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Moving from Chief Executive Officer to Chief EXECUTION Officer

March 11, 2013 //
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What happens when the CEO gets involved in the details of strategy execution?

The E in CEO gets changed.

It’s all too easy for a leader to delegate the actions of strategy execution to levels of management below them.

And it’s a mistake.

By retaining the execution of strategy, the Chief Execution Officer can achieve consensus and commitment across the leadership team; establish and preserve the integrity of the strategy; and engage the team. If done correctly, this approach and these achievements can greatly improve any strategy’s performance.

Randall Russell, VP at Palladium Group and founding editor of Balanced Scorecard Report, has identified the following three practices that can lead to a successful management style of a Chief Execution Officer.

Lead the Leadership Team – creating a leadership team that is unified around the strategy is the most important prerequisite for successful strategy execution. Consensus on and commitment to the strategy provides a litmus test for determining who should stay on the team – and who should go.

Share the Story of the Strategy – too many strategies never get executed because they remain the closely guarded secrets of the leadership team. To be effective, strategy should be shared with all team members. Successful organizations believe that people who perform non-strategic but vital roles should know the general outline of the strategy so that they can become more engaged and find ways to contribute.

Leverage Strategic Performance Feedback – Once the strategy is se and the extended team is engaged, a system of strategic performance feedback must be established. Alignment of performance reward and recognition systems with strategy execution must be done early in the process. Team members who see how their individual roles make a difference will be powerfully motivated.

Application for ChurchWorld Leaders

  1. Establish cross-functional integration, high-level consensus, and commitment to the strategy across your leadership team.
  2. Translate the strategy into a set of measurable objectives that guide behavior across all your teams.
  3. Integrate organization-wide measurements that enable individuals to understand their contribution to the strategy
  4. Align reward and recognitions to the overall strategy while acknowledging unique individual contributions.

Smart leaders translate strategy into execution.

For more information, see the full story here.

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Categories Teamwork, Brand You, Leadership, Strategy

Edison’s Four Phases of Collaboration

February 11, 2013 //
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As noted in yesterday’s post, I’m learning a whole new definition of “collaboration” in my role of Vision Room Curator at Auxano.

Webster’s defines collaboration as “the act or process of collaborating” – meh.

According to Sarah Miller Caldicott, great grandniece of Thomas Edison and author of the new book Midnight Lunch, Edison viewed true collaboration as a value creation continuum. If one were to find a single notebook entry capturing Edison’s definition of true collaboration, Caldicott believes it would read something like this:

Applying discovery learning within a context of complexity, inspired by a common goal or a shared purpose.

True collaboration for Edison operated like an invisible glue that fused learning, insight, purpose, complexity and results together in one continuous effort.

Translating Edison’s decades of groundbreaking practices into language for the 21st Century leader, Caldicott has developed a four-phase model of the collaboration process.

 How do we create the foundation for true collaboration to flourish?

Phase 1 – Capacity: Select small, diverse teams of two to eight people who will thrive in an environment of discovery learning and collegiality.

 How can our collaboration team reframe the problem at hand, driving the greatest range of creativity and breakthrough solutions?

Phase 2 – Context: Focus the outlook of the team toward development of new context that broadly frames the problem or challenge under consideration. Use a combination of individual learning plus hands-on activities to drive perspectives for potential solutions.

 Can the collaboration team stay the course and continue forward despite disagreements?

Phase 3 – Coherence: Maintain collaboration momentum, creating frameworks for progress through inspiration, and inspirational leadership even though disagreements may exist. Newly discover, or re-emphasize, the shared purpose that binds the team together.

How can our collaboration team leverage internal and external networked resources nimbly and with speed?

Phase 4 – Complexity: Equip and reskill teams to implement new ideas or new solutions using internally and externally networked resources, rapidly accessing or managing complex data streams the team must navigate. Leave a footprint that contributes to a broader collective intelligence.

Edison leaves us a legacy we can return to over and over again as we newly shape a future that embraces the highest and best of our collaborative spirit.

