The Chasm

Sometimes even when people agree, they can’t communicate with each other.

I’ve seen this common problem play out with bosses and employees when they are both really smart, capable people, but they just don’t get each other — they drive each other crazy.

The issue is that we all have our own preferred style of thinking and communicating.

When we get a match with our boss, life is easy. When we end up as opposites, the interactions can be highly stressful and annoying, leaving both parties scratching their heads about why this is so difficult.

(If you are thinking Myers-Briggs, yes, that is a good way to explain this. But let me jump to specific point I want to make and I’ll put the Myers-Briggs stuff at the bottom for anyone who is interested.)

The Issue

These two types of people look at making progress very differently.

1. BIG PICTURE/GO
2. DATA/PROCESS

Because of that, what should be simple conversations often fall apart. Here are two examples of the problem.

Problem 1. BIG PICTURE/GO boss and DATA/PROCESS employee

(In Myers-Brigs, NP vs SJ)

Your boss says to you, Make it so.

You respond, OK, but here are the things we need to consider to make that happen. And we need to do this first, learn this, and fix this before we can complete that.

You feel like you are being smart and engaged, but what your boss hears is you putting up roadblocks, or giving excuses about why you can’t do it.

You start to feel your boss’s disapproval and frustration, but don’t get it. What you are saying is, Yes, I’ll do it! And here’s how. In your mind, you are showing your boss that you are capable and ready to take this on.

But what your boss’s reaction seems to be, Why are you arguing with me?

The more you talk about what it will take and how you will do it, the more frustrated your boss gets.

Solution: Stop explaining.

When your BIG PICTURE/GO boss says, “Make it so”, you say “Will Do!” and leave the room.

It’s import and to give him the, “YES and GO” feedback in the moment.

Any more information, explaining how it will work, or noting problems to solve at this point will not only NOT add value, it will aggravate him.

Your BIG PICTURE/GO boss is looking for you to join him on the “GO” wagon. Just say, I’ve got it. I’ll report back later. Then GO.

Once you are off on your own you can say to yourself, oh crap, this is difficult, we can’t just jump to that outcome, this might not work, we need to do all this other stuff first… At this time you can study the situation, get inputs, break the task down into steps, start solving problems, etc.

Stay in the Big Picture

Then when you go back to your boss, your BIG message is, I am making progress.

If you need some help, resist the urge to explain or show your work, and keep it a big picture request.

…I have broken this down into 4 areas. All are moving forward but one. I need you to make a decision on this one and then I can continue. Here are two choices.

Keep all of your sequence and process to yourself and reveal only what is truly required, to your boss.

You don’t need to show how capable you are by exposing the machinery. The good news is that your boss trusts you and doesn’t need as much data and sequence as you need.

Score points on his terms not yours.

Problem 2. BIG PICTURE/GO employee – DATA/PROCESS Boss

What about the opposite, where you are the big picture/go person and your boss is the data/process person.

What happens here, is you say to your boss, I’ve got it, but then your boss wants to see all the spreadsheets and project plans. He is thinking about way more detail than you are, even though you are the one doing the work.

He expresses concern that you don’t have enough data. You feel like he doesn’t trust you.

You just want to get on with it and your boss is slowing you down.You are miserable going on data fetching exercises which are not helping you move forward.

Solution: Switch to productive detail.

You won’t get away with not giving detail. So satisfy his need for data and detail but change the conversation so it doesn’t slow you down.

Always have a flow chart with you that shows what you are doing between now and delivering the outcome. Go into the conversation with at least a block diagram of your process. This can deflect a lot of detailed questions.

Focus his detail energy on getting more data about the outcomes, not the process and activity:

…Are these measures OK? Are there other outcomes I have missed? Can you think of other things we need to test or measure to make sure this delivers what we need?

Bridging the Communication Gap

If you are having these kinds of dis-connects with your boss or employee, stop and think about how you are both reacting. Chances are, it’s a big-picture/go, data/process disconnect.

Once you are both aware of if, you can start changing how you interact, have a much more productive and pleasant relationship, and get better business outcomes.
You might even find yourselves joking about it.

Myers-Briggs Information

If you are interested you can take a Myers-Briggs personality test here:

Here is the short-hand about what the assessment tells you.

On each of 4 scales there are two end-points and a range in between. Most people are more toward one end than the other on each scale, but seldom wholly one or the other.

