Mike Russell

Another international crisis …

Another opportunity for leaders to make a positive impact in their companies.

How you behave and communicate in a crisis will affect:

1. Current productivity/results
2. Future productivity/results via who “comes and goes”

For current impacts, leaders can help by addressing immediate fears (see previous article https://novusleadershipinstitute.com/2022/04/11/the-only-thing-we-have-to-fear-is-2/) and needs:

• visibly leading by example,
• acknowledging fears or direct impacts/needs people may have, and
• clear and transparent communication.

The future impact is more subtle but the effects are longer lasting. People will make judgments about the company based on how leaders behave during the crisis.

Central to those judgments is attractiveness of the company as an employer:

– Current employees – should I stay with the company?

– Prospective employees – should I join the company if there’s an opportunity?

A significant factor affecting attractiveness is “clear and transparent communication.” Are leaders communicating what effects, if any, the crisis has on the company? And by extension, can employees trust leaders in the future about anything affecting employees?

Leaders have a few basic choices in communicating company and individual impacts:

1.   Say nothing, especially if there are negative impacts.

2.   Say something, but not everything.

3.   Disclose current and anticipated impacts along with plans.

4.   Disclose impacts and plans, plus any uncertainties about the future and related plans.

There can be many considerations for each choice; here are a few:

For the first choice, the typical hope is that any bad stuff will go away and employees won’t “notice” any issues. Employees will notice! And they will form their own conclusions, which may not be realistic nor what leaders hope for.

The second choice is similar to the first. The underlying fear is driving employees away or reducing productivity. Employees will notice, and will form their own conclusions about what is not communicated. Additionally, partial communication will often taken as intentional misleading. That can make the second case worse than the first.

For the third and fourth choices, confidence in and attractiveness of the company can increase. The fourth choice is the “full” disclosure path, acknowledging that leaders may not have all the answers. If communication hasn’t been open in the past, these choices also need to acknowledge the past and why the change, so leadership intent is clear. Otherwise, the change in communication itself might create unease or distrust.

Ultimately, the issue is whether leaders trust employees to make decisions for themselves about their own well-being.

Withholding information affecting employees creates a culture that makes decisions for employees. Some employees may be O.K. with that, others – and probably most – will not be.

How are you doing?

Just the opposite.

Unwillingness to get perspective or explore is the real sign of weakness.

Does that mean a leader with a coach gives up responsibility for decisions? For thinking? Planning? Whatever?

Absolutely not.

Coaching is about improving, not abdication. About getting out of any mental ruts and over whatever is reducing your success and satisfaction.

I have had external or internal coaches in some form for almost all of my career, whether I was in leadership positions or in external coach/consultant roles.

The biggest misses or errors I made in the past were usually when I didn’t have a coach, didn’t seek perspective … or got it, then ignored it! 😞

A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points. (Attributed to computer pioneer Alan Kay)

Looking at opportunities or problems in new ways is often the most effective way forward. Reframing is a key element of brainstorming and other improvement techniques.

You can get that kind of perspective with anyone willing to constructively participate. Fostering collaboration in organizations also helps.

Coaches are of particular benefit for leaders on things that can’t be discussed with others in their organization. Or there is a need for any kind of confidential discussion in a safe place.

At the very least, a coach can help you avoid what Zig Ziglar called “stinkin’ thinkin’” 😉

If you don’t have a coach, I invite you to take advantage of a totally free “Business Breakthrough” coaching session where we’ll work together to:

🔎 Examine your situation from different angles

👉 Create next steps that take advantage of promising angles

⚡ Leave you better armed to tackle opportunities and problems

If you are in a leadership or management role, apply now for one of the limited free slots now opening for this month.

Contact us with:

1. What’s the biggest problem you’re trying to solve?
2. How hard has it been to solve it?
3. What have you already tried to solve the problem?
4. What progress have you made?
5. How would your life change if you solved it?

… along with any relevant background information about your role and the business.

Why wait? This gives you a “try before you buy” opportunity with little risk.

Saw this referred to recently – a great example explanation of guiding principles for a business:

https://polyfacefarms.com/guiding-principles/

Just having words as values or principles is helpful … even more helpful is defining what the words mean for that business along with examples of how applied.