If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.    –Thomas Edison

Go Ahead – astound yourself…

A multi-part series being reposted in honor of Thomas Edison’s 166th birthday today

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Categories BookNotes, Innovation, Teamwork

The Basic Four – Communicate

February 8, 2013 //
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A senior leader’s job isn’t to have all the ideas or even most of them. Her job is to communicate corporate goals to employees and motivate them to achieve them. – Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton

A 200,000-person study by the Jackson Organization confirmed that managers who achieve enhanced business results are significantly more likely to be seen by their employees as strong in the Basic Four areas of leadership:

  • Goal Setting
  • Communication
  • Trust
  • Accountability

Authors Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton used that study as a foundation in their book The Carrot Principle, adding on the accelerator of frequent and effective recognition to illustrate that the relationship between recognition and improved business results is both highly predictable and proven to work.

As in all good things, you must start with the basics.

Communicating Openly

When you stop to think about it, communication within an organization is going to happen without a leader’s active participation. Communication is happening every day among employees. If a thing or a person or an event exists in an organization, someone, somewhere, is talking about it. So when a leader fails to constantly and openly communicate “who we are and what’s important,” the conversation doesn’t stop. The dialogue among employees just goes in a different direction, and the organization’s culture develops away from the leader’s influence, goals and priorities.

So what do leaders who openly communicate do? For starters:

  • Set clear guiding values and goals
  • Discuss issues facing the organization and the team – not just the big decisions and announcements
  • Pass on all useful bits of information to employees, especially those that involve change initiatives or that personally affect employees
  • Make time for employees and listen intently when they express opinions and concerns
  • Welcome open discussion from team members about rumors they hear
  • Respond promptly to team member requests for more information
  • Go up their own chain of command to fill in the details they don’t know
  • Introduce employees to other key individuals in the organization, sparking dialogue
  • Give employees online access to relevant databases

Leaders communicate on many other levels as well. They communicate by example, gesture, their decisions, what they value, and what they celebrate, what they reward and what they don’t reward, and their actions.

The one thing they can’t do is communicate from their office.

While meetings, conference calls, and reports are all important, the things that keep leaders in their offices are nowhere near as important as open communications with their team.

It’s impossible to lead people without open communication.

And that requires you to open your door and take a walk…

 

Adapted from The Carrot Principle by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton

Part 3 of a series

Part 1

Part 2

 

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Categories BookNotes, Leadership, Teamwork

The Basic Four – Goal Setting

February 7, 2013 //
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A 200,000-person study by the Jackson Organization confirmed that managers who achieve enhanced business results are significantly more likely to be seen by their employees as strong in the Basic Four areas of leadership:

  • Goal Setting

  • Communication

  • Trust

  • Accountability

Authors Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton used that study as a foundation in their book The Carrot Principle, adding on the accelerator of frequent and effective recognition to illustrate that the relationship between recognition and improved business results is both highly predictable and proven to work.

As in all good things, you must start with the basics.

Setting Clear Goals

The work life of many employees today is seen as a meaningless task with no end in sight. Too many organizations are operating in a vacuum where team members and even their leaders have no idea what is valued. Deprived of direction, team members coast along, getting nowhere fast.

Whoa – did those words just describe the organization that you are a part of? GASP – even your church?

It doesn’t have to be that way.

While leaders cannot often change the tasks in their organizations, they can change team members’ attitudes toward those tasks by setting clear team goals. Be defining the purpose of a task and tying it to a desirable end result, effective leaders infuse work with meaning and purpose. The task remains the same, but its significance in team members’ minds skyrockets.

Great leaders infuse their team with a clear sense of purpose. They not only explain the mission to the organization in terms of serving others, acting with integrity, being the best in their category, and so on, but how that grand, overarching mission applies to specific goals for their team and each individual’s daily work.

Teams need clarity from their leaders: clarity of goals, clarity of progress, and clarity of success. Leaders who provide clarity set an optimistic tone for the future.

A leader has to focus every day on gaining alignment with what matters most to the organization. Achieving goals should be noticed and rewarded while variances from the mission and values should necessitate quick action.

Goal setting may seem to be a basic management skill, but it is rare to find a manager who does this effectively. If you were to think back to an effective manager or leader you’ve had in the past, chances are they not only helped you understand the direction of the team, but how you as an individual contribute to that direction.

