This week I want to extend the conversation suggest you resist the urge to hide in too much complexity and detail.
The reason people and teams fall into this is because complexity can make you feel smart and safe.
Here’s what I observe:
Complexity is often substituted for actual problem solving
If you can sling enough complex detail around, and take the time to keep everyone updated on the detail, there is no time or room for actually doing anything about it.
Removing complexity exposes the actual problem you need to solve
This is the crux of successful business execution: If there are no defined problems to overcome, you are still just talking — and not executing.
Complexity thrives, because the simple version of the truth can expose a painful reality – and a critical (and scary) need to act.
So you stay conversationally safe, while the business declines.
Stop having “Situation” Discussions
A prolific source of complexity is what I refer to as “situation” discussions.
Situation discussions are things like commenting about the market, the competitors, the resource shortage, the time pressures, the financial pressures, the state of the products, the capabilities of the organization, or the myriad of other topics that only serve to add more detail to the conversation with no forward movement.
Situation discussions are tempting because they give you a platform to talk about something that is important, but are free of conflict. So they make you feel smart and safe.
You can feel it when you are stuck in a situation discussion.
Situation discussions by definition, don’t move forward, they just gather more detail. After about 15 minutes you’ve all got the picture, yet you are still talking…but not going anywhere. The discussion has turned into a giant hairball of smart and important sounding words.
Collectively admiring the problem
I refer to situation discussions as “collectively admiring the problem”.
The way to break out of the detail and complexity of situation discussions is to ask outcome and action-oriented questions.
Below are some examples of the type of questions that I use to break through complexity that is stalling forward movement. (This is not an exhaustive list.) These kind of questions help clarify the real problem to solve, and naturally lead to an action plan.
This is the approach I use when working with leadership teams to move their business forward in my Strategy into Action program.
“We’re stuck in a situation discussion, let’s define an outcome instead”
Magic words…
The idea is to catch yourself when talking too long about the situation, and instead start talking about a specific, concrete outcome, and a specific action plan to get there.
Define a concrete outcome:
What is a specific desired outcome we want to achieve with regard to this problem?
What are the 3 most important things we can DO to get that outcome?
What are the 3 most important obstacles to overcome to get that outcome?
How would we observe and measure this outcome if it was working?
If we were to do a demo of this when it is halfway finished, what would people see?
How will we measure progress each quarter until it is finished?
Define who is impacted and exactly how:
Which specific groups or people will this effect/involve/require? – (names and shoe sizes please)
Does this [thing] pertain to everyone, equally, all at the same time? Or to what extent, in what order?
What will be different for this specific person or group? How will they perceive it?
Define what needs to change:
What new skills will this require? Will we train or hire people?
How long will it take to get the new skills in place?
Where will the budget come from: To pay for the project? To develop/acquire the skills?
What specifically has to be fixed, invented, started or stopped to make this succeed?
Managing the fall-out of being clear
So often the implied conflict of moving resources from one project to a new critical program is so conversationally painful, that the leadership team won’t do it.
Instead they hope it will get worked out in the background. (This never happens)
Part of my role when I work with teams in this state is to say something like,
“It sounds like you all agree that the business fails if you don’t do this”.
So….
Who, specifically will you assign to do this? When? Why not right now?
Often there will be someone in the room who is crumbling because doing this resource shift means their program is getting decimated.
But you can’t let that stop you from doing the right thing.
You have to work through it. You need to assign the resources now to the “can’t fail” project, and you need to actively work on an alternative future for the people who are impacted.
Leadership is hard
Learning to trade conversational discomfort for genuine business progress is a shared trait of the most effective leaders.
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About Patty Patty Azzarello is an executive, best-selling author, speaker and CEO/Business Advisor. She became the youngest general manager at HP at the age of 33, ran a billion dollar software business at 35 and became a CEO for the first time at 38 (all without turning into a self-centered, miserable jerk)
She is a regular contributor to Fast Company and was featured in Forbes Magazine in a column called Women We Love.
You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her bookRISE…3 Practical Steps for Advancing Your Career, Standing Out as a Leader, AND Liking Your Life.
If you take the time to collect your team in a room together, the last thing you should do is review status.
Status review meetings
I think this is an organizational habit that takes root when new managers have a staff meeting because they think they should, and then they are not sure what to talk about, so they ask each person to give an update about their work.
What ensues is basically a series of 1-1 meetings between the manger and each team member while everyone is watching.
Phase Review Meetings
Then this type of behavior moves into bigger forums which turn into things like phase review meetings, and quarterly business reviews.
These meetings have lots more people from multiple teams in a room for hours or days on end, to review the status of multiple projects at a level of detail that makes you want to kill yourself.
To picture this meeting imagine, say 30 people, sitting in a room not paying attention to one person, who is standing in the front of the room talking to slides that are densely populated with detail.
