Remoteness

Many people have asked me recently how to build your personal brand and get positive visibility when you work remotely and no one can see you!

Change

Organizations are changing so much and so frequently that many people have never met their boss or their peers. Many companies right now have zero-travel policy for internal travel.

So many people find themselves trying to build their credibility and their career without every getting face time with their stakeholders.

If you are a remote employee trying to exert your influence on the business, you can feel invisible, isolated, and powerless. And no one can see how truly impressive you are in your slippers.

The big issue for you Presence

Any leader needs to make their presence felt –  in the room or from afar.

If you want to build credibility and influence you need to build up your personal presence.  It’s harder as a remote employee, but not impossible. And it’s even more important.

Face time first

OK, so there is no substitute for face time.

Every time I have had a remote assignment or managed a remote employee I required a 2-4 week break-in period where the person begins the assignment in the office with the team.

If you “live” with people for awhile first, you’ll do MUCH better later.

You will build up some social comfort with each other, and then remote is not nearly as distant.  I would not accept a remote assignment if this was not how it began.

With travel budgets frozen it’s not always possible to spend time with the people you work with.

Consider footing the bill for your air travel yourself.

Find someone to stay with. Tell your manager that you are going to be in town for personal reasons (at no expense to the company) and that you’d like to work at the main office for a couple of weeks while you are there.

This is a very worthwhile investment you can make in your career. After you get the face time, you will be more effective and respected forever after.

If you can’t establish the face time, the additional ideas below are even more important.

Don’t Hide on Conference Calls

Don’t dial in 5 minutes late, do your email and not speak.  Instead dial in 5 minutes early.  Greet everyone who joins.

I knew a guy who worked remotely who took a picture of himself every day, and when ever he was on a conference call with the group at headquarters, he would email the picture of himself with a note that said something like, “thought you would want to see what shirt I was wearing today”.

It may sound silly, but he was exerting his presence. He was well known and respected.

Exert your presence in words too. Tell them about the weather where you are at and what you have been working on.  Learn about their life. Then don’t check out during the call.

Participate, interrupt, contribute. Make your presence felt.

Make people feel like you are “in it”.

Use Video

I have to say that I am blown away by Skype video.  I have clients around the world who I have never met, but after a few hours of conversation with and skype video I feel like they are colleagues and new friends that I know personally.

Unfortunately many corporate firewalls do not allow Skype. 

If I were a remote employee, I would encourage all of my key colleagues and stakeholders to take a Skype call with me from home once in awhile (convenient in their time zone), so we could connect “in person”.  It makes a huge difference.

Video Mail

If you can’t arrange skype, try sending a video mail once in awhile. It’s easy and it’s free. Google “free video email” to find options. Eyejot.com is one that I have used and works well. A 30-second video can exert way more presence than a bunch of email.

Lead things

Step forward when things need to get done.  Take the lead.  Put yourself in the center of a project even though you are not there.

Of course it needs to be something you can succeed at remotely, but don’t fail to ever take the lead just because you are remote.

If you want to be relevant — be relevant!

Network More

As a remote employee you miss the company lunches and the discussions around the coffee machine.  But you don’t need to miss connecting with people.  Identify people in the company you need to have a relationship with, and build a relationship with them.

You should spend at least an 2 hours a week (if not a bit more) just connecting and talking with people at your company.  Live connections = presence.

Get Personal

Reach out to people. Get to know them as people beyond the work discussions. Learn what they care about and enjoy. Contribute things of interest. Where you have key relationships with people, invite them to connect with you on Facebook.  Keep yourself current and present in their thinking. 

When you become a full person, you are far more visible than when you are just a work conversation.

Share your ideas and knowledge

Become a thought leader in your area of expertise.  Consider writing an internal blog.  Share interesting news that people at corporate don’t see. Seek out external information relevant to your business and be the one to share it.  Have a point of view.

Just because you are remote, doesn’t mean you need to be invisible.