The power of a clearly communicated goal is amazing. Cultures around the world from all time periods have created epic myths about journeys through danger, despair, and ultimately, triumph. What makes the journey and its trials worthwhile is the hero’s noble purpose – his goal. Those stories live on today…

Isn’t it time for you to create an amazing legend of your purpose (goal) that permeates deeply within and through every member of your team?

Next: The Basic Four – Communication

Adapted from The Carrot Principle by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton

Part 2 of a series

Part 1

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Categories BookNotes, Leadership, Teamwork

Designing Elevation Church’s Volunteer Culture with the Excellence of Nordstrom’s – Team Leaders

January 21, 2013 //
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Reaction and comments from yesterday’s post and the correlation to the Ritz Carlton brings to mind another iconic retail establishment known for its customer service: Nordstrom’s.

Last fall, I was privileged to speak at the Worship Facility Conference and Expo on the topic of “Servant Leadership.” I had been doing research on Nordstrom’s customer service principles, and found that they were easy to translate into the volunteer culture at my church, Elevation Church in Charlotte NC.

Taking the same 3-tier approach at Nordstrom’s, you can read a quick summary of the first tier here. Here’s a quick summary of the second tier:

Part Two: What eLeaders Can Do to Create a Culture of Servants

#1 Strategy: Recruit the Smile

  1. It’s not the role for everyone
  2. 4 reasons volunteers choose your eTeam
  3. Recruit the smile, train the skill
  4. Invest in your team

That’s My Job: Empower Teams to Act Like Entrepreneurs

  1. Trust your team
  2. Give them freedom to make decisions on the spot
  3. Push decision-making responsibility and authority down to the lowest level possible
  4. Encourage your team every step of the way
  5. Use mistakes as tools for learning

Dump the Rules: Tear Down the Barriers to Exceptional Volunteer Service

  1. Trust your team’s judgment
  2. Simplify the process
  3. Do what’s right
  4. Promote one rule: The Golden Rule

This is How We Do It: Manage, Mentor, and Maintain Great Teams

  1. Find ways to motivate your team
  2. Treat the team with dignity and respect
  3. Encourage new team members to find mentors
  4. Promote a culture where team members mentor unselfishly
  5. Provide coaching tools
  6. Promote a culture of loyalty and ownership

Recognition, Competition, & Praise: Create a Sustainable, Emotional Bond with Your Team

  1. Always find ways to praise team members for great acts of GS
  2. Recognize and reward
  3. Provide team members with information on how they are doing
  4. Send notes, emails, phone calls to team members regularly

Staff and coordinators may create the atmosphere and culture, but it is up to the people on the front lines to put it into practice. Team Leaders at Elevation have experienced the front lines – that’s where they came from! Because of this, they know what to look for in a new volunteer, how to empower people, mentor them, train them, and praise them for a job well done.

Next: Team Members

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Categories Teamwork, Volunteers

The Lineup at Elevation Uptown

January 20, 2013 //
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It’s one thing to have a Credo, Three Steps of Service, and 12 Service Values like the Ritz-Carlton (see the post here for more details). Many businesses go through the exercise of defining key values or composing mission statements. They might even display them in their literature, or in imposing art displays on the corporate walls.

How many organizational leaders understand the importance of regular and repetitive presentation of the core aspects of their business – not only to management, but to their front-line staff?

Enter the “lineup” at Ritz-Carlton.

To truly appreciate the Ritz-Carlton leadership approach to repeated dissemination of the “Gold Standard” mentioned here, you would have to drop in on a section of the housekeeping staff as they prepare for their days work – or at the corporate headquarters – or in the kitchen of the fine restaurants that serve the hotel chain – or anywhere, and everywhere, throughout the entire organization.

You would observe that a meeting is taking place at the beginning of each shift. Not just any meeting, though: the leader in each group starts by sharing the Credo and talking about the importance of creating a unique guest experience. Another team member might share a guest story from a Ritz-Carlton hotel in another country. Another team member shares how what they do in their department helps create memorable guest experiences. Then a few quick announcements, special recognitions are given, and the meeting is closed with a motivational quote by another team member.

All in about 20 minutes.

Every day.

On every shift.

