LDRLB | Archive | May 2012

Archives For May 2012

Five Signs of a Spineless Leader

John Bell — May 30, 2012

Do you have to meet a spineless leader to know one? Not necessarily. Recently, I unveiled a spineless leader upon learning how he handled a single set of circumstances – the orchestrating of an unfair and unjust hiring practice that covertly circumvented the promotion of the best candidate. This is all I needed to visualize the yellow stripe illuminating from the back of his neck to the base of his spine.

For sure, the details of this tragic case would make for juicy story-telling. But I’ll not go there because the story is a little too close to home. All I’m going to do is use this politically-motivated example to share five signs of a spineless leader. If you see any of these within the leadership of your organization, beware. I suggest you think seriously about moving on.

Spineless leaders refuse to hire people better than themselves. They feel threatened that star performers will show them for who they really are. Their practices weaken and demotivate. Ultimately this weakens the organization’s product or service.
They hide behind, and manipulate self-appointed committees to get what they want. This mitigates the ramifications of the decision they want to make, and allows them to escape the responsibility for that decision.
The decisions they do make seldom put stakeholders first. These stakeholders can be customers (a business leader), constituents (a politician), or students (a school administrator).
They dodge the truth and avoid the tough decisions by asking questions – superficially seeking the opinions of followers. Too many “What do you think?” questions are nothing more than avoidance.
They answer questions by beginning their response with, “That’s a good question.” This gives spineless leaders time to choreograph a political response that either fails to answer the question or does so in vague terms.

Spineless leaders are accidental leaders, not intentional ones. And everyone knows it. The obvious question is “how do these cowards become the boss in the first place?” While one can attribute their rise to political shrewdness, the frightening answer is that someone bought into their “smoke and mirrors” and promoted them into a leadership position.

Spineless leaders hire spineless leaders and create a slithering chain of command that is difficult to break. Sadly, in the case “close to home,” that person remains at the top of the heap.

John Bell is the retired CEO of coffee/confectioner Jacobs Suchard’s North American business, now part of Kraft Foods. After Kraft, he became a strategy and branding consultant for several of the globe’s most respected blue-chip consumer goods companies. Currently, he is a regular blogger at www.ceoafterlife.com and an online contributor to Fortune and Forbes.

In Leadership bell, Leadership

Leading HR: Excelling in Administration

Tim Vanderpyl — May 29, 2012

HR leaders, in their quest to be strategic, must not forget about the administrative tasks that still must get done accurately, effectively and efficiently. The scope of HR typically includes managing the HR Information Systems, overseeing contracted services, ensuring compliance with applicable labor and human rights laws, coordinating and delivering on projects and many other things. These mostly administrative tasks are an inevitable aspect of the bureaucratic organization that Max Weber described. If HR departments did not oversee these areas, who would? The role of the HR department does not stop with administrative tasks, but HR leaders must continually find ways to present the data they have in useful ways to leaders.

(I know your mortgage payment bounced last week because we forgot to pay you. Just fill out this form and we’ll fix that in a month or so. While you are here though, check out the itinerary for the Christmas party we’ve been working on!).

HR leaders diminish the importance of administrative and transactional tasks to their own detriment. No matter how ‘strategic’ an initiative might be, no employee will trust HR if the payroll department is unable to get their paychecks or benefits right. Operational leaders will not trust HR if the department constantly bungles their transactions. These transactions and administration are a necessity from HR departments, and HR leaders must ensure their teams excel in all aspects of performing them.

Some companies attempt to outsource as many administrative aspects of HR as possible. This may work for some organizations, but can create its own difficulties as well. For instance, healthcare workers in Calgary, Alberta filed a $50 Million class action lawsuit against Telus Sourcing Solutions Inc. in 2009. Telus was hired by a number of healthcare regions to perform administrative aspects of HR for the HR department. This lawsuit alleged numerous errors and issues with the processing of payroll and demanded damages and became a publicity nightmare for government, executives, and their HR department. Outsourcing does not abdicate responsibility and requires unique leadership competencies by HR leaders who must still be responsible and accountable for the services provided.

Metrics are important but must be delivered in a way that serves and benefits the rest of the organization. These metrics must not simply create more work for other departments. Unfortunately, many HR leaders do this inadvertently and diminish their own credibility in doing so (sure I’ll help you, just fill out this 13 page form first and we’ll add it to that pile over there). HR leaders must take a servant leadership approach to the rest of the organization, in order to be truly effective. Few people would argue that administrative tasks are glamorous, but they are necessary to help the organization function, and for the people in the organization to thrive at whatever they were hired to do.

HR departments may not directly deal with customers, but their ability to excel in administration directly impacts the employees who do.

CBC News. (2009, May 21). Health workers file lawsuit over Telus payroll system. Retrieved from link.

This is part Two of a series I will be doing this summer on leadership by and from HR.

Tim Vanderpyl is a Certified Human Resource Professional (CHRP) with Canada’s largest catholic healthcare organization. He holds a Master of Arts in Leadership from Trinity Western University and is working toward a Doctorate in Strategic Leadership at Regent University.

In Leadership hr, human resources, vanderpyl

Why Adaptability is the New Strategy

David Burkus — May 25, 2012

Adaptability is a requirement for human survival. The ability to adapt smarter or faster than the situation is what allowed the species to survive and flourish. In his new book, Adaptability: The Art of Winning in An Age of Uncertainty, Max McKeown argues that adaptability is an equal requirement for corporate survival. As the pace of change quickens, many companies find themselves unable to keep up. McKeown uses several case studies to illustrate his thesis: Blockbuster’s inability to adapt to consumer demands, which led to being outpaced by Netflix. Border’s inability to see the way online retailing forced a change in business models led to closing its doors and admitting defeat by Amazon.