Below are not the official definitions. These are my practical take-aways that I use as a rule of thumb when I interact with people. (By the way, I am an INTJ.)

1. I or E
How you learn and process information about the world: In your own head (I) or by talking things out with others (E)

2. N or S
How you form your picture of the world from that information: Big picture, top down (N), or bottoms up, built from lots of detail (S)

3. T or F
How do you decide what to do about it: Logic/thinking (T) or Caring/Feeling (F)

4. J or P
How you take action on it: Sequence and process (J), or Go now and learn as you go (P)

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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)

You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her book RISE…How to Be Really Successful at Work AND Like Your Life.

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New Random House Edition

I’m excited to share the news with you that my book RISE has been picked up by a large commercial publisher.

Here is a sneak peak at the new cover. It’s also been updated with additional examples, and re-organized a bit, but the content and the tone remain the same.

If you loved the original, all the stuff you liked is still there.

Get RISE now, or wait till May

I wanted to let you know that RISE will be unavailable for a few months as we switch over to the new version.

So if you want to get a copy as a holiday gift, or for your team or book club, you’ll need to order now. Otherwise you’ll need to wait till May 2012.

Here is all the information on availability.

Dec 31, 2011
The last day to buy the original version.

Jan 1, 2012
You can pre-order the new version.

May 1, 2012
The new version will be shipping.

Get your copies now

Buy on Amazon

Buy on Barnes & Noble

CLICK HERE FOR
VOLUME DISCOUNTS

Increased Distribution & Audio Version!

RISE will be published May 1, 2012 by Ten Speed Press, an Imprint of Crown Books, a division of Random House.

Starting in May 2012:

• RISE will be in book stores and in major airports nationally
• We will also finally have distribution in India which many of you have been asking for
• There will be an audio version (with my voice…James Earl Jones was busy).

Thank You

Thank you for all your support, interest and feedback on RISE. I really appreciate all the reviews, and how many of you have passed it on and are buying it as a gift for others. That is such an honor!

Thanks again.

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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)

You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her book RISE…How to Be Really Successful at Work AND Like Your Life.

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I was doing a series of leadership workshops last week and one of the things we talked about was creating a thank you habit in the organization.

Create a “Thank You Habit”

What I mean by a Thank You Habit is to make it known to everyone that the organization wants to acknowledge good work.

Make it clear that the executives want to be informed when good work happens, so they can personally say thank you.

This in itself builds good will, and a helps build a culture of trust.

Create a process for recognition

I don’t think organizations are necessarily stingy with saying thank you, the problem is that good stuff happens all the time and you don’t know about it.

Everybody’s busy, people travel, people are in different sites, so great work happens all the time and you just don’t see it.

All you need to do is create a simple process for any individual in any location to feed a suggestion for recognition of a peer up the management chain.

Make it personal

Commit that when a thank you request comes in, an executive will personally say thank you to the individual, whether that is by a drop-in, a phone call, or a hand written note. (Notice I did not say email).

The more personal the thank you is, the more value it has.

If an executive goes to an individual and recognizes the good work personally, not only does the individual feel great, but everyone in the group is left saying “Wow, they actually know what we do here!”.

It costs nothing

Many organizations over-engineer their recognition programs and it becomes a exercise in spreadsheets and gift certificates.

If you have a reward system in place, that’s fine, but don’t forget about the personal part — the part that takes more time and trouble, but costs nothing.

Make a genuine connection with someone who has done something you appreciate and let them know.

Act on the Thank You

We all fall victim to appreciating things people do for us and never saying anything. I have a far from perfect record on this myself.

But I find that it helps to create a task for yourself that turns into a habit — when you feel gratitude or apprecation, always say so.

So finally…

Thank You!

I am very honored that so many people read my blog and my book, and share it with others. THANK YOU.

I am very grateful for those of you that hire me to come and speak to your group or work with your team. THANK YOU.

And I am very thankful for all the kind words, feedback, and ideas you share with me.

Thank you all. And to those of you in the US,

Happy Thanksgiving!

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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)

You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her book RISE…How to Be Really Successful at Work AND Like Your Life.

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Driving Action

In this month’s webinar we talked about how to optimize your communications to drive action in your organization.

HIGH VALUE COMMUNICATIONS

Listen or download the webinar to learn more.

Trust & Confidence

Useful assumptions: It’s useful to assume as a starting point, that people don’t listen to you, don’t believe you and don’t trust you. If you then proactively work on trust, your communications will stick.