In every Ritz-Carlton hotel and office around the world.

The magic of the lineup involves the following:

  • Repetition of values – the core belief that values need to be discussed daily, and that values can’t be discussed enough
  • Common language – shared phrases across all tasks binds the team together
  • Visual symbols – The Credo is printed on a card that all team members carry at all times
  • Oral traditions – Personal, direct, and face-to-face communication makes a huge impact in a world increasingly dominated by e-mail, text, and voice messages
  • Positive storytelling – stories communicate life in a powerful and memorable way
  • Modeling by leaders – the active, daily presence of the leaders communicates the importance of the time together

What would “lineup” for each of your teams do to preserve the core values, communicate the importance of everyone on the team, and provide momentum for the day’s activities?

At Elevation Uptown, here’s what our ‘lineup’ looks like on Sunday mornings at 7:45 AM:

 Elevation Uptown 012013
Or how about this word for the process? Alignment.

That’s how we roll Uptown!

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Categories Guest Experience, Teamwork, Volunteers

The 7 Step Road Map to Being All In

August 13, 2012 //
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To have any hope of succeeding as a leader you need to get your team “all in.”

No matter the size of your team, few things will have a bigger impact on your performance than getting your people to buy into your ideas, your cause, and to believe what matters.

- All In, Adrian Gostick & Chester Elton

Best-selling authors of The Carrot Principle and The Orange Revolution, Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton’s new book All In answers one of the most overlooked leadership questions of the day: Why are some leaders able to get their employees to commit wholeheartedly to their culture and give that extra push that leads to outstanding results?

As with their previous works, a huge (in this case, 300,000 person) study led to a groundbreaking finding: leaders of the highest performing groups create a “culture of belief.” In these distinctive organizations, people believe in their leaders and in the organization’s vision, values, and goals. Team members are engaged, enabled, and energized (the authors use the term Three Es).

Based on the extensive interview process and combined with their years of experience, the authors created a seven-step road map for creating a culture of belief:

  • Define Your Burning Platform – define the mission with great clarity and instill a sense of urgency
  • Create a Customer Focus – focus on customers and mandate a pro-customer orientation
  • Develop Agility – learn to see the future and position your team to meet both seen and unseen challenges
  • Share Everything – create a culture that is a place of truth, has constant communication, and exhibits marked transparency
  • Partner with Your Talent – success is direct result of your teams’ unique ingenuity and talent
  • Root for Each Other – high levels of appreciation and camaraderie create a tangible esprit de corps
  • Establish Clear Accountability – teams must be held accountable for goals, but have the responsibility and tools to ensure their success, with appropriate rewards at completion

All In is a book about culture, but more than that it is the story of how great leaders create unique, inviting, and rewarding places to work – or serve.

What about you – are you ready to lead all in?

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Categories BookNotes, Change, Leadership, Personal Development, Teamwork

A New Way to Play Follow the Leader

July 19, 2012 //
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Walt Disney’s unique definition of leadership:

The ability to establish and manage a creative climate in which individuals and teams are self-motivated to the successful achievement of long-term goals in an environment of mutual respect and trust.

Today’s post continues excerpts from Innovate the Pixar Way by Bill Capodagli and Lynn Jackson. The authors contend that Pixar has reawakened the innovative spirit of Walt Disney and set new standards for commercial and critical achievement. The book explores how Pixar has built an organization on the simple philosophy that quality is the best business plan. With a track record of 13 for 13 smash feature animation films, it’s hard to argue!

Walt Disney didn’t ascribe to the childhood playbook for “follow the leader” – instead, he created an environment of self-motivated creative thinkers who worked together to deliver a magical, magnetic, enchanting experience for his audience.

Pixar understands leadership the same way.

