a new situation and tell them to wing it.
• Watching - learn a great deal, but only when they are given the chance to see the total performance.

Part II: The One Thing You Need to Know About Sustained Individual Success

Only twenty percent of the working world report that they are in a role where they have a chance to do what they do best on a daily basis.

Key Point: “discoer what you do not like doing and stop doing it.”

The secret to sustained success lies in knowing what engages one’s strengths, what does not, and having the self-discipline to reject the latter. Although it is possible to experience some achievement when employed in non-strength-engaging activities, the activities are usually depleting, draining, frustrating, or boring. Thus, sustained success is lessa bout what to accumulate and more about what to edit.

The longer invidivuals put up with aspects of their work thy do not like, the less successful they will be.

Execution by Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan

In the year 2000, 40 CEOs of the Top 200 Fortune 500 companies were let go. This is because sometimes even smart, highly regarded people fail to produce critical results. Results they promised to deliver. Bossidy and Charan believe this is fast becoming an epidemic due not to the volatility or unpredictability of the business environment, but to the direct consequence of the lack of execution. The thesis here is that execution - the real job of business leaders and the key discipline for success today - bridges the gap between what leader want to achieve and the ability of their organizations to deliver it.

Part I: Execution - The Fundamentals

There are three critical points to understand:

1. Integral to strategy, execution is a discipline that prosecutes the three core processes of people, strategy, and operations with rigor, intensity, and depth.

2. It is the major responsibility of the business leader, who gets things done by taking responsibility of the business leader, who gets things done by taking charge of running the three core processes (no delegation).

3. Execution must be a core element of the organization’s culture, embedded in the reward systems and in the norms of behavior.

These points are built on seven essential behaviors of leadership, an effective framework for cultural change, and having the right people in the right place.

Leaders:

• must know their business
• have acquired a lot of knowledge, experience, and wisdom which they must pass on to the next generation of leaders
• directly influence the behavior of the organization and behaviors deliver results
• must change the beliefs that influence people’s behavior
• have the most important job of selecting and evaluating people

Though the judgment, experiences, and capabilities of people make the difference between success and failure, many leaders do not pay enough attention to the quality of this resource - the one thing under their control. Instead they pay more attention to budgeting, strategic planning, and financial monitoring, when they need to commit as much as 40 percent of their time and emotional energy to selecting, appraising and developing talent.

Critical Point: Boards, CEOs, and senior executives place too much emphasis on education and intellectual qualities and neglect to determine how good a person is at getting things done.

Part II: Execution - The How

If leaders model the right behavior, create a culture that rewards execution, and have a consistent system for getting the right people in the right jobs, the foundation is in place for operating and managing the people, strategy, and operations processes effectively. Bossidy and Charan stipulate that the people process is the most important, for people create strategy and translate strategy into operations.

A robust process:

• accurately/exhaustively evaluates individuals
• provides a framework for identifying and developing all levels and kinds of leadership
• is the basis of a strong succession plan

Most companies evaluate the jobs people do today instead of focusing on whether individuals can handle the responsibilities of tomorrow.

This kind of framework must be built on:

• linkage to the strategic plan/milestones (near, medium, and long terms) and operating target
• including specific financial targets
• development of the leadership pipeline through continuous improvement
• decisions on what to do about non performers

Most companies have three major flaws in their budgeting/operations process:

1. The process does not provide for robust dialogue on the plan’s assumptions
2. The budget is built on desired results, but does not specify the actions that ensure those results
3. The process does not provide coaching opportunities for people to learn the whole business, nor does it develop the social structure for working together for a common cause

Thus, an operating plan must include the programs the business is going to complete within one year:

• product launches
• marketing plan
• sales plan
• manufacturing plan that stipulates production outputs
• production plan that improves efficiency to reach specified earnings, sales, margin, and cash flows

Note: An open debate on assumptions is a critical component. Debating the assumptions and making trade-offs build the business leadership capacities of all involved.

The Leadership Challenge by James M. Kouzen and Barry Z. Posner

The Leadership Challenge is your “personal coach in a book”.

