Tag Archives: management

3 Questions to help you take charge of change

in Leadership

This is a guest post from John Baldoni. John is an internationally recognized leadership consultant, coach, author and speaker. This excerpt is adapted from his newest book, The Leader’s Pocket Guide.

One reason we fear change is because we feel a loss of control. And while you cannot control the change process, you can control how you and your team react to it.

Assert your ownership. Doing so shifts the emphasis from something being done to you to something over which you have control. Consider these three questions to help you take charge:

  1. What do we do now? Understand that you have a choice; you can opt out and not accept the change. Of course you may feel that for financial reasons you cannot do this, but understand that, unless you have been sentenced to jail, you are free to decide what to do. Making decisions to stay for whatever reason means that you have made a decision. Likewise, if you decide to leave, that is your decision.
  2. What do we do next? Make your teammates aware of what you have decided to do. If you are staying in, you want to make certain your boss knows that you are still part of the team. If your disappointment is evident, as it might be with a loss of promotion, acknowledge it but do not dwell on the negativity. Reassure the boss that you are still in the game and want to be considered as a contributor. Such behavior will mark you as one who has a strong sense of self and can deal with disappointment.
  3. How can we make this work for us? Consider how you can turn the situation to your advantage. Look for ways to turn the change into new opportunities. Find ways to assert your can-do spirit. Be proactive. Look for ways to make a positive difference.

Owning the change process and making it work for you is critical to demonstrating resilience as well as an ability to move forward. It is very definitely a mark of leadership.

P.S. I highly recommend my readers to get Mr. Baldoni’s Leadership pocket book guide because it is full of useful to the point advice like this on a variety of leadership and management topics.

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Must read innovation posts of the week: Mintzberg on What’s Wrong with Management

in Must reads of the week

Must read innovation posts of the week: Mintzberg on What’s Wrong with Management

Storified by Jorge Barba · Sat, Aug 25 2012 20:19:03

Bringing Science to the Art of Strategy http://s.hbr.org/SNCHmy #playingtowinHarvard Biz Review
#Leadership Alert – Mintzberg on What’s Wrong with Management http://ow.ly/1m8bkySoren Kaplan
Business Model Innovation Through Process Change http://s.hbr.org/NWwmDsHarvard Biz Review
Orgs need complementary #innovation systems – my latest: Evolutionary and Revolutionary #Innovation – http://bit.ly/Pd3nMGRalph-Christian Ohr
There are two sides to the equation of shaping #innovation – http://bit.ly/Pgn7iFPaul Hobcraft
How to Design Culture: 16 Patterns to Build Adaptive Learning Organizations. http://feedly.com/k/NYiwR2 #organizationaldesignNilofer Merchant

If you like these links, check out all the previous “Innovation Must Reads of the Week“. And don’t forget to

6 Attributes of an effective strategy

in Leadership, Strategy

company strategy map

Picture credit: Martin Oberhäuser

At its essence, strategy is a guide to behavior. And, when communicating your strategic intent, the most important goal is conveying your unique aspects and advantages with specific and engaging words.

This is hard. But, if you’re not being challenged at coming up with an effective strategy statement, you’re not trying hard enough. Because It is a real challenge to translate strategy into execution, this is something we must continually work at, that is, communicating strategy. Research has found that only %14 of employees understand their company’s strategy and direction.…

3 fundamental lessons about change that strategists must understand

in Strategy

change

“You must accept the things you cannot change, have the courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” – Serenity Prayer

Like you, in my neck of the woods, I’ve observed that business leaders have a complete disregard for the forces of change in the world and much less in their industry. They understand their business very well, but not what is changing or will change their business.

And if they think they have an idea of what is changing, they adopt a “wait and see” approach and look at their competitors for direction.

Basically, their business acumen is non-existent. They base their strategy (if any) on luck and hope. And you know very well that luck and hope is not a strategy. They obviously think that because they’ve “been doing this for a long time” and it has worked for them thus far, that they somehow control their fate.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Three fundamental lessons about change are of paramount importance (from the book The Strategist):…

Management Innovation at DJO Global Tijuana

in Innovation, Leadership

I had the opportunity to assist a Corporate Mix at Cetys Universidad yesterday. And boy was I happy I went.

The focus of the talks were about exchanging best practices about how to best develop human capital inside organizations.

One talk stood out from all the rest. Eduardo Salcedo, Sr. VP of Operations of DJO Global and his exciting ideas about developing human capital. DJO Global manufactures rehabilitation products. It has about 5K employees around the world and generates 1 billion dollars in annual sales.

Here are a few takeaways from Mr. Salcedo:

Giving time back to the employee

With the goal of creating a more engaged and happy workforce, Mr. Salcedo’s team asked themselves: What does an employee do in his time-off?

With the goal and question in mind, they started writing down a list of things employees do in their time off like buying groceries, paying for utility services, exercising, etc. As they were creating the list, they started thinking that if employees do all these activities in their time off, then they really “have no time-off” from their work. And with that though, came another question: How can we help employees have real time-off?

One idea they came up with was to bring the supermarket to the office. So, that is what they did. They brought the Tianguis (open air market) to the plant. That way employees don’t have to drive, or take the bus to the supermarket and waste precious time-off from work.

DJO Global, gives back time to their employees.

Rewarding employees like Hollywood Stars

Another story Mr. Salcedo told was about how they honor their employee of the month. Again, they looked beyond the traditional way of doing things. So instead of putting pictures on a wall behind plexiglass (disposable material = disposable people as he explained) like they do at Walmart, at DJO Global they embed a star with the employee’s name onto the factory floor. Just like they do in Hollywood!

As you might imagine, the people who were listening to Mr. Salcedo were highly engaged. This is not common. And compared to the other presenters, Mr. Salcedo put on a passionate display of leadership.

For those of you who have been reading this blog for a while, it might not come as a surprise that I’m sharing this with you. At Game-Changer, It is our modus-operandi to be unconventional.

But, I was surprised to hear these types of stories from a company in Tijuana. Like everywhere else in the world, technology gets all the attention. Rarely does speaking about innovative ways to develop human capital get attention.

And, I was even more surprised to learn that DJO Global is #2 on the “Best Companies to work for in Mexico” (yes, all of Mexico) behind Plantronics. Also from Tijuana.

It seems to me that Mr. Salcedo wrote the “Delivering Happiness” book before it ever came out. A Game-Changer to say the least.

There were other ideas Mr. Salcedo talked about, I will try to contact him and get more formal insights for you. To be continued…

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Innovation must reads of the week: The fallacy of the “rapid pace of innovation”

in Must reads of the week

 

 

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Innovation and Diversity

in Innovation

This is a guest post by Dr. Ralph Ohr. Dr. Ohr has extensive experience in product/innovation management for international technology-based companies. His particular interest is targeted at the intersection of organizational and human innovation capabilities. You can follow him on Twitter @Ralph_Ohr.

networks of innovation

A while ago, I came across the following tweet by Gary Hamel:

Tomorrow’s management systems will need to value diversity, dissent and divergence as highly as conformance, consensus and cohesion.

It reflects well the fact that businesses range in increasingly dynamic and complex environments, imposing accelerated and mostly unforeseeable change. The most promising way for organizations to face this unprecedented discontinuity is to develop an ability to adapt to changing conditions and emerging opportunities: Adaptability.…