Don’t wait for people to find you

Be the one to exert your presence, build relationships, share information, and engage. You can build a strong personal brand, even if you are not there.

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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.

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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

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

Personal Brand and Defense

Sometimes you find yourself in a situation where your gifts and skills don’t line up with the type of skills that are valued in your environment.

You might get shut out or pushed down because of it. It is stressful and uncomfortable.

When this happens, there is a tendency to go on the defense — to prove that you belong there, and to try and show that you can be more like them.

But you’re not.

When you try to do this you put yourself on a back foot.

You are not at your best. You are caving into the pressure and expectations of the group, and trying to win them over by being something false, that you are not good at.

Use your brand to turn the situation around

When I talk about the value of building your personal brand, solving this problem is one of the big payoffs.

Having your personal brand defined lets you put your best foot forward with great confidence all of the time, especially when you are in a situation or environment where you are not comfortable.

If you are clear about your personal brand, you don’t need to be defensive when you don’t fit. You can use it to sell your strong points.

You’ll be more confident and more impressive.

Confidence and Advantage

Here are some examples of ways people have used their personal brand to go on the offence, build confidence, and get an advantage.

Example 1: “Boring old person” in an internet startup

I loved this feedback from a woman who heard me speak on personal brand, and put the idea into action.

She found herself bidding for work in an internet startup company full of hip 20-somethings. She was initially concerned that she would not fit with their culture — like she might be viewed as their mother! As a result, she was concerned she would be under-valued even though she believed she could help them.

Don’t even try to fit in.

But with her Personal Brand in focus, she decided not to even try and fit in, and not to worry about it. Instead she decided go in unapologetically with her personal brand which was about focus, achieving clarity, and translating ideas into revenue.

Staying on brand made it easy for her to engage this group. It removed the stress and the uncertainty. By focusing on her brand, she gave herself the opportunity to sell her strengths without hesitation. She was able to demonstrate truly authentic confidence.

Instead of being cautious and defensive and trying to earn their respect on their terms, she wowed them on her terms.

She got the job.

Example #2: Business Person in a Technology Organization

This was me at various points in my career – Although I have a technology background and an engineering degree, I am a business leadership expert, not a technology expert.

I know many people who have this particular problem in technology companies. The environment doesn’t respect you because you are “not technical enough”.

What I did, is to go back to my brand, and build my confidence from an authentic position of strength. Instead of defending my right to be there by trying to convince them that I was technical enough, I went on the offense.

“You don’t need another one of you”

I would say, “the last thing you need is another technical person. We have plenty of them around here, and I’ll never be as smart as you on technology.

What I contribute is an understanding of the people who use our products and what motivates them. I can translate all this technology into things that they not only care about, but want to spend their money on. I can help bring revenue in. You don’t need another technical person, you need one of me.” (Implied, respect me. I’m different, but I can do things you can’t.)

It put me on solid ground. It made me feel confident. I didn’t’ care if they thought I wasn’t technical enough, because I had real value to offer. It gave me strong executive presence, because I was using the part of my brand of being straightforward, business-focused, and making real and useful connections with people.

I did not need to be defensive. (or technical). I became respected.

Example #3. Program Manager in an Engineering Organization

Another non-technical person I work with used a similar approach in a highly technology focused engineering organization. She was being challenged on her lack of engineering pedigree. Did she really belong here? Many people thought not.

Pedigree doesn’t matter. Results Matter.

Instead of getting defensive she said, basically, “you’re quite correct I am not an engineer. That’s a good thing. I wouldn’t be as good at my job if I was an engineer. What I contribute is an ability to drive complex projects through to completion. The fact that I don’t get involved in every technical detail is actually an asset. I can keep the program focused on the finish line, and get it out on time and on budget. That’s what you need, not another engineer doing a deep dive on technical detail.”

Steady Confidence

When you have your personal brand defined you are more powerful and more impressive for two reasons.