Almost everyone is doing email.
Then for each presenter there is someone in the audience who tries to sound like they are interested and accountable, who asks a couple of pointed questions under the guise of uncovering a deep insight or exposing a risk.
These meetings are a waste of time.
Stop having status meetings
There are 3 key problems that status/review meetings cause.
1. You don’t gain necessary insights about risks and opportunities
2. You keep people from doing real work and waste a lot of time
3. You fail to discuss the things that would give you insights about risks and opportunities because you spend all your time and energy reviewing project detail.
What to do instead of status meetings…
1. Consider your desired outcome
What is your team trying to do?
* Is it to deliver products on time?
* Be more competitive?
* Create new products?
* Improve quality?
* Improve the sales close rate?
2. Find the Control Points
Then ask yourself: What are the key outcomes, control points, and risk triggers which will let us know that we are on track or off track to get that outcome?
(This by the way is something you should be talking about in your staff meetings instead of status).
3. Create a useful tracking framework and process
Once you know what the key outcomes or control points are, then you can create a process and framework for each project team to report ahead of time on those key measures.
Each product team will still create and use their detailed project plans to do and manage their work, but what gets reported upwards will be a new, communication-oriented report.
The communication report will contains insights about the key control points for each project and how you are performing on those.
Note: Moving the same amount of detail upward that you use to do your work is not leadership, and it wastes too much overall organizational time.
4. Have a different and better meeting
Then when you have the staff meeting or review meeting, reading of the new reports about the control points is pre-work. It gives you a chance to flag the issues, risks and opportunities. Those become the things you talk about in the meeting.
In one company I worked for I got the quarterly business review process down from 5 full days per quarter to 2 by doing this. And the quality of the insights and output was better. Everyone was happier.
What you should do with staff meeting time.
Here are 11 ideas of the kinds of things you should do with staff meeting time.
This list is by no means exhaustive. There are just some ideas to get you thinking about higher value things you can do with your team, than to merely review status.
1. What are the key outcomes we are on the hook for? How will know if we are achieving them?
2. What are the risks we face? What should we do about them?
3. What is the data we wish we knew about our business? Is it knowable? How will we find it? If it is not knowable, what scenarios should we plan for?
4. What stupid stuff are we doing? I would have this as a staff topic at least twice a year. Grit always creeps into the gears, and old habits lose their usefulness. Question them.
5. What has changed in our market, business, or customers’ markets and businesses? What does that mean for our plans?
6. What process or infrastructure improvement would have the biggest impact on our ability to deliver?
7. What has become harder and easier in our work and business? What should we consider changing?
8. What should we all be learning about this year in addition to our core work? What do we want to be better at, or smarter about next year?
9. Who in our organization has done something remarkable that we should recognize?
10. Who are the stars in our organization that we should be investing in developing?
11. Who/what groups should our team be communicating, networking, or improving our brand with? How should we do it?
5. Use your team as a team.
1. When you begin the meeting, socialize, laugh, talk. People are more productive when you treat them like people. I would spend the first 10 minutes of every staff meeting socializing, and having people tell jokes and stories. It was not wasted time. This socializing make the rest of the meeting so much more productive.
2. Ask people ahead of time to recommend topics that they feel are important for the whole team to discuss.
3. Have someone on your team plan the agendas ahead of time. Or rotate this responsibility among team members. Some people are great at this, and will naturally gravitate to it.
Value team time
Time with your team is really valuable. Just think about the hourly cost of having all those people in the meeting. Find ways to make it more valueable.
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About Patty Patty Azzarello is an executive, best-selling author, speaker and CEO/Business Advisor. She became the youngest general manager at HP at the age of 33, ran a billion dollar software business at 35 and became a CEO for the first time at 38 (all without turning into a self-centered, miserable jerk)
She is a regular contributor to Fast Company and was featured in Forbes Magazine in a column called Women We Love.
You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her bookRISE…3 Practical Steps for Advancing Your Career, Standing Out as a Leader, AND Liking Your Life.
Want to better align your core values and strengths with your job
Are feeling unsatisfied, stuck, or overwhelmed at work
Want to gain more confidence, visibility, and support
Want your work to be less painful!
What you can control
Lots of things cause stress.
In this webinar I shared ideas about how you can make material changes in the work-related ones you can actually control.
We each have an opportunity to break free of our job description, and tune our work to have more value and be more satisfying.
Bottom line: Don’t give up your power by thinking you don’t have any.
Here’s what the webinar covers:
How to find your personal “playbook” where you are most effective and satisfied in your work
Key ideas about values, stress, fear and confidence
Dealing with feeling overwhelmed, stuck and unsupported
Connecting with your network (and your family) to make your job easier and your life better
Worksheets included
As part of this webinar, in the worksheets, I provided some templates to work from.