McKeown argues that an executive can develop a plan; the truly great leaders know how to react to new events and new possibilities. But this kind of adaptability doesn’t happen naturally. McKeown explains how organizations can increase their ability to see the need to adapt, understand what adaptation is needed and lead their organization through the transformation. There are many books on strategy, one even written by McKeown, but Adaptability is different. In Adaptability, McKeown explains why the science of strategic planning might just give way to the art of reacting…or adapting.

In Leadership adaptability, book review, mcKeown, strategy

Innovative Leaders Aren’t Scared of Customers

Soren Kaplan — May 23, 2012

I recently had the opportunity to meet with a major bank. The discussion involved how to create new financial services for their high net worth clients (a.k.a. people who are way richer than I’ll ever be). I offered my opinion that directly engaging their clients could provide a big stimulus for their ideas. “We can’t talk to our customers”, my bank clients replied, “their relationships are way too important to us.” Much to my surprise, I gleaned from the tone of their reply a very basic fact; this major bank is scared of its customers. Underlying this core truth is the fear that customer loyalty may be jeopardized if my client approached its customer base with questions for them and about them; or that customers would assume my client is unclear about the future of their business; or the simple fear that customers won’t want to take the time to talk to them (e.g., the fear of rejection).

During an organization’s start-up days, it’s much easier to test-drive new ideas since there’s not much to lose. With only a few customers in the early stage of the game, any open-ended conversation with someone interested in what we’re doing is welcomed with enthusiasm. But the growth of a company can have an inverse relationship on customer focus. This happens when the company is actually doing well serving its customers with a specific product or service but refrains from trying something new fearing that valued paying customers will take their business elsewhere. As a result, incremental improvements become the focus. And cautious behavior becomes the norm.

In contrast, the most innovative leaders and companies continually engage customers to help them reinvent their offerings and their organizations. And they do so strategically. A different bank, for example, recently created an incubator where early-stage ideas could be seen and worked on by employees only. They recognized that certain ideas simply needed more time in the conceptual oven before they felt baked enough for customer feedback. But they also created a “lab” where they brought in real live customers to test-drive new online banking products. The lab proactively recruited customers who were pre-screened as forward thinkers who were interested in providing input. Using this “back room – front room” model, the bank kept certain ideas away from customers until they were “ready” and then used the lab to gain inputs from the customers that they knew were pre-disposed to “co-creating” the future with them. Through rapid prototyping, the bank was able to bring a mobile banking application to market in just 60 days (versus the typical 12-18 months), and at approximately one-tenth of the cost.

What is true in human nature is also true of corporate culture: we fear what we do not know. So, the next time fear of the customer is heard in the voices of your colleagues (or even in your own head), you might try asking: “What are we most afraid of… losing a customer or missing out on an opportunity for innovation?”

Soren Kaplan is the author of Leapfrogging and a speaker, educator, and managing principal at InnovationPoint, where he teaches leaders how to create business breakthroughs.

In Innovation innovation, kaplan, Leadership

Fighting Self-Delusion in Leadership

Guest — May 21, 2012

This is a guest post from Betty Bailey, Ph.D from Reliant. LDRLB has partnered with Relient to offer a FREE Leadership Development Assessment to our readership. To take the assessment, click here.

“In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future.”—Eric Hoffe

People who become executives begin their careers as functional or technical specialists. A specialty is the basis on which to grow new, diverse expertise and ultimately either choose to stay on the specialist ladder or move to management.

As a person moves from first time manager, to managing others, to managing groups, to managing an organization; work continuously broadens, organizational dynamics and politics become increasingly complex and require an evolving set of priorities.

A leader’s awareness and their speed of adaptation in a new role influence the organizational culture, employee engagement, client loyalty and financial results. The keys to a leader’s success? Knowing yourself; assessing preparedness and requirements of work, being clear about internal and external measures of success, being honest with oneself about personal readiness, ways to maintain resilience and creating trusted connections with others.

Mentors and role models all serve to give feedback, provide perspective and increase awareness. They can be our trusted advisors and the ones who we can rely on to tell us the truth. They can become the accelerator of a leader’s success.

The tendency towards self-delusion increases the higher a leader/manager ascends the organizational hierarchy. The higher one climbs, the more placating peers and subordinates become, resulting in acute insulation and putting leaders in a type of vacuum away from constructive feedback. What’s the culprit? Isolationism, a relative lack of honest, critical, and corrective feedback, all part of a phenomenon that conventional training and development practices, in style and substance, cannot adequately address.

That’s where Leadership Assessment and 360 feedback can play a proactive role to provide information for self insight. We all have blind spots or areas where personal growth once areas, when identified, can improve our effectiveness.

The following graphic illustrates how to use feedback and create a plan for growth.

Step one is to have information through a 360 assessment or Leadership Assessment
Step two is having someone who can review your assessment data with you and discuss your strengths and areas for development, such as a mentor
Step three is to create a plan for growth and change
Step four is ongoing practice to master new behaviors
Step five is meeting with your mentor to discuss success or times when you weren’t so successful and determine improvement tactics

This diagram illustrates the following points:

We all learn from examining how similar our self perception is to our public perception
The closer the self and public perception are aligned, the more authentic we are “coming across” and the more comfortable we are in our own skin
Having a mentor who can give us feedback about a self assessment or a 360 broadens our perspective and can help us reframe or coach us on areas which are more difficult ones to change
Practice is key. Growth as a leader requires practice, feedback and acknowledgment that practice is not an event. Rather it’s ongoing and takes time to fully master behavior change.

In Leadership bailey, development, Leadership, self-delusion