1. You are leading with your strengths, so you’re good at what you are doing and it truly impresses others.

2. But even without that, by using this approach you give yourself the gift of confidence. You give yourself solid ground to stand on. You define the terms you are going to interact on, and it’s a place where you feel comfortable. You give yourself an advantage no matter what the situation. Your executive presence soars when you are confident.

Next time you feel like you don’t fit, and people are under-valuing you, don’t try to be like them. Lead with your brand. Lead with your strengths.

Being clear about who you really are, and what you are naturally good at and building that into your personal brand is a great way to increase your confidence and your value.

Building your Personal Brand

If you want some help building a strong Personal Brand based on your natural strengths, you can use my Personal Brand Building workbook.

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What Good General Managers Do series

Strategy vs. Numbers

Most strategic planning exercises are doomed from the start by being connected to the annual budget process.

The money always wins.

Strategy is creative. Financial Planning is operational. Strategic and financial planning require different skills, timelines, and different measures of success. You must separate the two streams of work if you want a real strategy.

But most organizations are not practiced at creative, strategic planning, and they are practiced at quarterly and annual financial planning.

So the money wins and the habits win. Strategic planning turns into numbers-driven operational planning.

Making your strategy more strategic

OK, so you have to deliver numbers to your executive committee. And you want to be credible and not look like you are changing your mind or getting surprised.

But just think about delivering your numbers on the planned schedule, and then run a strategic planning exercise completely separately, on a different calendar.

If you are saying, “But we can’t go back and surprise the board and ask for something different after we give them our operating plan”, think about it this way…

If you have a big customer bail on you, or a competitor makes a dramatic move (or the market crashes…) something that you need to react to, you are willing to go back to the board with reactive re-work.

So why not come up with a brilliant forward-looking strategy and associated investment plan? Then go back to the board and say, “We’d like to talk about a new investment”.

Or even better, when you go to get your financial plan approved, also discuss that you in the midst of a multi-year strategic planning process, and your goal is to uncover new growth opportunities outside the current operating plan, so stay tuned…That always worked for me.

What was that on page 132?

You should be able to be communicate your strategy  to your mom, without a powerpoint presentation.

If you can’t boil it down to a few key points, your team will never stand a chance of understanding it, internalizing it, and making the necessary changes in their day to day work to actually implement it.

• Who are your customers? What do they value?
• What is your advantage? How do you win?
• What are your measurable objectives for success?

Who cares?

Another common sign of a strategy that isn’t going anywhere is when you have to call the business planning expert in to present the strategy.

Everyone in your organization should be able to communicate your business strategy to another person. And it should be the same story!

If that is not the case, you don’t have a strategy that will get executed.

Part of the problem is complexity, and part of the problem is taking the time to really include the whole organization.

Are you serious this time?

Most strategies fail not because they are not good, but because they don’t get executed.

Most strategies don’t get executed because the natural tendency for ANY organization when they hear about a new strategy is to think, “This is not serious, this will change again, the safest thing for me to do is to keep doing what I’m doing”.

You need to communicate the basic points of your strategy over and over (and over) again, if you want your team to act on it.
(More on how to communicate your strategy in a future post.)

Repetition is what makes people realize you are serious, every day, every week, every month, and every quarter until it’s done. Without this your strategy will stall.

What Good General Managers DO

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

Aritlces in the series so far:

People
Listen: Stay Connected to Reality

Process
The Gap Between Committed and Done
Failure & Motivation

Profit
Strategic Planning and Other Delusions (today)

Want more?

Awhile back I interviewed Bob Kaplan, former McKinsey Director on the topic of: Is Your Strategy Any Good? He talks about these, and more obstacles to a good strategy. It’s a great discussion.

You can get the interview here.

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RISE…How to Be Really Successful at Work AND Like Your Life.
Free eBook Download

When people don’t deliver on their commitments

One of the questions I get most frequently is how to get people who don’t work for you, to do work for you.

