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Strategy: How Savvy Are You About Office Politics?…Playing Politics in the Workplace is Not about Gossip, Backstabbing, or Opportunism

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Playing politics in the workplace is not about gossip, backstabbing, or opportunism. Instead, savvy people in business know how to network and with whom. They also understand how decisions are made in their organizations, and they have learned to use these political factors to their advantage.

OvercomeFear

Political savvy is critical for career success and the good news is that you don’t need to lose your integrity in the process. Political savvy involves developing relationships and a sensitivity to the culture of the organization. This can be accomplished over time with the use of keen observation and listening skills.

In her research on this topic, Lisa Mainierointerviewed 55 high profile executive women in the 1980s to determine the role corporate politics played in their career histories. Her article, “On Breaking the Glass Ceiling: The Political Seasoning of Powerful Women Executives,” is the result of her interviews about their involvement in workplace politics. Most of the women interviewed felt that “politics” was a dirty word and did not admit to engaging in the politics.

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Mainiero stated, “A careful analysis of the career histories of these women, however, showed that they developed a sensitivity to corporate politics that belied their comments. As they recounted key developmental events in their careers, it became clear that not only were these women astute observers of their corporate cultures, but they had an ability to build alliances and partnerships that were unequaled among their peers.” In essence, they became politically savvy over time despite their lack of intention to do so.

What is involved in learning to be politically savvy?

Using Mainiero’s work as a guide, I have identified four stages for development of political savvy. In each of these stages, I have indicated specific characteristics and milestones that will help you figure out where you are in this process and where you need to go to further your savvy skills.

Stage 1: Naiveté

In Stage 1, you are completely focused on your work. In fact, you spend most of your time in your cubicle or office. You most likely work long hours and are not tuned into or even aware of the politics around you.

You are in Stage 1 if you:

Are unaware of unwritten “Rules of the Game”

Are 100 percent work focused

Learn about workplace politics through a negative or positive experience.
You can be in Stage 1 at the very beginning of your career or when you transition to a new role or company and need to learn the rules of the game all over again. Then something occurs that catches you off guard and opens your eyes to the culture and decision-making process. Maybe you were passed over for a promotion or see others less qualified than you being promoted. At this point, you begin to move toward Stage 2.

Stage 2: Great Work

You are in this stage when you:

Build a reputation for great performance

Are aware of who has the power and influence in the organization.

Understand the importance of relationships

Focus on career advancement but you do not yet have a strategic plan to move forward

Do some networking, but not strategically.

In this stage, you see the importance of developing your personal brand and creating visibility and credibility across the organization. You still work very hard, but now you see that relationships are also important for your advancement. However, you are not actively building relationships for your career or prioritizing this. You are aware of the politics but do not yet engage. You recognize that if you want to get ahead, you need to focus on your career, not just your work. You have yet to figure out how to fit this into your work schedule.

Stage 3: Career Strategy

The next stage, Stage 3, is about becoming strategic. In this stage you are:

Learning delegation/management skills

Building strategic relationships

Seeking mentors/sponsors/coach

Learning to talk about accomplishments

In this stage you are looking at where you want to go and creating a strategic plan to get there. Your plan includes building relationships with key stakeholders and influencers. You are aware that if you want to succeed, you need to delegate to and empower your team and develop your own personal influence and self-promotion skills. In this stage, you recognize the importance of working with a coach or finding a mentor and sponsor.

Many of my clients are in this third stage. They have established themselves as talented and hardworking and now realize that they need to work with their team to reach the next level of success. The work involves how to motivate and inspire the team; how to sell their ideas to their supervisors, peers, and direct reports to achieve business outcomes—in other words, how to create influence and be recognized as a talented manager.

One of my clients, Katherine, contacted me to help her create more visibility and credibility for herself in the global financial services firm in which she works. Katherine describes herself as the “go-to person”—the person who gets things done. My interviews with her peers, direct reports, and supervisors confirmed that this was Katherine’s reputation in the organization. Though her performance was exemplary, she was perceived as more of a doer than a manager. Coaching her to empower and delegate to her team has improved her executive presence and therefore leadership potential. Helping her to identify and build relationships with the power people resulted in her identifying a sponsor and getting promoted twice in 18 months.

Stage 4: Political Savvy

Using personal influence

Mentoring others

Maintaining credibility/visibility

Leading and inspiring others

In Stage 4, you have reached a leadership position by leveraging your talent and hard work along with the relationships you have built across the organization. Now at the top of your organization, you see politics as a way of maintaining your status, promoting your ideas, and helping others to move up the ladder. It’s more competitive on top and you spend much of her time and energy working the politics. You are a great role model for other women in the company and mentors other men and women to achieve their goals.

Bear in mind, as you develop your political savvy you will most likely move back and forth between stages. There are no formal rites of passage. These stages are meant to be a road map for you to track your development and progress.

Where are you in terms of your political savvy?

What stage best represents where you are right now?

What do you need to do to move to the next stage of political savvy?

If you found this article valuable, please follow me on Twitter TWTR +6.22% @selfpromote and check outmy website for more resources and interviews.

Leadership: 6 Things Wise Leaders Do To Engage Their Employees…These 6 Things are What Employees are Constantly Thinking About, but Not Talking Enough About with their Leaders

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An article in the New York Daily News reports that nearly 70% of U.S. employees are miserable at work. According to the story, research conducted by the Gallup Poll suggests that the majority of American’s dislike or feel disengaged on the job. Needless to say, this is disturbing news. It’s also an indicator that leaders are having trouble finding ways to stimulate engagement with today’s employees – a workforce that is much more diverse and younger than ever before.

SheepHerder

Many corporations are experiencing transformation mode, where leadership is about enabling the full potential in others. It’s about allowing employees to be their authentic selves so they can leverage their strengths and unique perspectives. I know this firsthand; in the early years of my career, I was considered high-potential by an organization that was reinventing itself. Rather than assume I was too young to take on the additional responsibilities of hiring and leading people twice my age to accomplish their goals, the organization’s leadership invested in my potential and as a result I grew quickly in this new role. This calculated risk from leadership paid off, and allowed me to prove that as an executive in my late 20s, I could generate tremendous revenue growth and ROI for the organization. I will forever be grateful to those leaders that engaged me early on and guided me rightly.

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Leaders need to let go and guide their employees to mature within new and expansive roles and responsibilities. Employees want to feel valued and challenged; they want to be trusted and given the freedom to explore and learn within the job. Employees that stretch themselves to grow and take on more advanced assignments especially should be given the opportunity to further accelerate their advancement. The bottom line is that leaders must continuously create new opportunities for their employees – or their workforce will not be innovative enough.
How else can you determine if an employee is capable of performing and stepping-up their game if you are not continuously finding new ways to engage them? This is leadership and it takes extra time and effort. If you are not cut out for this, then reconsider your leadership role. If you are not engaging your employees to create great teams, you are being irresponsible to the organization and the people you serve. Perhaps this explains the Gallup Poll’s recent findings.