Consistency: The repetition and consistency of your message is as important as the content. If people don’t hear it over an over again, they won’t believe you are serious. We talked about methods and technologies to show that you are serious this time.

Concrete language: The more concrete you make your language the better. We discussed the use of a timeline, and how to use it to create concrete examples of goals and progress.

Communicate on their terms: It’s important not to modify your communications into sanitized “business speak”. Address tough issues head on and answer questions in the same language as people ask them.

Decisions: Don’t undermine your communications with decisions that go against what you are telling people. We talked about the kind of mistakes organizations make that leave people suspicious and skeptical. (So action stalls.)

Getting Action

Keep it Simple: Greatness of Strategy = Strategy * Execution. You should be able to explain your strategy in straightforward terms that anyone can understand. Complexity undermines execution. If execution is zero, greatness is zero.

Spell out the next steps: High level strategies can be exciting and motivating, but don’t tell people what they need to do differently when they get to work in the morning. We talked about how to give people clear direction and measures that increase accountability across the organization.

Getting Communications to Spread

Get more people talking: You know you have communicated successfully when you are not the only one communicating. The goal is to get all the people talking amongst themselves about what you are communicating. We taked about a few ways to do this.

Create a new social norm: The pull for people to go back to working the old way is very strong. Unless you build communicating about the new way of working into the work day, people will think that you have given up on it and go back to what they were doing.

Get Personal: The more you personalize communications the more impact they will have. Get inputs, and ask questions and get more people communicating about what matters. Things like brown bags and breakfast meetings work well.

Use Social Media: We talked about how internal blogging and community sharing technologies can help groups of people share knowledge efficiently and reduce the email load.

Want more?

Listen or download the podcast – High Value Communications
Download the complete webinar – High Value Communications
(includes the presentation and the worksheets from the webinar)

Become a member – Get this webinar and all the other Webinars

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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)

You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her book RISE…How to Be Really Successful at Work AND Like Your Life.

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A story…

Recently, I have found myself re-telling a story I read a long time ago, in a leadership book, that really stuck with me.

It was about a boy who had a summer job at a bank. I’m paraphrasing…

One time the CEO of the bank asked the boy, “So, how do you like your job”?

The boy replied somewhat discouraged, “I have a really stupid job. All I do is replace the pens and the make sure these containers that hold the deposit slips are never empty”.

What matters

The CEO then said, “Not only is your job not stupid, you have the most important job in the whole bank!”

“Our bank can’t exist if customers don’t deposit money, and customers won’t deposit money if they don’t have confidence in our bank. It’s your job to make sure that our customers’ very first experience when they walk through our door is a good one. What could be more important than that?”

“How do you think our customers would feel if the pens didn’t write or they needed to go through the time and hassle to ask someone to get them a deposit slip? Would they feel welcome and confident in us?”

Motivation and Effectiveness

The boy suddenly felt much better and kind of proud. Once he thought about his job the way the CEO had explained it, and realized why his job did matter, he thought of ways to do an even better job to make customers feel more confident and welcome. So he started cleaning the counters each day, and making sure every thing on them was neat and organized. And he started greeting people as they walked in the door.

I think there are three important lessons in this story.

1. Every job matters.
2. Make sure each employee knows why their job matters.
3. Employees who understand why their job matters will do a better job.

1. Every job matters

If you can’t explain why each job in your organization matters, you need to question whether or not you need the job in the first place.

You need to make sure you can explain how everyone’s job contributes to the business, both to make sure that you are maximizing your resources, and so you can explain it to the people doing the jobs!

2. Make sure each employee knows why their job matters

As a leader, it’s your job to make sure you explain to everyone why their job matters and how it impacts the business. You need to make sure that the experience that boy had with the CEO happens for every one of your employees.

People want their work to matter. There is no better way to have employees understand why their job matters than for you to connect the dots for them, and give them a clear line of sight both to the top of the organization, and to the outside customer.

Make time to connect the dots

I would always make time in my schedule to talk to individuals and mid-level managers to understand how they felt about their job. I would learn what parts of the business and external world they could (and couldn’t) see from where they were sitting.

I would then connect the rest of the dots for them.

I did this in 1-1s, talking with people in the cafeteria, breakfast meetings, riding in the car for sales calls, brown bags, attending staff meetings of the managers who worked in my organization, and any other opportunity that came up.

If you make an effort to share with people how their work fits into the bigger picture they will be more motivated and more effective. Which gets me to the third point.