The worksheets include:
Discover your playbook
Dealing with being overwhelmed
Find the optimal intersection of strengths, values, and work
Turning off the negative voice in your head
What you can control
Bring your best (and true) self to work
It’s really hard to go through the personality lobotomy every Monday morning if you feel like the real you is not welcome at work.
The good news is that the more you are thriving at work, the better it is for your company. You are not cheating or being selfish by taking care of yourself. When you are thriving personally, you get better at your job.
If you feel discouraged, invisible, stuck, or overwhelmed, you are not in a position to excel.
Change something.
The magic happens when you can find the intersection of these three things: what you genuinely care about, what kind of work gives you energy and what your company values.
When you find that you will also find new confidence, recognition and the opportunity to truly excel and feel great about your work.
How you feel about work has a huge impact on how you feel about life.
Create your plan for changing something to reduce stress, be more productive, and feel happier. (In your work and life).
If you are a member, just on this topic alone, you can also get related webinars for free on:
Build Career Value
Make More Time
Living Your Values at Work
Negotiating Your Workload
Stakeholders & Sponsors
.
So you might as well join and get them all for free!
Additional benefits for members
Take a look through the Member Library and see all the other great webinars and resources you get too. For your membership fee of $179 you will be able to access everything in the Member Library for a full year!
Plus you get live coaching from me in monthly Coaching Hour conference calls where you can ask your own questions.
Membership a great resource (and a steal at $179) to help you advance your career. Many members report raises and promotions, and cite lessons and support they specifically got from this program.
Be more successful, and happier along the way. I’d love to help.
If you found this article useful, please help me share it with others and encourage them to subscribe to this Blog for free.
About Patty Patty Azzarello is an executive, best-selling author, speaker and CEO/Business Advisor. She became the youngest general manager at HP at the age of 33, ran a billion dollar software business at 35 and became a CEO for the first time at 38 (all without turning into a self-centered, miserable jerk)
You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her bookRISE…3 Practical Steps for Advancing Your Career, Standing Out as a Leader, AND Liking Your Life.
This is short post this week, but this topic is on my mind because I have had this conversation with so many people over the past month or so.
The dilemma so many people face…
Two kinds of people
There is one kind of person (who is universally disliked) that brags, is always talking, pretends they know it all, doesn’t add value, but acts like they are really important.
There is another kind of person who is highly capable, but doesn’t speak up because they are SO afraid that they will turn into (or be seen as) that first type of person.
The reality:
1. This NEVER happens
2. There is LOADS OF ROOM in between
Smart, capable, humble, respectful
You can speak up and you can step forward – a lot — without risking turning in to that kind of person you don’t want to be. There is so much room between the two. Don’t worry about it so much.
If you are not already an annoying blow-hard, you are not going to turn into one because you speak up. That kind of person is a different species.
It’s important to contribute to the conversation.
Madeline Albright once offered this very good advice to people who are not stepping forward: Learn to interrupt.
You will not be given the floor to share your contribution. You need to work it in or risk living in the background forever.
OK, you might living in the background. But just know that you are limiting your opportunity to contribute. You’ll get to do more excellent work it if you step forward and share your knowledge with others.
Give yourself a break
Many people feel unworthy of speaking up.
I often ask people struggling with this… Do you think you are at least as capable as the person doing all the talking.
The answer is always a resounding yes, even more-so.
So the question is, why not give yourself permission to be even a fraction as confident as that other person is acting?
If you found this article useful, please help me share it with others and encourage them to subscribe to this Blog for free.
About Patty Patty Azzarello is an executive, best-selling author, speaker and CEO/Business Advisor. She became the youngest general manager at HP at the age of 33, ran a billion dollar software business at 35 and became a CEO for the first time at 38 (all without turning into a self-centered, miserable jerk)
She is a regular contributor to Fast Company and was featured in Forbes Magazine in a column called Women We Love.
You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her bookRISE…3 Practical Steps for Advancing Your Career, Standing Out as a Leader, AND Liking Your Life.
Awhile back I wrote an article in my General Manager series called “Why people don’t do what you say”.
It had 10 steps for improving how you communicate with your organization.
Just as a quick summary, here are the 10 points:
1. Create an ongoing communication plan – important words “ongoing” and “plan”
2. Remember, they are not really listening
3. Set Context
4. Discuss what is NOT changing
5. Thank them for the work so far
6. Now…Tell them your content
7. Keep it simple
8. What is means to them, really, specifically
9. Communicate 21 times
10. Create a new social norm
All of those points are still useful, but today I want to expand on the #10 which is:
“Create a new social norm.”
Communication vs. Conversation
As I work with organizations to move their strategy forward and drive change successfully, I have been swapping out the word “communication” for “conversation”. There’s a big difference.
“Communication” is task, an activity.