Part I: The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership

People who guide others follow common patterns of actions. These patterns are not about actions, but about standard practices that the authors have forged into a dynamic model, the Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership:

1. Model the Way
2. Inspire a Shared Vision
3. Challenge the Process
4. Enable Others to Act
5. Encourage the Heart

These practices lead to credibility and because it makes such a difference, leaders must take it personally. Not only do employee loyalty, commitment, energy, and productivity depend on it, credibility also influences customer and investor attitudes. For this reason the authors advise: DWYSYWD - Do What You Say You Will Do.
Part II: The Ten Commitments - Building your Competence to Lead

The authors note that a leader’s value is not only determined by a set of guiding beliefs, but also by his or her ability to act on these beliefs. Embedded in each of the Five Practices are behaviors, what the authors call “The Ten Commitments of Leadership.” They are:

1. Find your voice by clarifying your personal values
2. Set the example by aligning actions with shared values
3. Envision the Future by Imagining Exciting and Ennobling Possibilities
4. Enlist Others in a Common Vision by Appealing to Shared Aspirations
5. Search for Opportunities by Seeking Innovative Ways to Change, Grow, and Improve
6. Experiment and Take Risks by Constantly Generating Small Wins and Learning from Mistakes
7. Foster Collaboration by Promoting Cooperative Goals and Building Trust
8. Strengthen Others by Sharing Power and Discretion
9. Recognize Contributions by Showing Appreciation for Individual Excellence
10. Celebrate the Values and Victories

Leadership is about “[giving] courage, [spreading] joy, and [caring] about people, product and process all along the way.”

Designing the Customer-Centric Organization by Jay R. Galbraith

“Studies show that sales to existing customers are more profitable than sales to new customers.” With three years of research with McKinsey Organization Design Practice under his belt, Galbraith is the authority on organizational design. The book is a comprehensive customer-centric model for any organization designed to show business leaders an effective means of creating the right infrastructure for truly organizing around the customer.

Part I: The Customer-Centric Imperative

Galbraith starts by showing the differentiators between product-centric and customer-centric organizations.

Product-Centric won’t succeed in the long run because stand-alones commoditize rapidly and destroy profits. The drawbacks to this type of organization are examined from the perspectives of strategy, decision making, and sales.

Strategy:

• Stand-alones commoditize rapidly and destroy profits
• Customer must be highly advanced
• Enterprise must stay on the cutting edge
• Develop new (and improved) products
• Price is determined on the basis of the market and competition

Decision making:

• Revolves around setting priorities for a portfolio of products
• Facilitated by an organizational structure based on product-line profit centers.
• Planning/budgeting, and business review focus on products - those of the company and competition
• Product-development process is paramount

Sales:

• Salespeople rewarded with commissions/managers are rewarded with bonuses based on market share
• Technical employees are rewarded with assignments to create the next product
• Innovative types with in-depth products knowledge are the ones selected and nurtured
• Transaction oriented

On the other hand, customer-centric organizations are the new foundation for profitability, and this means that companies must organize around the customer so as to manage these relationships effectively and profitably. Galbraith also examines this type of organization with the same criteria:

Strategy:

• Strives to provide the best solution for the customer’s needs
• Solution may, or may not, include the best products
• Solution will involved a customized/personalized package of reliable products, services, support, education, and consulting, so as to make the customer more effective

Decision making:

• Leaders manage customer or customer-segment profit centers
• Plans, information systems, and business reviews are geared toward a portfolio of customers around which the company sets priorities
• Most important processes are CRM and solutions development
• Success is measured by the share of customer spending in the market segment and customer satisfaction and retention

Sales:

• Commissions and bonuses are tied to customer satisfaction, retention, and asset growth
• Relationship managers, serving the most important customers, are the most powerful people
• Focus is on developing general managers for accounts rather than salespeople for products
• Relationship oriented

In the new world of business, global, knowledgeable, and powerful customers are saying, “Give us what we’d like, with a side of customization.” While this means forming long-term relationships with the most valuable customers, this can only happen if organizations become customer-centric, assigning strategic priority to this dimension of the business in order to find and integrate as many products and services as possible for their existing customers. But the people in an organization have to be incentivized around the customer-centric goals if they are to be successful.

Part II: Determining how much customer centricity is enough

Many customers want relationships with their key suppliers and this allows astute suppliers to discover unmet customer needs/requirements and expand their offerings to include more products/service packages that make the customer more effective. the more effective the customer, the more the customer will use the supplier and engage in even more dialogue.

Companies that follow a relationship strategy, leading to this kind of solutiosn package, create more value for the customers than customers can create for themselves when they buy stand-alone offerings.