3. Employees who know why their work matters do a better job

Once people truly understand how their job contributes to the business and why it matters, they are more likely and able to step up, solve more problems, and add more value.

Once the boy understood it was about customer confidence, not pens and paper, he developed more ideas of how to deliver that outcome on his own.

With personal knowledge of what business outcomes their roles need to drive, people will do more of what the business needs them to do.

Get your people to step up and creatively do the job that needs to be done, not just the one that was defined for them.

Here are a few examples:

Product Development:
I would explain to my product development organization how we made money, and where the profit came from. I would explain how getting new products out sooner would benefit not only our competitiveness, but also cost less.

I helped them understand how their salaries fit into the P&L, and gave them ideas of the kinds of things they could do to impact sales (make it easier to demo) or impact expenses (make it easier to test.)

Tech writers:
I would give tech writers a chance to interact with customers, and share the business model of our customer support function with them. I’d have them talk with customer support people.

They realized that if they could improve the product documentation it would result in both a better customer experience and a lower support cost.

IT department:
I explained the business model to the IT department and how much each sales rep needed to sell, and what all the steps are in the sales process.

I told them about the length of sales cycles and how special deals were often given in the last 24 hours of the month. That helped them to understand why the IT systems had carry a to carry heavier load (and better stay working!) at those times.

They realized that they could change the way they planned and managed IT services to support the sales team to make closing business and handling special pricing easier.

Taking  the time to share and explain

Taking time to share with every group, how the company makes money, where the revenue comes from, and where the profit comes from, motivates people to step up and do more for the business.

Helping them understand how the P&L works and  if their job is part of the P or the L, and how their job impacts the profit, makes a big difference not only to morale, but to cost reduction, creative thinking, and innovation.

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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)

You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her book RISE…How to Be Really Successful at Work AND Like Your Life.

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Strategic Progress

In this month’s webinar we talked about the critical difference between tactical progress and strategic progress.

WILL YOUR STRATEGY SUCCEED?

Listen or download the webinar to learn more.

Your strategy will only succeed if you execute it.

We talked about 4 common things that block organizations from making strategic progress on their business, and what to do about them:

1. Talking vs. Action

Smart Talking: Companies can get very practiced at talking about their strategy. Some people fall into the trap of believing that providing brilliant insights about what is going on in the business is adding value. It isn’t. Value comes from doing.

High Level Goals: High level goals are another form of talking. High level goals are motivating, but they are vague. They don’t tell people what they need to do when they get to work in the morning.

Clear, concrete steps. Strategic progress is made in concrete steps by specific people. We talked about how to translate high level goals into specific actionable steps that will ensure strategic progress.

2. Weak Alignment and Support

Passive vs. Active Agreement. There is a big difference between verbal agreements with nodding heads (passive agreement), and people being ready, willing, and committed to take action (active agreement).

Get the whole organization engaged. To make real strategic progress, you need to get the whole organization involved, engaged, motivated, and executing the strategic change.

Expose conflict. Being super-clear about what you expect in terms of defined tasks, measures and resource decisions raises conflict. But working through productive conflict is the only want to get active agreement.

We talked about the specific steps to get active agreement.

Deal with Sabotage. We talked about what do do when people are actively sabotaging strategic progress either because they disagree or are personally threatened by the change.

3. Lack of Measures and Accountability

Acknowledge Deadlines. The problem shows up when deadlines come and go and nothing happens. Too many organizations let this happen. You need to measure, track, and follow-up on the tasks that are required to make strategic progress.

Have the conversation. If a deadline is missed. You must deal with it! We talked about techniques to address missed deadlines and still keep team motivation high.

Show you are serious. The temptation to go back to the old way of doing things is very strong. You need to show your organization you are serious by communicating consistently, and by not making tactical decisions that undermine strategic progress.

4. Being too busy to do anything new

Tactical Pressure: Many organizations struggle to make strategic progress because they stay too busy working on the immediate demands of the current business.

Scaling. We talked about how to break the busy-ness cycle and focus key areas of the organization on scaling, even when it’s the boss who is the one blocking forward progress.

Want more?

Listen or download the podcast – Will Your Strategy Succeed?
Download the complete webinar – Will Your Strategy Succeed?
(includes the presentation and the worksheets from the webinar)

Become a member – Get this webinar and all the other Webinars

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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)

You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her book RISE…How to Be Really Successful at Work AND Like Your Life.