 

  • Establishment of a Clear Vision – Pixar has a clear vision and communicates that vision to its team. The best leaders are excellent communicators, engaging their teams by providing them with the tools and information needed for success – and then trusting them to do their jobs.
  • Creative Climate – Creative climates need leadership and a management style that helps them to develop and grow and allows them to have fun in the process. Pixar is in the people development business, going to great lengths to nourish and support its team members. They invest in people, creating a culture of learning, filled with lifelong learners.
  • Individuals and Teams – Pixar thrives on teamwork, but each person on the team is given creative ownership of even the smallest task. This level of autonomy and accountability is practically unheard of in the movie business, where a top-down fear-driven culture is the norm.
  • Self-Motivated Personnel – great leaders know that self-motivated people are essential to developing a creative culture. Pixar is continually on the lookout for new talent that can blossom with their unique culture. The team at Pixar is 100 percent self-motivated to being as creative as they can be and to making movies the best they can. Period.
  • Long-Term Goals – It’s always been about creating for the long-term at Pixar. Their definition of “long-term” speaks volumes about its culture. They go to great lengths to ensure that its culture can support new ventures and still remains true to their values.
  • Mutual Respect and Trust – Pixar team members have embarked on a journey together, nurturing one another in an environment of mutual respect and trust. When leaders exhibit a high level of respect and trust, earned over time, that’s exactly what they will get in return.

There’s no “follow the leader” game at Pixar. Their playbook simply calls for an open playground where leadership serves as a catalyst in the pursuit of big dreams.

If you were to hold up the “magic mirror on the wall” to your leadership style, what would you see?

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Categories BookNotes, Disney, Leadership, Teamwork

13 for 13

July 13, 2012 //
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This is not a post about triskaidekaphobia, but today would be a good day for one. No, it’s a simple question:

What if Pixar came to your church?

This is Pixar Animation Studio’s track record: 13 for 13.

That’s thirteen films since the studio’s launch in 1995, every one of them a smashing success. What’s their secret?

Their unusual creative process.

Unlike the typical studio that gathers all the necessary personnel to produce a film and then releases them after it is finished, Pixar’s staff of writers, directors, animators, and technicians moves from project to project.

The result: a team of moviemakers who know and trust one another in ways unimaginable on most sets.

My wife and I saw “Brave” recently, and it reminded me of an article in Wired magazine from a couple of years ago on how Pixar does it, using “Toy Story 3″ as the example. You can read the whole article here, but take a look at their step-by-step process in a nutshell:

Inspiration

  • Day 1 – coming up with a great story. The creative team leaves the campus for an off site retreat, and knocks out a quick storyline – which they promptly discard.
  • Day 3 – working from a series of plot points, screenwriter Michael Arndt begins drafting the script. Director Lee Unkrich and the story artists start sketching storyboards. The storyboards allow the filmmakers to begin imagining the look and feel of each scene.

Presentation

  • Day 36 – character design begins. Working in digital images, sketches, and clay figures, each character comes to life in a process called simulation – a constant negotiation between the artistic and technical teams.
  • Day 123 - the storyboards are turned into a story reel that can be projected, much like an elaborate flip book. This allows the team to watch along with an audience and determine what works and what doesn’t.

Characterization

  • Day 380 – actors come into the studio to record all the lines – dozens of times. The actors are also being filmed, so the animators can watch the actor’s expressions and use them as reference points when they animate the characters’ faces.
  • Day 400 – shaders began to add color and texture to character’s’ bodies and other surfaces that appear in the film. Complex algorithms are used to simulate the effect of light and shadow on different toy surfaces like plastic, cloth, or wood.

Animation

  • Day 533 – the pictures are moving, defined by up to 1,000 points of possible movement that animators can manipulate like strings on a puppet. Each day the team starts by reviewing the previous day’s work, ripping it apart to make each scene more expressive.
  • Day 806 – technical challenges pile up. The studio’s design which places essential facilities in the center allows the team to have unplanned creative conversations while on the way for a cup of coffee or walking to the bathroom.
  • Day 898 – the animators hit high gear, working late into the night in customized and personalized offices.
  • Day 907 – rendering, the process of using computer algorithms to generate a final frame, is well under way. The average frame (a move has 24 frames per second) takes about seven hours to render, though complex frames can take nearly 39 hours of computer time. The Pixar building has two massive render farms, each of which contains hundreds of servers running 24 hours a day.

Resolution

  • Day 1,070 – the movie is mostly done. the team has completed 25 of the film’s sequences and is finishing the most complicated scene of the move. It has taken 27 technical artists four months to perfect that single scene.
  • Day 1,084 – Only weeks away from release, the audio mixers at Skywalker Sound combine dialog, music, and sound effects. Every nuance is adjusted and readjusted. Director Unkrich: “We don’t ever finish a film – I could keep on making it better. We’re just forced to release it.”