There are four major dimensions of solutions strategy (two major & two minor):

1. Scale and scope of solutions (major)
2. Degree of product/service integration (major)
3. Types of solutions (minor)
4. Percentage of total revenue deriving from solutions (minor)

There are five cumulative levels of complexity when determining how you will interface with a company:

1. Informal networks and e-coordination
2. Formal teams
3. Integrator
4. Matrix organization
5. Separate customer line organization

The IBank example provides many key lessons and guidelines in the application of a solutions strategy:

• Different customers want to do business differently
• Managing complexity provides and advantage
• Customization leads to growth
• Managing customer interactions at all touch points is key
• Customer-centric units are a major step toward creating a customer-centric capability
• Link the customer units with products units

Conclusion

Firms hesitate to take the plunge into full customer-centricity for two reasons: First, many underestimate the transformations needed to implement this kind of solution. Second, many operate under the misapprehension that they are already customer-centric, simply because they have worked so hard over the past 10 or 15 years to become customer focused.

The role of leadership is critical to how an organization becomes customer-centric. Nokia, P&G, Citibank are examples of the competencies that enable leaders to think about the relationship of their companies to the customer in order to provide breakthrough strategies. There are modesl of competencies that show leaders how to take decisive action and energize teams ot execute their business strategies rapidly.

The Speed of Trust by Stephen M.R. Covey

From inspiring trust by beginning with yourself, to utilizing consistent behavior, to creating alignment (a tough one for any organization) this book gives you a 380-page roadmap on building and infusing trust in you and around you (personal relationships, colleagues, teams, families, society). Just like Social Styles allows you to evaluate the particular style of an individual, the Smart Trust(TM) Matrix allows you to determine to what degree one’s present tendencies add to, or reduce, one’s ability to extend trust

How the Results are Determined

Covey begins with how trust is critical to Results. The traditional business formal says that Strategy multiplied by Execution equals Results:

S * E = R.

However, the hidden variable (Trust) in this formula can either discount the output, or greatly increase it:

(S * E)T = R.

But this becomes clear because an organization can have a great Strategy and the ability to Execute, but lack of Trust will kill the Results. Another view is that an organization may be obtaining Results that are meeting benchmarks, but the lack of Trust may not allow their business to:

• scale as they attempt to grow,
• introduce new offerings to the marketplace,
• obtain more business from existing customers,
• or, reduce the speed at which you wish to grow.

Five Waves of Trust

Covey calls them the 5 Waves of Trust, but honestly the waves model just didn’t work for me and the fourth and fifth aren’t necessary. The fourth is the result of the first three being done properly and the fifth is simply a contribution. But here’s how they are broken down:

1. Self Trust: It’s about building the 4 Cores of Credibility that make you believable, both to oneself and others.
2. Relationship Trust: Imbuing the 13 Behaviors to develop consistent behavior.
3. Organizational Trust: Utilizing the 4 Cores and 13 Behaviors to build alignment in an organization.
4. Market Trust: It’s all about brand and the principle of reputation.
5. Societal Trust: Is contribution.

Four Cores of Credibility

The first layer, or Wave is all about the four dimensions of credibility. These are the foundational elements that make people believable to themselves and to others and they are:

1. Integrity: Being the sames individual inside and out (no gap between intent and behavior).
2. Intent: Having a good plan, or purpose.
3. Capabilities: Creating both personal and organizational credibility.
4. Results: Classify an individual as a producer and performer

Thirteen Behaviors

The second layer is about behaving in thirteen different ways. Covey believe that these behaviors are common to high-trust leaders and individuals worldwide. These can all enhance one’s ability to establish trust in all relationships. One through five flow from character, the second five from competence, and the last three from a combination both. This is a list you will most probably have to come back to time and time again.

1. Talking Straight
2. Demonstrating Respect
3. Creating Transparency
4. Righting Wrongs
5. Showing Loyalty
6. Delivering Results
7. Getting Better
8. Confronting Reality
9. Clarifying Expectations
10. Practicing Accountability
11. Listening First
12. Keeping Commitments
13. Extending Trust

Smart Trust

Finally, to inspire trust is to create the foundation on which truly successful organization/relationships stand. Now here’s the key part - this ability (the first job of a leader) is the prime differentiator between managing and leading. A vital component is to extend “Smart Trust”.

The grid below shows how to determine to what degree one’s present tendencies add to, or reduce one’s ability to extend Smart Trust. The ideal here is to be in Zone 2 where there is a high level of propensity to trust and a high analysis in order to manage risk wisely.