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Corporate Crap

Corporate crap is all that extra, low-value work and random pressures that interfere with delivering on your job…

It’s the stuff that drains your time and energy, and annoys you a lot…

It’s the stuff that makes you feel like you are not controlling your own destiny.

It’s things like needing to defend what your group does, or deflecting low value initiatives and useless demands on your time.

The reality

Your job is to deliver what is in your job description AND deal with all the crap that gets in the way of delivering on your job description.

By the way, the higher you advance in a corporation, the more crap you get to deal with.

It’s part of what they pay you for.

One way to think about this is… if you were to go from a corporation to a startup, you would notice two things:

1. There is no corporate crap. You spend virtually 100% of your time moving the business forward. This feels great.

2. You get paid a lot less. This feels less great.

But it’s a trade-off. I always thought of this difference in pay as the money they pay you for dealing with your allocation of corporate crap.

Politics and The High Ground

One of the biggest time and energy sinks is politics. There is an endless source of negative drama you can get drawn into at work. This is not the high ground. But avoiding it is not free of time and energy either. Crap.

For example, if you get so wrapped up in staying on the high ground that you say, “I refuse to engage in politics. It doesn’t add value, and it’s wrong” this can come back to bite you.

It’s important to realize that if everyone else is playing politics, and you are not, you can get damaged by being invisible, or by having the wrong story out there about you. So you need to do something…

Defensive Politics

One of my mentors gave me some advice that really stuck with me when I was taking the high ground and refusing to engage in a political war.

I told him, “I won’t engage in empire building because it’s wrong. We are trying to cut costs and having a big organization doesn’t mean you are adding more business value. I would rather deliver on my business then spend time building an empire.”

He said to me, “Patty, the only problem with that approach is if you are the only one who is not empire building, you will be left with no people”.

So how do you stay on the high ground when others are being political and you need to defend yourself?

Visible, but not Annoying

I never ever advocate politics and publicity instead of excellent results.

The most important thing is to deliver excellent results first,
THEN make sure to get visibility for it.

This is how you accomplish what I describe as “Be Visible, but not Annoying”. If you are known for outstanding results, visibility does not look shallow or political. People value knowing what you are doing when you are doing great stuff.

Control your story

For example, if someone is spreading the word that “Patty is doing the wrong stuff, her business is not going well, and she is a weak leader”, that story is getting air time. Even if it’s completely untrue, people might be saying this because they are trying to steal my people, or knock me out of the competition for a promotion. And other people might believe it.

I don’t engage in that type of conversation at all, either to defend myself or to go on the offense. It adds no value. But you have to do something.

Saying nothing by refusing to engage in politics can damage you.

You need to control the story about you. So what I would in this situation is to make sure to communicate about the value of what I was doing to key stakeholders. Yes it takes time. Yes you can call it politics. But if your intentions are honorable it is not a negative thing.

By putting excellent work and high-value results out there where people can see them, you “respond” to the political attack, you take control of your story, preserve your Brand, and still stay on the high ground.

Preserving the empire

Ok, back to the plot. Although I didn’t go on the offence and try to build a big empire, I participated in enough discussions and debates to create positive visibility for my team’s work. I was able to control the story about me. I sold the value of what my team was doing which made it clear to everyone involved that my team needed to remain intact.

I was able to stay on the high ground. And by engaging in the game and making my team’s work visible, I was able to defend against the empire builders.

You don’t have to engage in shallow, ugly, negataive politics, but you do need to be aware that others are doing so, and stake your claim on the high ground in a positive, high-value and visible way.

It takes some time

The unfortunate reality is that it does take time. And it’s time taken away from moving the business forward. But once you see this as part of your job, and allocate some time and energy to it, you can proactively eliminate the issues, and take a lot of the stress out of the situation by taking control of the outcome.

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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)

You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her book RISE…How to Be Really Successful at Work AND Like Your Life.

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Does anybody care?

I am on a bit of a rampage lately about organizations not-addressing missed deadlines.

I see this a lot. The reason why so many organizations have so much trouble doing what they intend to do, on time, is because when they fail to meet a deadline, nothing happens.

Nothing happens…

The dates come and go and no one talks about it.

People who were on the hook either assume that they have been granted more time, or it wasn’t that important to begin with.

Then there is no new deadline established because no one is talking about it at all. So the strategic task takes an even lower priority over the more urgent tactical demands of the moment.