Communication is about delivery – there is no guarantee that anything particular outcome has happened.
“Conversation” is a result.
Conversation is social — it’s about understanding and moving forward.
While it’s important for executives to communicate clearly and effectively, the delivery of the communication is not the important part.
The important part is to ask: Then what happened? Did any learning and sharing happen?
The necessary outcome
It’s funny, I typically find an inverse relationship between the level of emphasis an executive will use to say, “but I was very clear” and how much has actually be understood by the audience.
It’s never about how clearly you think you communicate. It’s about what happens next, and over time, with all the people involved.
Here is the measure…
You have communicated successfully when the people in your organization are conversing about your message amongst themselves.
When you can approach an employee at any level at random and ask, what is the most important thing for us to be doing right now, and why? — and get the same answer most of the time — then you can say that your communication has been successful.
For example, when I led a big, strategic, transformation in the HP OpenView software business in the 2000′s, I knew it was working when 1) A customer described our new strategy to and editor and it was quoted accurately in the press, and 2. A sales engineer in a remote part of europe presented the strategy to a visiting colleague of mine who relayed it back to me.
The conversation was happening whether or not I was there.
The trick — get people to care personally
To get people to care you need to go beyond communicating and fuel and support them having the conversation on their own.
Here are a few ideas I have seen work miracles in this matter.
1. Blogs.
For any strategy, initiative, or big idea that you want everyone to understand, get someone blogging internally about it. Pick someone who has the interest and the knack for it. Then don’t overload the process. Make sure they know it’s not about perfect writing and publishing — It’s about sharing the most interesting ideas and decisions. It can just be bullets. Not fancy, it just needs to exist. You will find interested parties commenting, and discussions happening in a very organic way. This is a big win.
2. Ritual.
I understood the strategy and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.
Don’t skip the T-shirt! …or the water bottle, or the laminated ID card. Pick a couple of people within the organization to select a fun or interesting artifact that your culture will like, and use it to “decorate” the change. When people walk around and see that these things are all over the place, it helps to show you are serious and this is really what we are doing. The fact that it does not come from the top down helps to make it not look lame.
3. Brown bags, informal gatherings.
Be on the lookout for bright spots in the organization where the organization is doing the right thing. Ask that person or team to host a brown bag lunch and share how they did it. Recognize the effort. Celebrate the brave people who are the first ones to implement the change.
4. Celebrate the program success.
Don’t let real progress and finished milestones pass un-celebrated. Even if it’s ringing a bell (or the technology equivalent) that everyone can hear when the right kind of deal closes, or the next group implements the new system successfully. Find a way to let people know that you are having small victories along the way. And don’t forget to celebrate big victories.
5. Make sure your executive staff is aligned.
One way to shoot this whole process in the foot, is if your management team is not seen by the whole organization as communicating and supporting the same things.
Even if they really do agree, if they are not all sharing that in a visible way, and joining the conversation, those silences and differences will spread skepticism and distrust faster than anything you can do proactively on what you are communicating.
Make it a managed plan to make sure that your organization is hearing from your whole management team.
In my experience, this in itself is worthy of fueling conversation across the team. “Wow, they are all saying this same thing”! This won’t happen unless you do it on purpose.
Conversation = forward movement in the business
The strongest and most productive organizations I work with, engage their people in the planning, the communicating, and the success. They share knowledge regularly. It has become the habit of the organization, and the change they are driving has become part of the social fabric.
Communication is still important from the top down, but it’s done is such a way that it spreads laterally, naturally.
One of the most important things you can do as a leader is foster sharing of information and get your team talking about what is most important to your business — even when you are not there.
What has worked for you?
If you have examples of turning communication into conversation that has worked in your organization, please share what you did in the comment box below.
Was this useful?
If you found this article useful, please help me share it with others and encourage them to subscribe to this Blog for free.
About Patty Patty Azzarello is an executive, best-selling author, speaker and CEO/Business Advisor. She became the youngest general manager at HP at the age of 33, ran a billion dollar software business at 35 and became a CEO for the first time at 38 (all without turning into a self-centered, miserable jerk)
She is a regular contributor to Fast Company and was featured in Forbes Magazine in a column called Women We Love.
You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her bookRISE…3 Practical Steps for Advancing Your Career, Standing Out as a Leader, AND Liking Your Life.
I have had a “Comcast experience” over the past 2 weeks (photo is of their actual “finished” job) which took me about an hour to clean up.
(They actually went so far as to put in about 8 cable ties to reinforce the most tangled areas, making it impossible to even shove the pile of wires aside without cutting everything apart.)
In addition to the experience itself, two things happened:
1. I learned that a facebook post that includes the words “AT&T”, “Comcast” and “service” generates more activity and venom, and raises more emotional scars for people than almost any other topic! and…
2. It made me recall my thoughts around customer service being set by one key strategic decision a company makes: Cost or Care?