Today’s leaders must constantly focus on the growth of their teams and strengthening the capabilities of individuals that can make the team more effective; this creates an environment of continuous innovation and initiative. Think of your employees as an innovation lab. As such, employee engagement should always be abundant!

To assure you don’t create a reputation as a leader that doesn’t engage employees, here are six things to consider to more effectively engage your employees. These are fundamental tips that employees desire from their leaders, and if implemented properly, will stimulate employee engagement that’s been missing.

1. Stop unknowingly creating tension

Leaders unknowingly create tension with their employees when they expect them to behave like they do, rather than encouraging them to be their authentic selves. Opportunities are everywhere, but few leaders have the eyes to see them. When employees are encouraged to be themselves and not what others want them to be, they will begin to embrace an entrepreneurial attitude that wasn’t previously being leveraged – thus stimulating engagement.

Tension is created by leaders who don’t take the time to engage with their employees. When an employee feels that their leader doesn’t care – or is disingenuous about their career and future When an employee feels that their leader doesn’t care – or is disingenuous about their career and future opportunities, they may begin to shut down and grow bitter. Employees respect leaders that allow them to use their most natural skills and characteristics. Employees are most engaged when they don’t feel confined to an environment of limitations and constraints.   Be more aware of what your employees need and stop unknowingly creating tension.

2. Detect the most positive capabilities in people

Stop spending time being overly critical of what your employees are not doing right and identify what they are naturally gravitating towards – that which gets them excited. Throw their job description out the door and focus on those areas your employees enjoy contributing to the most and build a plan that utilizes their most positive capabilities to create the outcomes you desire.

Everyone wants to enjoy what they do at work, so allow employees to engage with the business in ways that generate the results that you require, while giving them the flexibility to navigate and explore how they can best contribute. See well beyond the obvious. Expand your leadership lens to detect what matters most to your employees and allow them to flourish.

3. Empower to discover potential

You will never know what an employee is capable of accomplishing unless you stop micromanaging and start empowering them to discover their full potential. Put them in situations that will build their confidence and strengthen their self-trust.

Empowering employees sounds simple, but it requires a leader to let go, step back and observe. It demands a confident leader that is willing to allow their employees to fail, then help them pick up the pieces and rebound. Employees engage when they are empowered to explore endless possibilities.
4. Put them in a position of influence

Beyond empowering employees, put them in a position of influence to see how they react and engage in their new role. Stimulating engagement is a two-way street: it’s not just how employees gravitate towards their leaders, but how others gravitate towards them. Allow your employees to discover their own potential and put them to the test. Witness how they lead and collaborate with others. If you micromanage employees too much, they disengage. Employees want to feel trusted and valued for the independent decisions they can make and the impact they can create.

The most engaged employees are those whose leaders have confidence in them; who trust that they can always be depended to deliver when called upon.   Employees are most engaged when they feel a sense of responsibility towards their leaders and the example their performance sets for others. This is accelerated when they are placed in roles of influence and responsibility.

 5.  Share your success to build their momentumRather than enjoy your leadership success alone, share it with your employees and allow them to experience it with you.   The wise man forfeits his fortune when he does not trust himself. Sharing your success with your employees and making them feel an important part of your accomplishments is a sign of trust that organically creates engagement.

Employees want to support their leaders – even more so when a leader is transparent enough to share not only their success, but also their vulnerabilities. Employees don’t need leaders that always have to be right (or perceived as perfect) – they want leaders that open themselves up enough to share their journey with them. Genuine collaboration drives engagement and creates an environment of significance for everyone.

6.  Be consistent and have their backs

Leadership is about having each other’s backs – especially those of your employees. Employees disengage when their leaders play mind-games and are inconsistent with their approach and style. Employees are vulnerable these days – not really knowing who to trust, rely upon or follow.

Recently, I spoke with a Fortune 80 executive who has been with his organization for more than 15 years.   He has grown tired of the inconsistency of his leader, who doesn’t value him nor does he place a priority on his career development.   This executive is ready to leave the organization in search of a leader that has his best interests at heart – while still in support of the organization’s goals. He wants to be part of a team that matters, with no hidden agendas.

Who wants to engage with a leader that doesn’t have their back?   This is why leaders lose top talent all the time. They just assume their employees will be loyal to them – rather than recognizing that retaining top talent requires leaders to always be looking out for their best interests.   Leaders must communicate and become more emotionally intelligent to stimulate employee engagement.

These six things are what employees are constantly thinking about – but not talking enough about with their leaders – as they navigate ways to elevate their engagement at work. Just as the wise man may forfeit his fortune when he does not trust himself, the wise leader forfeits his leadership when he does not engage his employees.

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Leadership: 13 Habits of Exceptionally Likeable People…Mistaken Belief that Being Likeable Comes from Natural, Unteachable Traits that Belong Only to a Lucky Few

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Too many people succumb to the mistaken belief that being likeable comes from natural, unteachable traits that belong only to a lucky few—the good looking, the fiercely social, and the incredibly talented. It’s easy to fall prey to this misconception. In reality, being likeable is under your control, and it’s a matter of emotional intelligence (EQ).

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You've got less than a minute to persuade the audience you're worth listening to.

You’ve got less than a minute to persuade the audience you’re worth listening to.

In a study conducted at UCLA, subjects rated over 500 adjectives based on their perceived significance to likeability. The top-rated adjectives had nothing to do with being gregarious, intelligent, or attractive (innate characteristics). Instead, the top adjectives were sincerity, transparency, and capacity for understanding (another person).

These adjectives, and others like them, describe people who are skilled in the social side of emotional intelligence. TalentSmart research data from more than a million people shows that people who possess these skills aren’t just highly likeable, they outperform those who don’t by a large margin.

We did some digging to uncover the key behaviors that emotionally intelligent people engage in that make them so likeable. Here are 13 of the best:

They Ask Questions

The biggest mistake people make when it comes to listening is they’re so focused on what they’re going to say next or how what the other person is saying is going to affect them that they fail to hear what’s being said. The words come through loud and clear, but the meaning is lost.

A simple way to avoid this is to ask a lot of questions. People like to know you’re listening, and something as simple as a clarification question shows that not only are you listening, you also care about what they’re saying. You’ll be surprised how much respect and appreciation you gain just by asking questions.

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They Put Away Their Phones

Nothing will turn someone off to you like a mid-conversation text message or even a quick glance at your phone. When you commit to a conversation, focus all of your energy on the conversation. You will find that conversations are more enjoyable and effective when you immerse yourself in them.

They Are Genuine

Being genuine and honest is essential to being likeable. No one likes a fake. People gravitate toward those who are genuine because they know they can trust them. It is difficult to like someone when you don’t know who they really are and how they really feel.