Strategic Progress

This simple failure to address missed deadlines is one of the biggest factors that keeps organizations from making strategic progress.

You can’t let the date come and go and leave the failure totally unacknowledged and unexamined.

This sends all the wrong messages and sets a very low standard of execution.

What you are communicating (by not communicating) is:

• It wasn’t that important
• It doesn’t matter that it didn’t get done
• There are no consequences for missing a deadline
• We’re not serious about meeting our commitments
• Late is OK

Why people don’t follow up

I have observed four main reasons why executives fail to follow up on missed deadlines:

1. Too busy to keep track
2. Not personally good at keeping track
3. Don’t like the conflict of keeping track
4. Don’t know what consequences to impose when something is off track.

The first two are really easy to fix. Get someone who’s naturally good at this to help you. I talked about how to do that that here.

Number 3 and 4 you can’t delegate. As a general manager, if these things make you uncomfortable you need to do them anyway.

Here are some suggestions:

How to deal with the conflict:

1. Be really clear up front about dates, owners, and measures, and communicate the status at the beginning of the project when everything is “green”.

2. Start communicating regularly about what is getting done before anything goes wrong.

3. Everyone can see their name on the chart with the due dates and measures. It is up to them to keep on track.

4. Then when something goes from green to yellow or red, it is not as much of a conflict to bring it up. At least it is not a surprise. Everyone saw it coming. The person who failed to deliver had the chance to avoid it, and knew before hand that it would be addressed, so the conflict is not personal.

What consequences to impose

You don’t need to fire someone every time a deadline is missed. So if you don’t fire the person for missing a deadline, what do you do?

There are so many options between termination and nothing!

You don’t need to be a tyrant.

But you do need to have a conversation.

Ask, “what happened? How to do you intend to recover?”. The act of having this conversation sends the message that it is NOT OK to miss a deadline.

It should be uncomfortable

Sure it’s an uncomfortable conversation, but it should be! You missed a deadline. That should not be pleasant, comfortable news for anyone.

It’s not about coming down hard on someone or being disrespectful or nasty. It’s about moving the business forward.

Also, I find that strong performers take a lot of ownership in these conversations and put more pain on themselves then they get from you.

Many leaders struggle with the motivation factor. They feel like if they give someone a hard time the person may get de-motivated, be less committed or leave.

In reality, the impact of not having the conversation is that you are letting the person know that what they were working on wasn’t very important, which I think is always even more de-motivating.

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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)

You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her book RISE…How to Be Really Successful at Work AND Like Your Life.

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CEO’s and General Managers

CEO’s and General Mangers can learn about Patty’s work helping businesses put their Strategy into Action™ and develop their leaders here.

What Good General Managers DO

Check out more ideas that define what the best general managers do.

Articles in the Good General Manager series:

People
Listen: Stay Connected to Reality
Why people don’t do what you say

Process
The Gap Between Committed and Done
Failure & Motivation

Profit
Strategic Planning and Other Delusions
5 things that block strategic progress

To act or to suffer?

As managers, at some point we all
encounter an employee who frustrates us, and drains the life and energy out of the team.

When you are in this situation with someone, you know it in your heart that
you should act …

…particularly when they really annoy you … but you don’t act right away because you second guess yourself …

and you keep thinking… they really do some things very well… sometimes…

Won’t

A colleague of mine shared this decision tree with me, and since then life has been easier.  When you are questioning yourself, whether or not to act, look at this chart. It makes it pretty clear.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I could probably stop here, but I’ll make a few additional points.

Reasons Managers don’t act

• The person has flashes of true brilliance, interspersed with being a drain, so you keep changing your mind about their value to the team
• You are afraid to lose a person doing some work even if they’re not the best
• They are doing work that you don’t know how to cover without them
• They have political support from elsewhere in the organization that may be hard to manage
• There is a “no replacement” rule and you don’t want to lose a headcount
• It’s hard.  On any given day it’s easier to ignore the problem
• It’s not fun
• It takes time away from “real business”
• It’s legally complicated

Poor performance is contagious

I am seeing more and more research that says that the overall team performance is defined by the lowest performer, not the highest performer.

One of my favorites was the NPR, This American Life Prologue, where a researcher got an actor to join a work team and act like a jerk, a slacker or a depressive… the rest of the team followed suit! Fascinating.

(By the way if you go to this link, don’t miss the second act, the Mike Birbiglia segment, on a comedy routine gone horribly wrong, it’s wonderful.)