One strategic choice: Cost or Care?
Here is what I mean…
If the executives choose to “Care”…
…meaning they actually want to help people and give them a good experience, and make the customer experience part of the value they deliver – this single choice will permeate virtually everything the company does at every level and at every customer interaction point.
If instead the executives choose “Cost” …
…meaning we begrudgingly provide service because we have to, so we want to do it at the lowest possible cost — this too will permeate pretty much everything the company does at every level and every customer interaction point.
The main places in a business to look for which choice they made are in 4 places:
Policies
Systems
Training
Authorization
I wrote a blog on Cost or Care this awhile back – about what happens when a company makes the choice in each of these four areas.
What it means to Care
But today, I want to talk about the Care choice and what it means to get it right.
Zappos is one company that gets it right. It’s not just about free shipping and returns for 365 days (which is great service which they partially fund through being slightly more expensive than buying someplace else on the internet)…
It’s about how they view people — how they view their employees and how they view their customers.
(Both of which are people… I state this as many business leaders don’t seem to know this.)
Zappos invests in their people, and they actually care about what their customers experience.
They inspire their employees to care. Their customers get care.
Zappos gets that great online service needs to reach beyond the internet and to the actual people. They treat their employees and customers as people who have names and lives outside of internet shopping.
“Press 5 for the joke of the day”
Have you ever called Zappos? For one thing their phone number is not hard to find. Customer Service is the first tab at the bottom on the home page and contact info is the first choice. One scroll, one click.
I called, and here’s what you get – a bright, cheerful friendly voice that starts immediately (with no long connect time and multiple transfers of your line, for the technology to start blocking you from getting to a person).
Thank you for allowing us to put a little Zappos in your day!
I’m Teri, and I’m a member of the Zappos team. To better assist you with your shopping needs please press 1 for new orders, 2 for general questions 3 for returns and press 5 to hear the joke of the day.
For all of your other shopping needs, please just stay on the line.
(How mercifully short and refreshing is that?)
I pressed 5, of course.
Hi my name is James, and I’m with the customer loyalty team here at Zappos.
Why was the chicken afraid of the chicken? Because it was chicken!
OK. So the jokes are not so good, but the “I’m glad I called” reaction is off the chart…I smiled. (I never smile when I call AT&T.)
“Thank you for calling, but please go away”
Think of Zappos’ greeting compared to the unfortunately ubiquitous, “We are experiencing a higher than average call volume right now”.
(As though it’s a service to tell you it’s a bad time at this particular moment, when they play this greeting all day every day.)
“so please use our website instead of expecting actual service, or better yet, just go away and die”.
Why the Zappos approach works so well is that the subtext of it is this:
Caring and humanity works
Hi, I’m a real person with a name, and I am part of a real team. I actually exist, and I acknowledge that you actually exist. I care and we (Zappos) care. So we are going to make this easy for you and make sure you get what you need. And we are going to put in some extra effort to make you smile.
Did your customer smile?
How would your customer service change if one of the measures was: how many customers did you make smile during the service call?
Zappos sets forth this intention in their core value of: Deliver WOW Through Service
It’s not just a technology or a system thing. It’s a people thing that is core to the culture of the company. When you let employees know what you care about as a company, respect them, and encourage and reward them to be creative, and to contribute to the cause they will. Another zappos core value: Create Fun and A Little Weirdness.
If instead you don’t actually care, and you hire people at the lowest possible cost you can, you disrespect them — so they don’t care, and you have systems and processes that prevent them from helping even if they did care – you get the service level of giant utility company.
While I acknowledge it would be hard for AT&T or Comcast or PG&E to ensure that every employee and every contracted worker every minute of every day was being competent and delightful – as if they were being paid to make people smile or say WOW – the service still would not be uniformly great 100% of the time. There would always be stories…
But why not at least start with that intention?
What can your company do?
OK, these giant companies are not good role models for mostly anything.
So if your company is not that big and does not have 24×7 customer interactions world wide every minute, you actually can make a big difference to your customers if :
1. You decide you actually want to provide care.
2. You engage every employee in your company in thinking this way.
YOU have to care
But it starts with you caring. And it’s always been interesting to me how many business leaders don’t actually care.
Caring personally about making sure your customers are treated well, takes a lot of personal energy. Many business leaders are just not up to it. Because once they decide to care, they need to engage employees in a direct, human way.
This is people stuff. People stuff gets complicated and messy. Let’s just put in a system instead…
Make caring part of your company legend
Here’s a great example of what I mean by personally engaging everybody.
I heard this story originally from the brilliant Stan Slap, about a bus company who wanted to provide excellent customer experience in their bus stations.