Likeable people know who they are. They are confident enough to be comfortable in their own skin. By concentrating on what drives you and makes you happy as an individual, you become a much more interesting person than if you attempt to win people over by making choices that you think will make them like you.

They Don’t Pass Judgment

If you want to be likeable you must be open-minded. Being open-minded makes you approachable and interesting to others. No one wants to have a conversation with someone who has already formed an opinion and is not willing to listen.

Having an open mind is crucial in the workplace where approachability means access to new ideas and help. To eliminate preconceived notions and judgment, you need to see the world through other people’s eyes. This doesn’t require you believe what they believe or condone their behavior, it simply means you quit passing judgment long enough to truly understand what makes them tick. Only then can you let them be who they are.

They Don’t Seek Attention

People are averse to those who are desperate for attention. You don’t need to develop a big, extroverted personality to be likeable. Simply being friendly and considerate is all you need to win people over. When you speak in a friendly, confident, and concise manner, you will notice that people are much more attentive and persuadable than if you try to show them you’re important. People catch on to your attitude quickly and are more attracted to the right attitude than what—or how many people—you know.

When you’re being given attention, such as when you’re being recognized for an accomplishment, shift the focus to all the people who worked hard to help you get there. This may sound cliché, but if it’s genuine, the fact that you pay attention to others and appreciate their help will show that you’re appreciative and humble—two adjectives that are closely tied to likeability.

They Are Consistent

Few things make you more unlikeable than when you’re all over the place. When people approach you, they like to know whom they’re dealing with and what sort of response they can expect. To be consistent you must be reliable, and you must ensure that even when your mood goes up and down it doesn’t affect how you treat other people.

They Use Positive Body Language

Becoming cognizant of your gestures, expressions, and tone of voice (and making certain they’re positive) will draw people to you like ants to a picnic. Using an enthusiastic tone, uncrossing your arms, maintaining eye contact, and leaning towards the person who’s speaking are all forms of positive body language that high-EQ people use to draw others in. Positive body language can make all the difference in a conversation.

It’s true that how you say something can be more important than what you say.

They Leave a Strong First Impression

Research shows most people decide whether or not they like you within the first seven seconds of meeting you. They then spend the rest of the conversation internally justifying their initial reaction. This may sound terrifying, but by knowing this you can take advantage of it to make huge gains in your likeability. First impressions are tied intimately to positive body language. Strong posture, a firm handshake, smiling, and opening your shoulders to the person you are talking to will help ensure that your first impression is a good one.

They Greet People by Name

Your name is an essential part of your identity, and it feels terrific when people use it. Likeable people make certain they use others’ names every time they see them. You shouldn’t use someone’s name only when you greet him. Research shows that people feel validated when the person they’re speaking with refers to them by name during a conversation.

If you’re great with faces but have trouble with names, have some fun with it and make remembering people’s names a brain exercise. When you meet someone, don’t be afraid to ask her name a second time if you forget it right after you hear it. You’ll need to keep her name handy if you’re going to remember it the next time you see her.

 

They Smile

People naturally (and unconsciously) mirror the body language of the person they’re talking to. If you want people to like you, smile at them during a conversation and they will unconsciously return the favor and feel good as a result.

They Know When To Open Up

Be careful to avoid sharing personal problems and confessions too quickly, as this will get you labeled a complainer. Likeable people let the other person guide when it’s the right time for them to open up.

They Know Who To Touch (and They Touch Them)

When you touch someone during a conversation, you release oxytocin in their brain, a neurotransmitter that makes their brain associate you with trust and a slew of other positive feelings. A simple touch on the shoulder, a hug, or a friendly handshake is all it takes to release oxytocin. Of course, you have to touch the right person in the right way to release oxytocin, as unwanted or inappropriate touching has the opposite effect. Just remember, relationships are built not just from words, but also from general feelings about each other. Touching someone appropriately is a great way to show you care.

They Balance Passion and Fun

People gravitate toward those who are passionate. That said, it’s easy for passionate people to come across as too serious or uninterested because they tend to get absorbed in their work. Likeable people balance their passion with the ability to have fun. At work they are serious, yet friendly. They still get things done because they are socially effective in short amounts of time and they capitalize on valuable social moments. They minimize small talk and gossip and instead focus on having meaningful interactions with their coworkers. They remember what you said to them yesterday or last week, which shows that you’re just as important to them as their work.

Bringing It All Together

Likeable people are invaluable and unique. They network with ease, promote harmony in the workplace, bring out the best in everyone around them, and generally seem to have the most fun. Add these skills to your repertoire and watch your likeability soar!

Travis co-wrote the bestselling book Emotional Intelligence 2.0 and co-founded TalentSmart, the world’s #1 provider of emotional intelligence tests and training, serving 75% of Fortune 500 Companies.

Forbes.com | January 27, 2015 | Travis Bradberry

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Leadership: Why Do Managers Hate Agile?…Agile Involves Self-Organizing Teams that Work in an Iterative Fashion & Deliver Continuous Additional Value Directly to Customers

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Why don’t Agile and management get along? In a poll last Wednesday of some 400 people working in many different firms where the practices known as Agile and Scrum are being implemented, 88 percent reported tension between the way Agile/Scrum teams are managed in their organization and the way the rest of the organization is managed. Only 8 percent reported “no tension.”

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Develop an Effective Knowledge Transfer System

Develop an Effective Knowledge Transfer System

Two different worlds

The reality is that “management” and “Agile” are two different worlds.

The world of “management” is vertical. Its natural habitat comprises tall buildings in places like New York. Its mindset is also vertical. “Strategy gets set at the top,” as Gary Hamel often explains. “Power trickles down. Big leaders appoint little leaders. Individuals compete for promotion. Compensation correlates with rank. Tasks are assigned. Managers assess performance. Rules tightly circumscribe discretion.”

The purpose of this vertical world is self-evident: to make money for the shareholders, including the top executives. Its communications are top-down. Its values are efficiency and predictability. The key to succeeding in this world is tight control. Its dynamic is conservative: to preserve the gains of the past. Its workforce is dispirited. It has a hard time with innovation. Its com1panies are being systemically disrupted. Its economy—the Traditional Economy—is in decline.

The Agile world is horizontal. Its natural habitat is in low flat buildings in places like California, although it also spreading rapidly like a virus and has already established footholds in most of the tall vertical organizations. The Agile mindset is horizontal. Its purpose is to delight customers. Making money is the result, not the goal of its activities. Its focus is on continuous innovation.

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Its dynamic is enablement, rather than control. Its communications tend to be horizontal conversations. It aspires to liberate the full talents and capacities of those doing the work. It is oriented to understanding and creating the future. It believes in banking, not necessarily banks. It believes in accommodation, not necessarily hotels. It believes in transport, not necessarily cars. It believes in health, not necessarily hospitals. It believes in education, not necessarily schools. Its economy—the Creative Economy—is thriving.