Even though it’s tough to act, it is worth it.

If you have a  Won’t on your team – someone who may be capable, but is fighting you at every turn, annoying others, being negative, checking in and out, working against what you are trying to do, or damning it with superficial support, the payoff for dealing with it is big.

Rewards for taking action

My experience has been, 100% of the time, that getting a won’t out has a remarkably positive impact:

• You will be more productive, as you will no longer waste time dealing with the variety of annoying, draining, damaging, needing to be corrected or re-worked, “not good enough”, or otherwise apologized-for issues that this person causes
• The motivation and productivity of whole team goes up, even if they have to cover the work
• Everyone feels the positive impact that results from the negative energy being removed
• Your top performers stay motivated to keep performing
• You build trust with your team, by showing that good performance counts for something
• If you position this as a critical skill replacement, you will often get your replacement headcount, even if the rules say no

Taking Action

Here are a few thoughts for taking action on poor performers:

Be honest with yourself
Don’t shy away from the situation or just hope it will improve. Face it head on.

Get your data together
Start making notes as soon as someone’s performance starts bugging you.
After a couple of weeks you will have suffering + data vs. just suffering.

Get support from HR
Let your manager know and HR know what you are considering, early in the process. HR can help you with the process.

Reinforce your performance standards
Reinforce your standards and the level of performance you expect with the rest of your team, before, during and after dealing with a problem employee.

Everyone is watching

It’s also important to note that the problem between you and a poor performer is not just between the two of you. Your whole team sees it and they are watching and waiting to see what you will do about it.

The longer you don’t act, the more you degrade your credibility and trust with the rest of your team, and maybe even your peers and boss.

This is the least fun part of management, but I bring it up from time to time because upgrading low performers has such a big impact on the success of your business, not to mention your sanity.

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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)

You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her book RISE…How to Be Really Successful at Work AND Like Your Life.

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What Good General Managers Do series

Your strategy is only good if you execute it

Think of if this way…

Greatness of Strategy = Strategy * Execution

If execution is zero, greatness is zero.

ONCE is not enough…

Simply telling people what is important will cause not the organization to start doing what is important.

I have seen this many times. Executives will communicate the new strategy at a big all-hands meeting with ice cream…

Then they expect that not only did everyone actually hear the strategy, but that they were listening carefully, internalized it, know what they need to do personally to act on it, know how to optimize it with regard to their current work, and will actively do the right things to implement their piece of it.

(This never happens…)

How to get your team listening, motivated and taking action

As a general manager, you need all your people to be ready, willing and able to implement the new strategy. You can’t do it without them.

You need to invest in recruiting them.

You need to give them insight, permission and support to take action on strategic initiatives.

These are the steps I have used with my own teams to get them to take action on the business strategy.

This works. Please plagiarize it.

1. Create an ongoing communication plan

Part of implementing your strategy is communicating about it continuously over the entire course of executing it.

Remember, all the employees were not in on the planning.

You have been thinking about this strategy, and the importance of it, for a long time. You have evaluated alternatives and tested assumptions.

You have had a lot of time, sleepless nights, showers, and traffic jams, to think through the plan, to personalize it and internalize it.

Why do you think your people can internalize it after hearing it one time? You didn’t.

2. Remember they are not really listening

Just because you talk doesn’t mean your people automatically listen.

You need to break in, and make your message more important than what they already care about.

The other thing working against you is that people hate change.

People are threatened by change.

They already feel too busy. They fear this new thing will mean even more work, or that their job will somehow get worse, or maybe even go away because of it.

Also, they will have a tendency to think that you are not serious, because they have heard about many new strategies and initiatives in the past, and nothing ever happens… So why should they bother investing in this one? It won’t matter anyway.

I’ll just endure this new strategy meeting, smile, nod, eat the ice cream, and go back to work…

3. Set context:

What made you choose to change something or do something in the first place? Say so!

As the leader, you live in the big picture. But the people in your organization live in the work.

You need to communicate the big picture and the sell the business reasons why your strategy is important, and why new things must be done.

You need to talk about the business pressures and drivers that caused you to develop the strategy. You need to make it vividly clear that the new way is vastly better than the current way, and why.

If it doesn’t seem way better, it’s probably not a very good strategy to begin with.

4. What is NOT changing

This may be the most important part of your message. What is NOT changing is the key that unlocks people’s ability to listen to something new. It lets them start listening from a position of “I already know something”.

