Effective Execution & The Essential Behaviors of Leaders.

 Leaders have to live their businesses !!

The CEO was sitting in his office late one evening, looking tired and drained. He was trying to explain to a visitor why his great strategic initiative had failed, but he could not figure out as to what had gone wrong.
"This was the brightest team in the industry. I assigned stretch goals. I empowered them and gave them freedom to do what they needed needed to do. They knew the rewards and penalties. We worked together with high energy. How could we fail?"

Effective Leadership is the Key Element. The Leadership here is not about the fancy designation you hold, or the number of people assigned to your team. Leadership is resultant of series of coordinated efforts and activities that are repeated and enforced by the leader, day in and day out.

Leaders have to live their businesses !!

Following are seven essential behaviors that form the key building block of execution:

1. Know yourself: Good leaders learn their specific personal strengths and weeknesses, especially in dealing with other people, then build on their strengths and correct their weaknesses. They earn their leadership when the followers see their inner strength, inner confidence, and ability to help team members deliver resuts, while at the same time expanding their own capabilities
2. Know your people and your business: In organisations, with weak execution action, the leaders are usually out of touch with the day-to-day realities. Here, leaders are getting lot of information delivered to them, but it is filtered - presented by direct reports with their own perceptions, limitations and agendas or gathered by staff with their own perspectives. The leaders are not where the action is. They are not engaged and neither do they know their organisation nor the people know him.
3. Set clear Goals and Priorities: Anybody who thinks through the logic of a business will see that focussing on three or four priorities will produce the best results from the resources at hand. Any leader who says that he has ten priorities does not know himself as to what the important things are. Along with having clear goals, leader should strive for simplicity in general. One thing you will notice about leaders who execute well is their ability to talk plainly and forthrightly about whats on their mind.
4. Insist on Realism: Realism is the heart of execution, but many organisations are full of people who are trying to avoid or shade reality. WHY? It makes life uncomfortable. They want to hide mistakes, or buy time to figure out a solution rather than admit that they don't have an answer at the moment.  Embracing realism means always taking realistic view of your company and comparing it with other companies
5. Follow Through: Clear and simple goals don't mean much if nobody takes them seriously. The failure to follow through is widespread in business, and a major cause of poor execution. Everybody may have agreed that the idea was good, but since nobody was named accountable for results, it doesn't get done.
6. Reward the Doers:  If you want people to produce specific results, you reward them accordingly. It is a known fact, yet many corporations do poor job of linking rewards to performance that there's little correlation at all. You have to design and make clear to all that rewards and respect are based on performance.
7. Expand people's capabilities: One of the most important part of leader's role is to pass on acquired knowledge to next generation of leaders. Good leaders regard every encounter as an opportunity to coach. Coaching is the single most important part of expanding others' capabilities. You must have heard the saying, "Give a man a fish, and you will feed him for a day; Teach a man to fish, and you will feed him for life".

In nutshell, Effective Execution is one of the most important component of Effective Leadership.  The heart of the working of a business is how the three processes of People, Strategy, and operations link together.

Smart Sales People

(PS- I have tried to keep the following, a bit light hearted and without any offence to anyone. I have been a Salesperson myself, for decades)

What do Smart Sales People do? They close good sales. Right?

One innovative Sales Situation I witnesses, as a customer was what I call it - The Broken Freezer.

A pick up truck with a freezer unit in the bed shows up outside my house. Driver (Salesperson) explains to my wife that freezer unit has just gone dead, and he has got a whole load of meat in there and that's going to spoil if he cant find somebody to take it. He offered my wife an 'at cost' deal on a box or two of prime streax. She can have this steal deal and can also recommend same to a few of her neighborhood friends. Since he does not have time to reach back his office in time, he might spoil the entire stock and might loose his job.
Its surprising how well it works. He plays on the natural desire to get "Good Deal" while also helping the guy to save good food and his job.

You call it Salesmanship or a Scam, your choice. But as as Salesperson, I see this as a strong sales presentation.

Marketing would be nothing without their Supermen called "Sales People". 

Good salespeople know that human brain has several parts. One part of your brain- the rational part- thinks. This part of your brain thinks, "All I need is Food, Shelter and may be some sex and I'm Happy. This rational part of your brain does not want to buy most of what I posses - Expensive Scotch, 5 pair of different footwear, Fancy car, Home theater system and so on......

The job of a salesman is to deactivate that happy part of the brain and get to the part that thinks, "Unless I buy an unending stream of unnecessary merchandise, I die."

The first task of a salesperson is to make you miserable, because happy people don't need anything. If there is nothing wrong with you, the salesperson will provide you with a problem. Salespeople want you to think about how desperately inadequate your life is now and how wonderful life will be in the future, assuming you buy some unnecessary products.

Well, it would be interesting to analyse a few sales presentations you might have attended in past, in the light of above....

What say?

All Managers are Leaders. Is it?