The adults in the room?

The vertical world of management likes to position itself as “the adults in the room.” The following from an interview with Sam Palmisano, former CEO of IBM, in June 2014 in HBR is typical:

“You’ve got companies in great runs right now, the Googles and the Facebooks. Good ideas, great returns, but then all of a sudden, you need an act two. Well, jeez, is act two going to propel you from $30 billion to $100 billion? That’s a little tougher. It’s the Microsoft challenge.

“So you have to say, ‘Well, I need a different view. I can still create shareholder value, but I can do it a different way. I can rethink capital allocation.’ Recognize where you are on your maturity curve, as a management team, and behave accordingly. Don’t give a speech as CEO as if you just got out of Stanford and you came up with an iconic interface and you called yourself a piece of fruit.

Sadly, the real world is the opposite of the imaginary world that Palmisano inhabits.

The firms with “names like pieces of fruit” are not “$30 billion firms.” In fact some of them are now much larger than the old 20th Century “giants.” Apple for instance is now more than four times the size of IBM.

Market capitalization

Apple $660 billion

Google $362 billion

Facebook $222 billion

IBM     $155 billion

GM       $ 54 billion

Whereas firms with a vertical mindset at the top, like IBM, are struggling with declining revenues andbloody cost-cutting reorganizations, firms in the horizontal world of Agile, like Apple and Google, are busy growing and inventing the future. Their second, third and fourth acts are already well under way.

What then is Agile?

For those managers who don’t know what the Agile is (itself a part of the problem), the horizontal world of Agile involves self-organizing teams that work in an iterative fashion and deliver continuous additional value directly to customers.

The practices of Agile that includes names like Scrum, XP, Kanban, DevOps and Continuous Development, grew out of lean manufacturing in Japan in the late 20th Century. As Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka wrote in “The New New Product Development Game” in HBR in January 1986:

This new emphasis on speed and flexibility calls for a different approach for managing new product development. The traditional sequential or “relay race” approach to product development… may conflict with the goals of maximum speed and flexibility. Instead, a holistic or “rugby” approach—where a team tries to go the distance as a unit, passing the ball back and forth—may better serve today’s competitive requirements.

In due course, Agile became a major force in software development, following the Agile Manifesto in 2001. More recently, it has been spreading to all sectors of the economy, not only in digital natives like Apple and Google, but also in significant pockets within large traditional organizations.

Agile was a response to hierarchical bureaucracy

Agile, Scrum and Lean arose as a deliberate response to the problems of hierarchical bureaucracy that is still pervasive in organizations today: falling rates of return on assets and on invested capital, a dispirited workforce, a decline in competitiveness andwidespread disruption of existing business models.

Given these problems, it’s easy to forget that hierarchical bureaucracy was a great advance when it was introduced over a hundred and fifty years ago. The basic idea of hierarchical bureaucracy is that work is organized with individuals reporting to bosses who tell them what to do and control their work. The roles, the rules, the plans, and the reports of hierarchical bureaucracy created order where previously there had been chaos.

Icons from TheNounProject

As Gary Hamel has noted, hierarchical bureaucracy solved two essential problems:

  • getting semiskilled employees to perform repetitive activities competently and efficiently;
  • coordinating those efforts so that products could be produced in large quantities.

In a stable environment, it had great strengths. It was scalable. It was efficient. It was predictable and it delivered reliable average performance.

It had some liabilities. It was vertical. It was non-collaborative. Its plans were linear. It couldn’t change direction very fast. It was dispiriting to staff but at least people had a job. And the customer was noticeable by being totally absent: the focus was internal.

In a stable environment, these liabilities didn’t matter much.

Change wasn’t important. A firm could go on, grinding out the same basic product for years without much risk of harm. In a stable context, it could predict what customers would buy. It didn’t need to worry about customers. They could be manipulated by advertising.

With semi-skilled employees performing repetitive tasks, collaboration wasn’t important. And who really cared if the workers were dispirited? It was enough that they had their job and their paycheck.

In a world where workers were only semi-skilled and information was hard to come by, it made sense to put the boss in charge. In that setting, managers generally did know best.

Then the world became turbulent

But the world changed and the marketplace became turbulent. There were a number of factors: Globalization, deregulation, and new technology, particularly the Internet. The Internet changed everything:

  • Power in the marketplace shifted from seller to buyer. Suddenly the customer was central, not something you could take for granted.
  • Now the new norm as “better, cheaper, faster, smaller, more personalized and more convenient.” Average performance wasn’t good enough. Continuous innovation became a requirement.
  • In a world that required continuous innovation, a dispirited workforce was a serious productivity problem.
  • As the market shifted in ways that were difficult to predict, static plans became liabilities.
  • The inability to adapt led to “big bang disruption.”

In this turbulent context, the strengths of hierarchical bureaucracy evaporated.

Scalability turned into unmanageable complexity.

The efficiency of economies of scale turned into diseconomies and inefficiency.

Predictability turned into a crippling lack of agility.

And reliable average performance wasn’t good enough for customers who wanted “faster, better, cheaper, smaller, more personalized and more convenient.”

The horizontal world of Agile

In the light of these problems, managers began to fundamentally rethink the way organizations are run. And so Agile was born. Scrum was notable among the approaches, but not the only one. The approaches all had certain features in common:

Work is done by self-organizing teams that could mobilize the full talents of those doing the work.

Work is focused directly on meeting customers’ needs.

A “lens” focuses attention on the customers’ needs (when the lens is a person, as in Scrum, the person is known as a “product owner”; in large scale applications, the lens is “a platform.”)

Work proceeds in an iterative fashion so that it can progressively satisfy customers’ needs better.

The arrangement can be pictured thus.

Icons from TheNounProject
In this way of organizing work, the basic dynamics of the traditional economy are reversed.

Instead of a vertical dynamic of hierarchical bureaucracy with people reporting upwards to bosses, the firm was operating horizontally was a focus on the customer.

Instead of a controlling ideology, the approach is one of enabling self-organization.

Instead of static linear plans, plans are iterative and continuously on the move.

Instead of a workplace that is dispiriting to staff, the workplace is interesting, even inspiring, because people have the autonomy to deliver their best.

Instead of the customer being absent, the customer is now central. The goal of the firm is to delight the customer.

Coming next: Part 2: Does Agile Scale?

And read also:

A Learning Consortium for Management Innovation

The best-kept management secret on the planet: Agile

The case against Agile: ten perennial objections

What manufacturing can learn from Agile

GE Healthcare Gets Agile

___________________

Follow Steve Denning on Twitter at @stevedenning

 

Forbes.com | January 26, 2015 | Steve Denning 

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Strategy: These 8 Scales Reveal Everything You Should Know About Different Cultures…How Organizations Make Decisions Relates Closely to How they View Leadership, but with Some Important Differences

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Many people, perhaps especially Americans, underestimate how differently people do things in other countries.  Examples and insights for avoiding this can be found in “The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business,” a 2014 bestseller by INSEAD professor Erin Meyer (also check out those global communication diagrams from Richard Lewis).

japanese salarymen businessmen tokyo

Japan is the opposite of America when it comes to communication.