No one can take on brand new information if it is all brand new information.

By saying “here are the things that are not changing”, you give them a place to stand.

You give them a fighting chance of opening up to receive new information. Never skip this part.

Even if everything is changing, find something to talk about that stays the same. You greatly increase your ability to execute if you do not skip this step.

5. Thank them for the work so far

Don’t get so excited about the new stuff that you forget to thank people for the work that got you to this point. It really pisses people off to hear you go on about the great new strategy and feel like their past 3 years of hard work doesn’t count for anything.

Even if the strategy requires you to throw away 100% of the work that has been done to this point, that is not a reason NOT to say thank you.

“Thank you for the hard work that got us to this point” is another door-opener to get people ready to listen.

6. And now, for something completely different.

Finally! Now you can talk about the new strategy.

Tell people what you will to do, on what scale, why you will win, and how you will measure it.

Be clear about the top few “Ruthless Priorities” to implement it.

7. Keep it simple

Make sure you can fit the basic points of your strategy on one slide.

Even better, test yourself by telling your strategy to a colleague that has not heard it before, one time, and then ask them to repeat it back to you. You should also be able to explain it your mother.

If you don’t pass this test, your message is too complicated.

We all have a way of overcomplicating our strategies. You should be able to communicate your strategy by answering a few simple questions. I coach CEO’s and GM’s on this all the time.

Let’s update the equation…

Greatness of Strategy   =

Strategy*Execution
________________
Complexity
(Complexity >=1, 1 is best)

The more complicated your strategy, the less likely it will stick.

 

8. Here is what the new thing means to you…specifically

Anticipate people’s questions and address them head on, in their words.

Don’t use lofty, impressive sounding business-speak.

Don’t avoid the real and uncomfortable questions people have.

One time when I was a GM at Hewlett Packard and had to greet the employees of a company we were acquiring for the first time. I said, “Hello”, you all know why we are here, I’ll get to all that in a moment, but I know what you are all thinking is:

“Do I still have a job? When will I know? and if I still do have a job, is it one that I will like? I didn’t choose to work in a big company, and now I am stuck in a big company…if I even have a job. What will happen to me?”

It’s not hard to know what questions people would have. And if you don’t know, ask. Find out. And make sure not to clean them up. Answer the questions in the same style and language they were be asked.

9. Communicate 21 times

There is a well tested marketing principle that says: for your audience to understand and internalize your message well enough to act on it, it takes them hearing or seeing your message seven times. And for every one time they see or hear it, they have to be exposed to it three times. That’s 21 times!

I can tell you without question or hesitation, 21 times is not overkill.

If this amount of marketing communication is necessary for someone to buy a digital camera or take a vacation, at least this much it is certainly necessary to sell a business strategy.

You need to be unfailingly consistent in your communications.

Only when you are mind-numbingly bored with talking about your strategy will your organization really know you are serious and feel confident about acting on it.

There is a very funny story in my book RISE… about this 21-times rule. (it’s in the chapter on Ruthless Priorities.) If you haven’t read RISE yet, there is a lot more information about how to communicate to your team, your peers and your management, so you get stuff done.

10. Create a new social norm

Even if you do everything right, and communicate over and over again, the gravitational pull of going back to the old way is really strong.

The trick is to not only communicate about the new strategy from the top, but to get all of your people communicating about the new strategy amongst themselves.

You need to make the new way of working to implement the new strategy a part of the social fabric of your organization, by getting people at all levels talking about it.

Get your people talking to you and each other about what is expected, and how it is going.

How are they doing? What is working? What is challenging? Where are the success stories? How have people made time to focus on the new things?

Final thought

There seems to be a natural tendency in organizations to focus on strategic planning and then not focus on communicating. Both are necessary.

Was this useful?

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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)

You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her book RISE…How to Be Really Successful at Work AND Like Your Life.

Free eBook Download

Subscribe for free
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Get Facebook Updates.
Click “Like” to get more great business leadership updates on Facebook

 

CEO’s and General Managers

CEO’s and General Mangers can learn about Patty’s work helping businesses put their Strategy into Action™ and develop their leaders here.

What Good General Managers DO

This is fifth article in my series of
What Good General Managers DO

More aritlces in the series so far:

People
Listen: Stay Connected to Reality
Why people don’t do what you say (today)

Process
The Gap Between Committed and Done
Failure & Motivation

Profit
Strategic Planning and Other Delusions