The new CEO did a tour to do business review meetings across the US, but did something surprising when he showed up at the first one…
He held the management meeting in the bathroom.
Can you imagine the CEO inviting you into the bathroom of a bus station to have a business review meeting?!
You can bet after the first 2 or 3 visits, every station cleaned their bathrooms.
He did not just send a memo saying, “We care about good customer experience”.
He did not just send a memo saying, “You must keep the bathroom clean”.
He created a story that spread like wildfire with no memos. Everyone that worked at the company knew that he cared and that they should too.
Engage Everyone
If you want to drive a change you can’t do so from the top down. Change only happens when the people involved are driving it. So if you want to get people to care about customers, you actually need to get them to personally care about customers.
Whenever I work with teams on this, we come up with some fantastic, wildly expensive ideas, as well as some fantastic low cost or even free, totally doable ideas.
But you only get there by engaging the individuals who deal directly with your customers, and letting them know they have the authority (and the expectation) to care through your choices, decisions and investments.
Was this useful?
If you found this article useful, please help me share it with others and encourage them to subscribe to this Blog for free.
About Patty Patty Azzarello is an executive, best-selling author, speaker and CEO/Business Advisor. She became the youngest general manager at HP at the age of 33, ran a billion dollar software business at 35 and became a CEO for the first time at 38 (all without turning into a self-centered, miserable jerk)
She is a regular contributor to Fast Company and was featured in Forbes Magazine in a column called Women We Love.
You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her bookRISE…3 Practical Steps for Advancing Your Career, Standing Out as a Leader, AND Liking Your Life.
Are needing people in your team to think and work more strategically
Are trying to move your business forward, but some of your people are stuck
You are not as good at delegating as you need to be
You want to train your managers to delegate better and think about succession
Re-define Delegation
Delegating is not just about giving work to someone else, it’s about making everybody better.
Think about delegating as teaching and developing, as building capacity.
Think of delegating as increasing team and individual performance over time.
Bottom line: Delegating builds real value in your business.
Here’s what the webinar covers:
How to use delegating to:
Create opportunities for people throughout your organization to deliver more value
Make sure learning always happens when delegating
Invest in high performers and deal with low performers
Manage risk, potential failure, and time sinks, while letting people achieve and grow
Worksheets included
As part of this webinar, in the worksheets, I provided some templates to work from.
The worksheets include:
1. Intermediate Outcome templates: Templates to identify ongoing measures to ensure consistent progress is being made.
2. A Delegation Checklist: A checklist of process steps to learn personally how to delegate better or to teach your managers better delegation skills.
Why this matters
Your team should always make you bigger than you are on your own.
Think about this: If you could delegate 100% of the work you currently have on your plate without risk, what would you do next? What higher value, more strategic thing would you work on once the distractions of your current work are gone?
Delegating = You need to give yourself a chance to do this higher value work.
If you don’t delegate well you are constraining the success of your organization to only ever be as good as you.
It’s huge missed opportunity.
But if you get all your people stepping up, and delivering at a higher level of value, you will be running a team that is not only delivering work, but getting better at what they do — so you’ll get a chance to do better too.
And you will be recognized for leading a team of high performers which is as important, if not more important, than getting known for delivering results.
(And by the way you’ll also deliver better results!)
If you are a member, just on this topic alone, you can also get related webinars for free on:
Leading a High Performing Team
High Value Communications
Ruthless Priorities and Guilt
Negotiating Your Workload
.
So you might as well join and get them all for free!
Additional benefits for members
Take a look through the Member Library and see all the other great webinars and resources you get too. For your membership fee of $179 you will be able to access everything in the Member Library for a full year!
Plus you get live coaching from me in monthly Coaching Hour conference calls where you can ask your own questions.
Membership a great resource (and a steal at $179) to help you advance your career. Many members report raises and promotions, and cite lessons and support they specifically got from this program.
Be more successful, and happier along the way. I’d love to help.
If you found this article useful, please help me share it with others and encourage them to subscribe to this Blog for free.
About Patty Patty Azzarello is an executive, best-selling author, speaker and CEO/Business Advisor. She became the youngest general manager at HP at the age of 33, ran a billion dollar software business at 35 and became a CEO for the first time at 38 (all without turning into a self-centered, miserable jerk)
You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her bookRISE…3 Practical Steps for Advancing Your Career, Standing Out as a Leader, AND Liking Your Life.
I was recently looking at my book RISE on my kindle to see what people were responding to, by checking out the “view popular highlights” feature.
The most highlighted passage was:
Think of your job as figuring out a better way to deal with all this stuff than it is to DO all this stuff and you’ll be on the right track.
I wanted to expand on this a bit, as it is such a key concept.
The key to success is not to try and do everything and die trying. The trick is to figure out how to deal with an overwhelming workload, and give yourself a fighting chance to get the most important stuff done.