Meyer claims you can improve relationships by considering where you and international partners fall on each of these scales:

  • Communicating: explicit vs. implicit
  • Evaluating: direct negative feedback vs. indirect negative feedback
  • Persuading: deductive vs. inductive
  • Leading: egalitarian vs. hierarchical
  • Deciding: consensual vs. top down
  • Trusting: task vs. relationship
  • Disagreeing: confrontational vs. avoid confrontation
  • Scheduling: structured vs. flexible

Communicating

Americans are the most explicit or low-context culture there is (low-context meaning their conversation assumes relatively little intuitive understanding). This is not surprising for a young country composed of immigrants that prides itself on straight-talking.

Japan and other East Asian countries represent the other extreme.

Meyer offers strategies for negotiating these differences, but the most basic solution, as with all scales discussed in the book, is simply to be aware. Thus Americans in Japan should pay attention to what’s not being said; while Japanese in America should brace themselves for direct language.

culture map communicating“The Culture Map

 

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Evaluating

Americans may be very explicit communicators, but they are in the middle of the spectrum when it comes to giving negative feedback — as anyone who as been to an American school knows.

Israelis, Russians, and Dutch are among the most direct when it comes to negative feedback.

Japanese are among the most indirect.

culture map evaluating“The Culture Map

 

Persuading

Some cultures, notably the French and Italians, tend toward inductive logic, focusing on evidence and analysis of that evidence before reaching conclusions.

Others, notably English-speaking cultures, tend toward deductive logic, focusing on a theoretical argument and its applications.

This trait shows up in everything from how people give presentations or lead meetings to how they write emails.

culture map persuading“The Culture Map

 

Leading

“In Denmark, it is understood that the managing director is one of the guys, just two small steps up from the janitor,” a Danish executive told Meyer. This represents one extreme in attitudes toward leadership.

On the other side of the spectrum in countries like Japan and Korea, however, the ideal boss should stand far above the workers at the top of a hierarchy.

America’s outlook on leadership falls somewhere in the middle.

culture map leading“The Culture Map

 

Deciding

How organizations make decisions relates closely to how they view leadership, but with some important differences.

Notably, while Japan has a very hierarchical leadership system, it has a very consensual decision-making system. This is the famous ringi system, which involves building consensus at a lower level before bringing a proposal to a higher level, thus enabling broad corporate consensus.

culture map deciding“The Culture Map

 

Trusting

In some cultures, notably America, people don’t worry so much about trusting each other because they trust their legal system to enforce contracts, and so business negotiations focus on what’s practical.

In others, including many emerging market economies but also to a lesser extent Western Europe, personal relationships are much more important, in part because people don’t trust their legal system to enforce contracts.

culture map trusting“The Culture Map

 

Disagreeing

Some cultures embrace confrontation while others avoid it. This scale looks a lot like the scale showing the directness of negative feedback, though with some differences, such as Sweden being further to the left (direct) on negative feedback and further to the right (avoiding confrontation) on disagreeing.

culture map disagreeing“The Culture Map”

 

Scheduling

That different cultures treat time differently is one of the most common observations for anyone working or even traveling abroad. On one extreme you’ve got the exceedingly precise Germans and Swiss; Americans fall relatively close to this end of the spectrum; Western Europeans and Latin Americans tend to be more flexible; Africa, the Middle East, and India are extremely flexible.

culture map scheduling“The Culture Map

Thanks to Meyer for letting us publish these charts from “The Culture Map.”

 

Businessinsider.com | January 20, 2015  | Gus Lubin 

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-culture-map-8-scales-for-work-2015-1#ixzz3PSdrqtB8

Leadership: Why All Managers MUST Be Leaders…The Only Thing Worse ‘Than Working for a Manager that Can’t Lead is Missing Out on the Opportunity to Turn our Existing Leaders into Managers

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Anyone within an organization has the potential to become a leader, but managers MUST be leaders. In schools and in our organizations we have been taught and conditioned to believe that managers and leaders are two separate people which is quite a harmful assumption.

 

Directions Man

As a result we have managers who cannot lead and leaders who cannot manage. A leader who cannot manage has a vision of where they want to go but no idea of how to get there. A manager who cannot lead is not able to build trust and create engagement within an organization to get to where they need to go. Neither of these scenarios are practical or effective.

Management and managers are human inventions that were designed with a single purpose in mind, to enforce controls and protocols. The role of a manager was to make sure that employees showed up on time, did their jobs, didn’t cause any problems, and showed up the next day to repeat the process.

There was no emphasis on creativity, innovation, engagement, empowerment, or the like; nor was there a need for any of these things. However today we live and work in a very different world where all of these things are essential. This means that managers MUST be leaders. I believe we have reached an important tipping point which is forcing us to rethink managers and management altogether.

The stereotypical manager focuses on control, delegation, productivity, the bottom line, process, and efficiency. The leader focuses on vision, engagement, big ideas, empowerment, innovation, and transformation. One without the other is meaningless. Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs are of course considered to be great leaders in the world of business, but do you think that they didn’t know how to build a team, look at the bottom line, execute strategies, and improve productivity? Of course they did.

 

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We don’t need to look to the likes of Bezos or Jobs, any manager regardless of how junior or senior needs to be able to come up with big ideas, inspire employees, take on a certain degree of risk, or engage team members. We spend a lot of  time taking people in positions of power and trying to train them to be leaders when we should be finding the leaders inside of our organizations and training them to be managers.

The only thing worse than working for a manager that can’t lead is missing out on the opportunity to turn our existing leaders into managers. We need to stop assuming that “managers” is a dirty word, if managers must be leaders then they should be looked at with a positive lens.

Greg Schott, the CEO of Mulesoft is a MANGER that personally interviews every candidate that applies to work there.

Todd Etter, the chief collaboration officer of The Motley Fool is a MANGER who uses games to inspire and engage his employees.

Lynanne Kunkel, the VP of Global Talent Development at Whirlpool WHR -1.14%is a MANGER that recently helped introduce a program across the company that instills the values of leadership and innovation across all employees.

Bob Chapman, the CEO of Barry-Wehmiller Companies, is a MANAGER who measures “heart count” at his company to look at how engaged and happy the employees are.

Scott Abel, the CEO of Spiceworks, is a MANGER who has something called “slices with Scott” where he orders pizzas for the whole company who then get to spend hours asking Scott any questions they want whether it be “what’s our company strategy going forward” to “how come you don’t have kids?”