And you thought getting a sermon ready for Sunday was difficult!

The process depicted above can be highly constructive for you and your team. Granted, you don’t have either the budget or the time to produce a film like Toy Story 3, but you can take the principles above and apply them in your context, resources, and time frame.

So, how about it? What Pixar creative magic can you put to use this week?

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Categories Teamwork, Vision

Lessons in Teamwork

June 22, 2012 //
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…courtesy of the Miami Heat

Here’s a repost from last year I thought was appropriate since the Miami Heat won the NBA Championship last night.

I’m not really a fan of pro basketball, but I must say that the free-agent talent raid pulled off by the Miami Heat has made for interesting conversations since last summer. From marketing hype at it’s most annoying (LeBron James’ announcement –“The Decision” – that he was going to the Heat) to instant pundits proclaiming them the next dynasty to a chorus of “I told you so”, it’s been more like a three-ring circus than a basketball team.

But leave it to Fast Company magazine’s Chuck Salter to find some great lessons in teambuilding from, well building a team. You need to read the whole story here, but for a quick taste read the following:

6 Steps Required to Create a Dream Team (in any setting)

  1. The Ego Equation: start with sacrifice. High-priced talent doesn’t ensure success. Think New  York Yankees – or the Knicks. Sports not your thing? Remember when Steven  Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen looked like a can’t-miss  team at DreamWorks? Turns out, no one bothered to account for the polarity  of their personalities. Teaming up has its trade-offs. Where once Wade had the spotlight, now he has to share it. No more entourage traveling with James. All three have seen less of the basketball. In other words, the team’s leaders have done what stars need to do when they merge: show a  willingness to sacrifice. It’s a necessary start.
  2. The Rule of Many: stars  can’t go it alone. New hires perform better when they bring a former colleague with them. Miami brought over a player who had been with James for seven seasons. The team also kept a longtime buddy of Wades who had been on the team eight years. All told, Miami added six new players in a span of 21 days: three-point specialists, guys to do the grunt work of rebounding, setting picks, and feeding the ball to the “Big 3.”
  3. The Platoon Principle: adversity is an asset. Nothing brings a team together like a common enemy. Google needs Facebook. Under Armour  needs Nike. The Heat need everybody who’s not the Heat. Coach Erik Spoelstra hoped to turn the vitriol to his advantage. The real bonding didn’t occur until the team began to lose – and badly. Said Spoelstra: “When it’s raw, when you don’t get along, that’s when there’s the most opportunity for growth.” Under duress, Miami found its identity.
  4. The Trust Theorem: when  the going gets tough, turn to one another. Watching the three  superstars at practice, it’s obvious these guys get along. But camaraderie  doesn’t necessarily translate into collaboration. When you assemble a team of experts, it’s better to have complementary, not competing, specialties.
  5. The Credibility Conundrum: manage from the inside out. Coach  Spoelstra’s position is like any manager operating between the CEO and the  in-the-trenches talent. Spoelstra needs to tread carefully, balancing his obligations to his boss and his commitments to his players, all in his  quest to build his own credibility for leadership. The coach must wrestle when to coddle and when to push, trying to master the sleight of hand that allows the young millionaires to feel they have ownership of the team even as he calls the shots.
  6. The Law of Patience: beware the blame game. Everyone remembers the six NBA titles the Chicago Bulls won with Jordan, Pippen, and a cast of specialists to support them. What we tend to forget is how long it took the Bulls to put all those pieces together. They didn’t win the first year. Or the second. Or even  the third. It took the team four years. Chemistry takes time. The playersrespect one another’s individual skills and even learn from one another. But those patterns don’t emerge right away. Chemistry isn’t something you create and then ignore. It’s a reflection of the bonds between members, and those bonds are fragile and needy – and constantly changing.

This is what any team aspires to: passion, unity, and absolute conviction that you can achieve whatever you want as a group.

What teamwork lessons can you learn from the Heat and apply to your team?

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Categories Teamwork
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