Convene colleague Ken Stewart noted this recently after watching a company’s workers successively fail at backing up their company trailer:

One of the most overlooked and easily dismissed elements of business process improvement and employee development falls squarely in this space: We fail to give our people the proper education and training needed to succeed.

Agreed.

It’s also a reminder that we have often solved similar things in the past but forget about them or discard them because they are not “new.”

For training, “Training Within Industry” or TWI is one of may favorite “forgotten” examples.

In the United States during World War II, many of the factory and other industrial workers were sent to the war zones. This left huge numbers of jobs open that were still critical to the war effort and needed to increase, not decrease, to supply allied war needs (ironically, supplies and equipment so those who vacated the jobs would be able to fight).

The problem: how to rapidly train and make productive people (mostly women) who were willing but usually had no background in the work whatsoever. Enter TWI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Training_Within_Industry as an example summary with some extracts below).

The program was structured based on the needs of every supervisor involved in training:

• Knowledge of the Work
• Knowledge of Responsibility
• Skill in Instructing
• Skill in Improving Methods
• Skill in Leading.

“Each program was based on Charles Allen’s 4-point method of Preparation, Presentation, Application, and Testing” … similar to the “Apprentice Method” process Ken included in his post:

I do. You watch. We talk.
I do. You help. We talk.
You do. I help. We talk.
You do. I watch. We talk.
You do. Someone else watches… (the learning process continues)

The training was usually done in the workplace … not in some classroom, other than for maybe introductory information. This is still largely ignored, and why the $100 billion invested in organizational “training and development” in the U.S. is largely wasted.

Also, workers were taught to “objectively evaluate the efficiency of their jobs and to methodically evaluate and suggest improvements” … i.e, the people who did the work were expected to be a primary source of improving the work. That should sound familiar to those in lean, agile, and related circles today.

Another key TWI aspect was that workers were to be treated as individuals … also ignored today when policies and procedures treat workers more like machine parts.

Where did TWI survive after the war? Japan … and incorporated into lean approaches and industry-specific examples like the Toyota Production System. The lean community still has a subset of folks who keep the TWI tradition and relevancy alive elsewhere, but TWI is rarely a topic you hear in discussions outside those areas.

Don’t have a good new supervisor training program? TWI is one place to start if you develop your own.

It’s also one of the aspects of our training programs, and why our programs can show ROI and pay for themselves. Let us show you how.

A good discussion on LinkedIn recently about experience vs. inexperience … along with another scenario that needs to be considered.

👉  Reducing cost by getting rid of experience is not usually a good idea, as it will lead to more cost through ineffective activity and mistakes (comment added by Kevin Martin)

👉  A small, experienced team can run circles around any number of inexperienced people (original post by Dipl.-Ing. Lars Behrendt)

But how do you get experienced people?

Typical methods:

1. Hire.
2. Move from another internal area.
3. Develop.

For a small team on its own, then the first method is usually common.

For a larger organization, the second may be possible but depends in the impact of departing from the original role.

Development is an option and takes time AND people with experience to bring the less-experienced along.

No matter the route or combination, planning for succession is critical to organizational sustainability.

Don’t leave it to chance.

… or hoping that the hordes of inexperienced people (like the players in the video) will pick up *meaningful* experience by osmosis.

Our programs can help you develop people AND get ROI that pays for the program.

Original post and video: https://lnkd.in/e4RAKnqf

One of the leadership mistakes I’ve made in the past is to have a great vision … but do one of these things:

* keep it in my head

* communicate it just to a few people

* communicate it just once

* not align the culture, processes/systems, hiring/developing people, etc. with the vision or vice versa

Mark Firth’s LinkedIn post highlights the importance of vision to an individual … and it applies also to any organization: https://lnkd.in/e8w_-JKF

Just don’t keep it to yourself 🙂

And if company political circumstances create a hostile environment for your overall vision, try making interim vision/milestone steps visible while working to gain allies to offset the danger. If the danger is too great for even that, then the questions are:

• Are you in the right role?
• The right company?