We can no longer afford to segment and separate managers and leaders, this does nothing but hurt our organizations. If you want to formally be placed in a position of “power” where you help drive your organization forward then the pre-requisite for this is that you must be a leader. That is, you have earned followers, you have built trust among your co-workers, and you are able to think big and inspire others. But if you are not a leader at your organization than you should also not be a manager.

Management and leadership need to be taught in schools as interconnected disciplines that cannot exist without the other. Leaders within organizations should be mentored so that they know how to properly manage. We must stop referring to leaders and managers as two separate people. And perhaps most importantly, we need to give leaders at our organizations the opportunity to be officially recognized as managers.

Only then will we be able to create organizations where employees are engaged, organizations that are able to attract and retain top talent, and organizations that are capable of surviving and thriving in a rapidly changing world.

 

Forbes.com | January 21, 2015 | Jacob Morgan

 

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Leadership: 7 Navy SEAL Sayings That Will Keep Your Team Motivated… “Everyone Has a Plan Until They Get Punched in the Face.”

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Asleep at your desk? Read this and get going.  Whether you are an entrepreneur, working in corporate America, or building a start-up, it is imperative to continually seek new ways to stay inspired and driven. Being a self-starter is a fantastic quality, but we are all human and get distracted by the minutiae of our day-to-day responsibilities.

Navy SEALs use their training to tackle any challenge.

Here are seven Navy SEAL sayings I keep top of mind while moving toward achieving my personal and professional goals.

1. The only easy day was yesterday.
This is one of the more well-known sayings of the SEALs. When constantly pushing yourself to excel, there will be challenges that make every day a battle.

As an entrepreneur, this concept keeps me motivated, because it puts things into perspective. If you wake up knowing that every day will pose new challenges and that you are ready to face them head-on, you will be well equipped to achieve any goal you set.

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2. Get comfortable being uncomfortable.

One exercise in SEAL training is “surf torture.” You link arms with your classmates and stand, sit, or lie in the frigid Pacific Ocean until your body reaches the early stages of hypothermia. During the initial phases of training, you do this daily. Then you cover yourself from head to toe in sand and stay that way for the rest of the day. You might follow this with running the obstacle course, weapons training, or classroom time, but you are expected to push the discomfort aside and stay focused on the task at hand.

There have been many times as a business owner that I have been in very uncomfortable situations. That could be a difficult conversation with a team member, a lawsuit, or dealing with a demanding board member. Discomfort comes in many forms. But the more you embrace that as a reality, the wider your comfort zone becomes. This boosts confidence and provides the tools for facing even larger challenges down the road. So as we like to say, “Embrace the suck.”

3. Don’t run to your death.

In the SEAL teams, this is not a metaphor. When conducting raids that put you in close-quarters combat scenarios, restraint is often the best approach. Once you breach and gain entry to the target, being slow and methodical often wins the race. Hence the phrase, “Don’t run to your death.”

Knowing when not to act is as important as knowing when to push forward. Restraint is crucial for business leadership. This is especially important if you are running or managing a rapidly growing business. Growth is fantastic, but smart growth is even better. Have a good plan, slow down, grow intelligently, and never, ever, run to your death.

4. Have a shared sense of purpose.

A shared sense of purpose is hard to continually communicate. The economy changes. New technologies emerge. Employees come and go. There are many moving parts, which is why it’s critical for the leadership to always be communicating the reality of the situation and what the “win” will look like when you get there. And, most important, what everyone’s role is in helping the team achieve that goal.

5. Move, shoot, communicate.

As a SEAL, you must be able to perfectly execute these three functions to ensure mission success. Move: You have to be able to work as one well-maintained mechanism with the ability to have constant fluid motion. Shoot: That’s self-explanatory. Communicate: All good teams have frequent, open, transparent communication. When the bullets start flying, everyone needs to know what the next move is.

The same philosophies apply in the fast-paced world of business and entrepreneurship. The team has to have the ability to communicate effectively to adapt to changing environments. Which takes us to the next saying.

6. No plan survives first contact with the enemy.

This is from Helmuth von Moltke, a German field marshal from World War I. Similar is this sentiment from Mike Tyson: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” That is why preparation and training are even more critical than planning.

When you have a team of the right people doing the right things, they will know how to adapt when the you-know-what hits the fan. And they will adapt with composure, not panic. This is why ongoing training and professional development are so important.

7. All in, all the time.

I wanted to close with another one of the more well-known SEAL sayings. Just being a good performer won’t cut it to make it into the SEAL teams. You have to give everything you have just to make it to the next day. Just like managing stress, you have to focus on one piece at a time. So don’t worry about the test you have in the afternoon. Your goal is to make it to breakfast. Then lunch, and so on.

Whether you are building a startup, leading a team in a large organization, being an active parent, battling cancer, or training for a triathlon, it’s got to be all or nothing. Mediocrity and moderation won’t get the job done. Give everything you do everything you’ve got.

My heart welled with pride when I heard my 8-year-old son’s flag football coach give the team one last piece of advice in the last couple minutes of its championship Super Bowl game. He said, “Now is the time to dig deep. Leave everything you’ve got on that field. If you do that, win or lose, you will be the champions!” So whether you are 8 or 58, get comfortable being uncomfortable, get well prepared, and be all in, all the time.

Follow Brent Gleeson on Twitter at @BrentGleeson or view his website atwww.brentgleesonspeaker.com.

Forbes.com | January 20, 2015 | Brent Gleeson 

Leadership: How Successful People Stay Productive & In Control…Unfortunately, Self-Control is a Difficult Skill to Rely On

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TalentSmart has tested more than a million people and found that the upper echelons of top performance are filled with people who are high in emotional intelligence (90% of top performers, to be exact). The hallmark of emotional intelligence is self-control—a skill that unleashes massive productivity by keeping you focused and on track.

You've got less than a minute to persuade the audience you're worth listening to.

Unfortunately, self-control is a difficult skill to rely on. Self-control is so fleeting for most people that when Martin Seligman and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania surveyed two million people and asked them to rank order their strengths in 24 different skills, self-control ended up in the very bottom slot.

And when your self-control leaves something to be desired, so does your productivity.

When it comes to self-control, it is so easy to focus on your failures that your successes tend to pale in comparison. And why shouldn’t they? Self-control is an effort that’s intended to help achieve a goal. Failing to control yourself is just that—a failure. If you’re trying to avoid digging into that bag of chips after dinner because you want to lose a few pounds and you succeed Monday and Tuesday nights only to succumb to temptation on Wednesday by eating four servings’ worth of the empty calories, your failure outweighs your success. You’ve taken two steps forward and four steps back.

Since self-control is something we could all use a little help with, I went back to the data to uncover the kinds of things that emotionally intelligent people do to keep themselves productive and in control. They consciously apply these twelve behaviors because they know they work. Some are obvious, others counter-intuitive, but all will help you minimize those pesky failures to boost your productivity.