Change the work into better stuff
Another popular highlight:
Your job is not to deliver work when everything lines up to support you. Your job is to get the most important stuff done despite everything that lines up to kill you.
It’s important to remember that the most successful people were not less busy and less hassled along the way. They were as busy and challenged as the rest of us, but found a way to deal with it.
I wanted to share a specific tactic that I have used for years which helps get on top of the overwhelming workload, so you can get the most important things done.
There are two key ideas:
Catch vs. DO
Make a Catch List
Catch vs. DO
This is an important mind shift. You have to CATCH all the work, but not necessarily DO all the work.
You can’t let requests and tasks just drop. But that doesn’t mean you have do do everything exactly as it comes in. The way to not drop something is to catch it by making a list — your “Catch List”.
The Catch List
Record every single thing that is asked of you: Who asked, what they asked for, when they need it.
After a few weeks or a couple of months, this list will give you great power. Here’s what happens:
Credibility
Maintaining this list shows you have caught everything. Anytime someone says, “What about my thing?”, you pull out the list. You show them that their thing is #47. It’s right there on the list. You’ll be surprised how much credibility you’ll gain just showing people the list, and being able to point to their thing and show you haven’t dropped it. (This works even with your boss.)
Sanity
Looking at the list let’s you judge if it’s doable or crazy: It’s hard to know this for sure when it all just piles up in your head. Facing the dragon head on, by seeing the whole list in one place makes a big difference to your state of mind about the work.
Communication
The list can be used as a conversation document: The list becomes a great communication tool to talk with the people who are asking for things. People have a tendency to think that they have access to 100% of your time. When you show them the list, (maybe color coded by the 8 people who ask you for things), they see their thing in context of everything you have been asked to do by all the other people. You get even more credibility for managing such a vast work load, and they will tend become more reasonable with their requests when they see them in context.
People forget and change their mind: Not all requests are created equal. When you remind people of all the things they have asked for, they tend to either get a little embarrassed at the sheer number, forgot what they asked for, or start scratching things off the list they don’t care about any more. Having and showing the list can automatically reduce your workload. (This also happens with your boss.)
Assessment
See the big picture: Having everything on the list right in front of you will allow you do to a frank assessment of how many things on the list are:
Critical things
Stupid things
Duplicate requests
Surprises
Emergencies
This is really where the magic happens.
Think and decide first: Knowing how many things fall into each of these categories is how you can begin to find a way to deal with all the stuff on the list, instead of just jumping in and trying do it all exactly as it comes across the table without thinking about it.
Deal with it
Plan and prioritize: Once you work though the list and think about it, you have given yourself the opportunity to strategize how to prioritize and negotiatiate. You can also find opportunities for consolidation, process improvement, prioritization, and negotiation.
Think about your job as sifting through all this work to find what is most important to do, and in what order, and to determine what can be delayed, improved or eliminated.
Always think before you work
Remember, your manager is delegating the thinking about the work, not just the work.
You are adding more value and doing a better job if you do the leg work of thinking through it all and making recommendations to your boss and stakeholders about the best way forward.
Was this useful?
If you found this article useful, please help me share it with others and encourage them to subscribe to this Blog for free.
About Patty Patty Azzarello is an executive, best-selling author, speaker and CEO/Business Advisor. She became the youngest general manager at HP at the age of 33, ran a billion dollar software business at 35 and became a CEO for the first time at 38 (all without turning into a self-centered, miserable jerk)
You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her bookRISE…3 Practical Steps for Advancing Your Career, Standing Out as a Leader, AND Liking Your Life.
One of the things that I observe over and over again is just how much help highly successful people get from others.
What ever they are doing, they seem to have a vast cross-functional team of people at many levels, from many organizations, who are part of an unofficial project team that helps them achieve their objective.
I refer to this as your “extra team”. (There’s a section about this in RISE in the Get Help, chapter.)
Expand the conversation
But there is one key idea that has been on my mind lately and that is:
If you need someone to help you, make sure that your relationship with that person goes beyond only asking them for things.
If the only time you ever talk to someone is to say: “please fill out this compliance report”, or “I still need that product information”, you have not made this person part of your “extra team”. You’re just that annoying person who ia always asking for things.
Influence
If you are trying to influence someone, the best way you can do that is to actually relate to them.
Communicate with them when you don’t need anything, show respect for their work and their time, share valuable information with them, eat or drink with them — offer to help them with something.
Make the conversation more than just the asking.
A good way to get someone to care about you and your work is to imagine that they are a good friend.
How would you feel about asking a good friend to work late to do an analysis that you need for your project plan? How would you ask? How would you show your appreciation? How would you make it up to them?
The people you work with deserve this same level consideration and respect.
If you take the time to do this, then when you finally ask for the help you need, you have made them part of your extra team – the team of people that wants to help you.