There was this news item that I read a couple of years back. It was about an incident of major fire in a chemical factory.

During that incident, material worth millions was destroyed and it took 8 fire fighting whole night to douse the fire. However, the highlight of this tragic incident was a Janitor, who single-handedly saved lives of many and helped avoid a major catastrophe.

As the fire broke out, manager was informed immediately and he in-turn ordered complete evacuation of the factory and he himself rushed out to safety. However Hero of the day, The Janitor, realized that there is large amount of chemical flowing in various tubes and in mixers. Boilers were also operational. Storage tanks have tonnes of chemicals stored in them... All this and uncontrolled fire would lead to a major accident and might lead to loss of Human life and other serious losses...

Seeing the situation and its potential escalation, this Janitor rushed to switch off the power from the mains. Simultaneously he instructed the electrician and few other coworkers to turn off the knobs of Storage and boiler tanks. He further made the housekeeping staff to switch on all the firefighting equipment. Atlast, he and his band of brothers ensured that all the factory roads are cleaned up for fire fighting trucks to rush in smoothly. 

A major Hazard was averted.

Question arises, What made this Janitor to drive himself and his fellow coworkers to do what they did?

He were not officially in charge. He was not instructed by any of his seniors either. Infact his Manager instructed all to evacuate immediately. What made him do what he did?

Leadership and Management

Most people think of a Leader as someone with a vision who effectively communicates that vision to others, who then help the leader achieve the vision. A leader is good at defining goals and inspiring others to achieve those goals. A leader is someone whom others trust and often admire.

How does a Leader differ from Manager?

The classic textbook definition of a Manager is someone who gets things done through other people. This means the manager is responsible for accomplishing goals by making sure that other people carry out the action steps and tasks designed to produce the desired outcomes.

Do you see mush of difference between Leaders & Manager?

In the above story of Chemical factory. While Manager was Manager, Janitor came up as a Leader:

• He foresaw.
• He did not panic or display any knee-jerk and abrupt reactions
• He visualized with clarity planned.
• Gave clear instructions on goals, actions, timelines and end result.
• Inspired a group of unrelated co-workers into action which was not normal for them, and achieving the ultimate goal of avoiding a catastrophe.

Many managers do not have skills or wisdom to get things done through other people. They become dictating bosses or paper shufflers or political creatures whose primary goal is to protect and preserve their own jobs and further their careers by pleasing their own bosses.

Above is the precise reasons, why much of time and energy is devoted to develop leadership abilities in managers.

Hence, While Managers are Managers, GOOD MANAGERS are GOOD LEADERS too..

Humans' Need for Attention !!

 Many decades ago, during my schooling days. I still remember this class mate of ours - Rony. He was very aggressive and abusive bully. Shouting at fellow students, pulling out and damaging books from bags of fellow students, picking up fight etc....

I always wondered as to why he is whatever he is. Am sure you would have come across many such personalities. Well may be worse or better, but such personalities do force us into thinking and mulling.

Have you ever wondered? Why John (fictitious name) keeps honking unnecessarily, while riding his bike in the neighborhood? Why your well to do neighbor loves to pick up your newspaper every morning? Why you always hear loud music playing in one of the houses, every late night?

The answer to above questions lie in their upbringing at a very young age. Don't get me wrong here. Am not here to lecture parents or teachers. am just trying to have a better clarity here.

To a very large extent, answer lies in the HUMANS' NEED FOR ATTENTION !!

Need for Attention is such a Powerful Human Need, some people will do almost anything to get it.

Engaging in negative behavior may be the way thy learnt to get attention at the very early days of their lives

It does not make sense for someone to engage in behavior that results in negative responses from others. But need for attention is emotional and not logical. What we learnt as children about getting attention were powerful lessons because they met our emotional needs. An emotional need often will not produce logical behavior choice.

How do we manage such behaviors?

What you STROKE is what you get !!

Dr. Eric Bernie, the creator of "Transactional Analysis system of social psychology", called every form of attention a STROKE 

So, Every time you are using Compliments to drive a particular behavior or performance, you are stroking. Stroking in our day today lives or even a Work Place.

Stroking in the Workplace

What you stroke is what you get, applies to the work place as in rest of our lives. Whatever you give attention to , you will get more of, as in the following instances:

• If you give attention to mistakes while ignoring good work, you will have to deal with more and more mistakes.
• If you give attention to late arrivals, you will have a continuing tardiness problem.
• If you give attention to meeting goals and being accountable, you will have team that works hard to accomplish its goals and be accountable for its actions and decisions.

Stroking is a very powerful tool, in managing human behavior. Many of us struggle with putting this strategy into effect, as Parents/ Elders/Supervisors. 

Often, because we do not ourselves prioritize the right deliverables or may be we have limited repertoire of strokes

Be it family front or work, its time to get our own priorities right and figure out more creative ways to to reinforce the Desired Behavior.