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They Forgive Themselves

vicious cycle of failing to control oneself followed by feeling intense self-hatred and disgust is common in attempts at self-control. These emotions typically lead to over-indulging in the offending behavior. When you slip up, it is critical that you forgive yourself and move on. Don’t ignore how the mistake makes you feel; just don’t wallow in it. Instead, shift your attention to what you’re going to do to improve yourself in the future.

Failure can erode your self-confidence and make it hard to believe you’ll achieve a better outcome in the future. Most of the time, failure results from taking risks and trying to achieve something that isn’t easy. Emotionally intelligent people know that success lies in their ability to rise in the face of failure, and they can’t do this when they’re living in the past. Anything worth achieving is going to require you to take some risks, and you can’t allow failure to stop you from believing in your ability to succeed. When you live in the past, that is exactly what happens, and your past becomes your present, preventing you from moving forward.

They Don’t Say Yes Unless They Really Want To

Research conducted at the University of California in San Francisco shows that the more difficulty that you have saying no, the more likely you are to experience stress, burnout, and even depression, all of which erode self-control. Saying no is indeed a major self-control challenge for many people. “No” is a powerful word that you should not be afraid to wield. When it’s time to say no, emotionally intelligent people avoid phrases like “I don’t think I can” or “I’m not certain.” Saying no to a new commitment honors your existing commitments and gives you the opportunity to successfully fulfill them. Just remind yourself that saying no is an act of self-control now that will increase your future self-control by preventing the negative effects of over commitment.

They Don’t Seek Perfection

Emotionally intelligent people won’t set perfection as their target because they know it doesn’t exist. Human beings, by our very nature, are fallible. When perfection is your goal, you’re always left with a nagging sense of failure that makes you want to give up or reduce your effort. You end up spending your time lamenting what you failed to accomplish and what you should have done differently instead of moving forward excited about what you’ve achieved and what you will accomplish in the future.

They Focus On Solutions

Where you focus your attention determines your emotional state. When you fixate on the problems that you’re facing, you create and prolong negative emotions which hinder self-control. When you focus on the actions you’ll take to better yourself and your circumstances, you create a sense of personal efficacy that produces positive emotions and improves performance. Emotionally intelligent people won’t dwell on problems because they know they’re most effective when they focus on solutions.

They Avoid Asking “What If?”

“What if?” statements throw fuel on the fire of stress and worry, which are detrimental to self-control. Things can go in a million different directions, and the more time you spend worrying about the possibilities, the less time you’ll spend taking action and staying productive (staying productive also happens to calm you down and keep you focused). Productive people know that asking “what if? will only take them to a place they don’t want—or need—to go. Of course, scenario planning is a necessary and effective strategic planning technique. The key distinction here is to recognize the difference between worry and strategic thinking.

They Stay Positive

Positive thoughts help you exercise self-control by focusing your brain’s attention onto the rewards you will receive for your effort. You have to give your wandering brain a little help by consciously selecting something positive to think about. Any positive thought will do to refocus your attention. When things are going well, and your mood is good, self-control is relatively easy. When things are going poorly, and your mind is flooded with negative thoughts, self-control is a challenge. In these moments, think about your day and identify one positive thing that happened, or will happen, no matter how small. If you can’t think of something from the current day, reflect on the past and look to the future. The point here is that you must have something positive that you’re ready to shift your attention to when your thoughts turn negative, so that you don’t lose focus.

They Eat

File this one in the counter-intuitive category, especially if you’re having trouble controlling your eating. Your brain burns heavily into your stores of glucose when attempting to exert self-control. If your blood sugar is low, you are far more likely to succumb to destructive impulses. Sugary foods spike your sugar levels quickly and leave you drained and vulnerable to impulsive behavior shortly thereafter. Eating something that provides a slow burn for your body, such as whole grain rice or meat, will give you a longer window of self-control. So, if you’re having trouble keeping yourself out of the company candy bin when you’re hungry, make sure you eat something else if you want to have a fighting chance.

They Sleep

I’ve beaten this one to death over the years and can’t say enough about the importance of sleep to increasing your emotional intelligence and maintaining your focus and self-control. When you sleep, your brain literally recharges, shuffling through the day’s memories and storing or discarding them (which causes dreams), so that you wake up alert and clear-headed. Your self-control, attention, and memory are all reduced when you don’t get enough—or the right kind—of sleep. Sleep deprivation raises stress hormone levels on its own, even without a stressor present, which are a major productivity killer. Being busy often makes you feel as if you must sacrifice sleep to stay productive, but sleep deprivation diminishes your productivity so much throughout the day that you’re better off sleeping.

When you’re tired, your brain’s ability to absorb glucose is greatly diminished. This makes it difficult to control the impulses that derail your focus. What’s more, without enough sleep you are more likely to crave sugary snacks to compensate for low glucose levels. So, if you’re trying to exert self-control over your eating, getting a good night’s sleep—every night—is one of the best moves you can make.

They Exercise

Getting your body moving for as little as 10 minutes releases GABA, a neurotransmitter that makes your brain feel soothed and keeps you in control of your impulses. If you’re having trouble resisting the impulse to walk over to the office next door to let somebody have it, just keep on walking. You should have the impulse under control by the time you get back.

They Meditate

Meditation actually trains your brain to become a self-control machine. Even simple techniques like mindfulness, which involves taking as little as five minutes a day to focus on nothing more than your breathing and your senses, improves your self-awareness and your brain’s ability to resist destructive impulses. Buddhist monks appear calm and in control for a reason. Give it a try.

They Ride the Wave

Desire and distraction have the tendency to ebb and flow like the tide. When the impulse you need to control is strong, waiting out this wave of desire is usually enough to keep yourself in control. When you feel as if you must give in, the rule of thumb here is to wait at least 10 minutes before succumbing to temptation. You’ll often find that the great wave of desire is now little more than a ripple that you have the power to step right over.

They Squash Negative Self-Talk

A big final step in exercising self-control involves stopping negative self-talk in its tracks. The more you ruminate on negative thoughts, the more power you give them. Most of our negative thoughts are just that—thoughts, not facts. When you find yourself believing the negative and pessimistic things your inner voice says, it’s time to stop and write them down. Literally stop what you’re doing and write down what you’re thinking. Once you’ve taken a moment to slow down the negative momentum of your thoughts, you will be more rational and clear-headed in evaluating their veracity.

You can bet that your statements aren’t true any time you use words like “never,” “worst,” “ever,” etc. If your statements still look like facts once they’re on paper, take them to a friend or colleague you trust and see if he or she agrees with you. Then the truth will surely come out. When it feels like something always or never happens, this is just your brain’s natural threat tendency inflating the perceived frequency or severity of an event. Identifying and labeling your thoughts as thoughts by separating them from the facts will help you escape the cycle of negativity and move toward a positive new outlook.