Increase your fund of knowledge
If you are inclined to work alone on all of your work, you will be at a disadvantage because you are relying only on your own “fund of knowledge”. What I mean by that is how much you know and can research on your own.
If instead, when you are faced with a big task you are inclined to say — who is expert in this? Who might be able to help me do this even better? Who are the people I can learn from? — you will greatly increase your fund of knowledge.
You will get better. You will do a better job. You will have a highly capable extra team.
I recently wrote an article called The Accidental Expert which makes the point that I typically do a better job at things that I don’t know how to do, because on those things, I get help from experts!
It works for work too
While increasing your fund of knowledge is great, people with strong “extra teams” also have people that will help them get work done. Successful people get more done because they have more people doing the work (even if they are not managers!)
Motivating people (who don’t work for you) to want to do work for you is a very valuable skill. By the way, for managers I also advocate using this approach with the people who report to you. Why just order people around (just because you can) if you could motivate them to want to do the work instead?
People you don’t like
The hard part about this, is that often the people you most need to influence, or that you most need help from are people you don’t like very much! So the thought of this extra-relating is kind of distasteful.
In my experience, it always gets better if you expand the relationship beyond the single point of the work or the budget discussion. Even if you don’t want to drink or dine with this person, knowing more about what they enjoy, care about, and struggle with, will help recruit them to your team as someone who is at least slightly inclined to help you.
Was this useful?
If you found this article useful, please help me share it with others and encourage them to subscribe to this Blog for free.
About Patty Patty Azzarello is an executive, best-selling author, speaker and CEO/Business Advisor. She became the youngest general manager at HP at the age of 33, ran a billion dollar software business at 35 and became a CEO for the first time at 38 (all without turning into a self-centered, miserable jerk)
You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her bookRISE…3 Practical Steps for Advancing Your Career, Standing Out as a Leader, AND Liking Your Life.
Are needing to prepare and make presentations to executives
Are trying to get executive support and investment for your projects
Want to increase your confidence in dealing with big executives
Need to build credibility with this important audience who can advance (or block) your career
The key challenge with executives
We talked about the fact that basically, big executives are closed to new ideas. (or at least it’s helpful to think that way).
They are busy, over worked, and travel-weary. They have big pressure and responsibility. They only care about what they care about.
Bottom line: They don’t care about your thing.
Get them to care
Your number 1 job is to get them to care, and to get them to be personally motivated to understand and help.
You can develop this skill with practice — I did.
Here’s what the webinar covers:
How to craft and highly effective communications and presentations
How fit in socially in executive circles
The 3 keys to getting executive support and buy-in to your ideas
How to be visible, but not annoying with executives
Worksheets and outlines included
In this webinar, I share what I learned and how I did it. And in the worksheets I give you the tools and templates to know what to do, so you can practice and get it right.
The worksheets for this webinar are great.
They include outlines for how to prepare:
1. The content of an executive presentation that will be highly relevant and persuasive, and make sure you avoid common mistakes.
2. A checklist for the delivery of an executive presentation to make sure you win over the audience, hit the mark quickly, and don’t let your nerves or the wrong storyline get you sidelined or dismissed.
Why this matters
Developing your communication skills for executives is:
A key skill necessary for achieving success:
Getting resources, support, good people and good projects
Getting deserved recognition, sponsorship and career advancement
. A specific combination of executive presence and executive content:
You need to be able to hit the mark quickly with busy executives.
There’s not a lot of chance for recovery.
. Because your manager needs you to step up
Your boss needs to feel like you are credible — someone executives can relate to
It is frustrating to managers when they know a person is capable and knowledgeable (maybe even more than them) but they can’t trust the person to communicate at the right level.
If you are a member, just on this topic alone, you can also get related webinars for free on:
Executive Presence
Selling Your Ideas
Standing Out
Confidence and Your Personal Brand
.
So you might as well join and get them all for free!
Additional benefits for members
Take a look through the Member Library and see all the other great resources you can get too. For your membership fee of $179 you will be able to access everything in the Member Library for a full year!
Plus you get live coaching from me in monthly Coaching Hour conference calls where you can ask your own questions.
Membership a great resource (and a steal at $179) to help you advance your career. Many members report raises and promotions, and cite lessons and support they specifically got from this program.
Be more successful, and happier along the way. I’d love to help.
If you found this article useful, please help me share it with others and encourage them to subscribe to this Blog for free.
About Patty Patty Azzarello is an executive, best-selling author, speaker and CEO/Business Advisor. She became the youngest general manager at HP at the age of 33, ran a billion dollar software business at 35 and became a CEO for the first time at 38 (all without turning into a self-centered, miserable jerk)
You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her bookRISE…3 Practical Steps for Advancing Your Career, Standing Out as a Leader, AND Liking Your Life.