Putting These Strategies to Work

The important thing to remember is you have to give these strategies the opportunity to work. This means recognizing the moments where you are struggling with self-control and, rather than giving in to impulse, taking a look at these strategies and giving them a go before you give in.

Travis co-wrote the bestselling book Emotional Intelligence 2.0 and co-founded TalentSmart, the world’s #1 provider of emotional intelligence tests and training, serving 75% of Fortune 500 Companies.

Forbes.com | January 20, 2015 | Travis Bradberry

Leadership:Boring Meetings? Try These Simple Steps to Go From Dull to Dazzling…Don’t Just Meet Because You’re a Group & You’ve “Always Had a Weekly Staff Meeting.”

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When everything’s said and done, there’s usually more said than done.  As most anyone involved in business, academe, politics, religion, or any number of other endeavors can attest, that truism applies especially to meetings.

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Meetings can be a mind-numbing squandering of time, money, patience, and other finite resources. But they needn’t and shouldn’t be. In his new bookMeetings Matter, Paul Axtell shows how thoughtful, respectful, and focused conversation is the key to effective meetings. What’s more, he provides lots of specific strategies and tactics. Adopt the practices suggested here and the meetings you attend will never be fruitless again. The bonus? You and your colleagues will be more engaged than ever in producing great results.”

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Test drive some of his ideas yourself. Use them faithfully, and you can transform your meetings into smooth-running, collaborative sessions that produce the high impact results you really want.

Rodger Dean Duncan: Most people seem to have a negative mindset about meetings. What impact does this perspective have on meeting effectiveness? Is this a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Paul Axtell: Absolutely, we get what we expect. Too many organizations contain a host of complaints about meetings that lead to reduced expectations and then reduced accomplishment. Bright, talented people have slipped into a “going through the motions” or “doing enough to get by” mindset about meetings. This is actually good news for those who acknowledge it and get to work on changing it. Even if an organization is being successful without the full leverage of powerful, effective meetings, turning that around provides a huge upside—and a competitive edge because almost every organization is in the same rut.

Duncan: Because effective conversation is the “operating system” of a productive meeting, what advice can you offer for making sure the conversations produce good results? 

Axtell: An effective conversation has four elements: clarity, candor, commitment, and completion. Each is important in its own way, but when they are all present, it allows for the back and forth conversation necessary for everyone to walk away with the same, clear understanding.

Let’s look at each individually:

Clarity means everyone understands what is being said in the same way.

Candor means everyone says what they think and is authentic, honest, and straightforward.

Commitment means you all agree on who will take what actions in what time frame after the conversation.

Completion means everything that needs to be said or asked has been expressed before moving on to the next topic.
In addition, it’s imperative at the start of the meeting to be clear about the outcomes for each topic on the agenda and to have set aside enough time to reach those outcomes. If you can do this, and stay on track, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how much you accomplish—and in record time.
Duncan: What are some proven ways to ensure that participants have an appropriate voice in a meeting?

Axtell: Again, it’s incredibly important to be as clear and direct as possible. In the setup to the meeting, remind participants that your intention is to have a back-and-forth discussion and that you expect their participation.

Let participants know what kind of input you are requesting for each topic and set aside enough time so that no one feels rushed by the agenda.

I also recommend you call on people “strategically and gently” to get the participation levels desired. Maintain your awareness for people who have not yet spoken and invite them to join the conversation. People have valuable input, if you give them a chance to voice it.

Duncan: You say that an important key to good meetings is to talk about the right things and talk about fewer things. Give us an example of how that filter can be used to create a good meeting.

Axtell: When it comes to meetings, it’s so easy to get pulled into short-term problem solving or low-level distractions rather than spending the time to go deeper into topics that have long-term leverage. You slip into a pattern of going lightly over ten to twelve agenda items rather than doing meaningful work on a few.

It doesn’t help to work on improving your meetings if you are talking about the wrong things.

Here are a few examples of what I believe do merit time on the agenda:

  • Discussing progress on the team’s most critical goals and initiatives should be first choice, especially if progress is in jeopardy.
  • Providing input to the manager or colleagues who have a significant issue and have asked for suggestions is another area where the experience of the group can add value to individual members, particularly those soliciting ideas.
  • Taking on strategic topics such as talent reviews, organizational restructuring, or hiring decisions keeps the organization positioned for the future.
  • Don’t just meet because you’re a group and you’ve “always had a weekly staff meeting.” Ask this question: In your regular meetings, are you honoring the time of group members by discussing things that matter?

    Duncan: What opportunities do good meetings offer for enhancing engagement throughout an entire organization?

Axtell: On a big picture level, it’s impossible to have an effective organization when you don’t have employee engagement and alignment. We’ve seen survey after survey validating this point.

In my opinion, this is because most employees don’t feel as though they have a relationship or connection with their supervisor or the organization itself. Or they don’t feel they have much of a say in how things work.

The good news? Each and every meeting is an opportunity to change this. Every time you ask for input. Every time you listen attentively. Every time you work with someone’s idea or question, you change this sense of being on the outside—of not being valued or engaged. Every hallway conversation, regular meeting, or quarterly Q&A session is a chance to reset this vital piece of the organizational culture.

Rodger Dean Duncan is the bestselling author of CHANGE-friendly LEADERSHIP: How to Transform Good Intentions into Great Performance. Follow him on Twitter @DoctorDuncan

Forbes.com | January 18, 2015 | Rodger Dean Duncan

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Strategy: 25 Time-Management Tips Every Young Professional Should Know…”No Car goes Without Gas, Manage Your Energy, Not Just your Time

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Montreal-based designer Étienne Garbugli spent most of his 20s equating long hours of hard work with success. But as he got older, he learned better ways to manage his workload and schedule his days.

Garbugli’s presentation “26 Time Management Hacks I Wish I’d Known At 20” was viewed millions of times and became SlideShare’s “Most Liked” presentation of 2013. He’s now raising money via a Kickstarter campaign for an in-depth book on the subject, “Hacking Time.”

Here, he’s shared his new presentation, which includes more productivity hacks he’s learned himself and from entrepreneurs.

 

Étienne Garbugli

Étienne Garbugli

Étienne Garbugli

Étienne Garbugli

Étienne Garbugli

Étienne Garbugli

Étienne Garbugli

Étienne Garbugli

Étienne Garbugli

Étienne Garbugli

Étienne Garbugli

Étienne Garbugli

Étienne Garbugli

Étienne Garbugli

Étienne Garbugli

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Étienne Garbugli

Étienne Garbugli

From “Rules of Productivity.”

Étienne Garbugli

Étienne Garbugli

Étienne Garbugli

Étienne Garbugli

Étienne Garbugli

Étienne Garbugli

Étienne Garbugli

Businessinsider.com | January 7, 2015 | 

http://www.businessinsider.com/time-management-tips-for-young-professionals-2015-1?op=1#ixzz3OASNVN3K