So many people are in matrixed situations, or they are a program manager over an endeavor that is dependent on people from all over the place.

So you are on the hook to get something done, and you are at the mercy of others that have no motivation to help you.

How do you get them to be more committed to your cause, and to do the work so that you don’t fail?

Public humiliation works

Here is a story from early in my career where I stumbled upon a great way to deal with this.

I was a product manager for a product line that interfaced with multiple third-party products.

Part of my job was to make sure that each time we changed a version of any of the products in our product line, that the interfaces to all the third-party products still worked. This required tasks like building or upgrading new versions of interfaces, and/or testing new combinations of versions.

No help…

I could not do this work myself.

The only way to get this done was to pester the engineers to do it — and they didn’t work for me. If anything, they prided themselves on not having to answer to me!

To make matters worse, this work was never going to be the most important work they were doing. It was never going to be the most interesting or fun work they could do. They had no personal motivation to do it.

List all the work and add names

Because there were so many moving parts, I needed to just get my head around it all.

So I began listing all of our product components, all of the third-party products they interfaced to, and the status of each interface: What needed to be done, the date it was due, and the name of the engineer who was responsible for it.

I put this on the large whiteboard that hung in my cubicle-office.

The reason I put it on the whiteboard was because it was a big enough place to get all the information in one look. Computers weren’t what they are today for displaying information and it was a good thing.

Because of the whiteboard an amazing thing happened.

The engineers all started using the back stairway near my office, and stopping in to make sure their name was not on the board! The didn’t want their name listed as being late for anything, where the world could see it.

I never had to bug them again. In fact, I never needed to even ask them again.

I just had to put the new task on the board and note the date and a name. They would, on their own, seek out if they were on the hook for something, and then deliver it. They were motivated to get their name off “Patty’s whiteboard”.

Here is the big lesson:

By showing the work that everyone needs to do to everyone involved, people are shamed into doing the work so they won’t look bad.

They might not mind being the reason that a program is failing if they don’t really care about the program, but they don’t want to be the obvious reason a program is failing — if everyone will know about.

How to apply this to your program or project:

Here is how I have coached people to apply this to a program or matrixed project of any kind.

Create a document with the key elements of work that you and everyone need to contribute to the program. Make it a one page document.

• Show everyone’s work that is due
• Show the status of each item

.
Here is a very simple version of what I mean.

The magic is in the distribution

Distribute this to:

• Everyone on the team
• Their managers
• All the stakeholders of the program

Positive communications

All of these people have a postitve reason to know what is happening, either because they are dependent on the program, or because someone on their team has work committed to the program.

If you start doing this at the beginning of the project you are not attacking anyone, you are just communicating work, due dates, and owners in support of a cross-organization program.

If you distribute this regularly from the beginning, and people (who don’t work for you) realize that their peers and their bosses are all seeing it, they will be much more motivated to do their part.

Automatic resolution

And when later, something is not getting done, you don’t need to do anything special to call it out.

Your positive communication process will automatically call people out publicly. They will be motivated to get their name off the list, so they’ll do the work!

This also saves you loads of time from having to pester people individually, which doesn’t work as well anyway.

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4. Share this

Difficult People are Everywhere

In this month’s Business Leadership Webinar
we talked about how to deal with difficult people, stack the deck in your favor, and get your way more of the time!

INFLUENCE DIFFICULT PEOPLE

Listen or download the webinar to learn more.

Here are some of the things we covered:

Influence, not Defense

Don’t get stalled. You WILL get bullied, blocked and let down. If you view this as an inconvenient nuisance that interferes with your real job, ignore it, or expect someone else to fix it for you, you will get stuck.

It’s part of the Job. Accept that dealing with difficult people proactively, and clearing the obstacles they create, is an official part of your job. We talked about how you can make more progress, and get less personally damaged by.

Defensive doesn’t work. You are never in a stronger position by getting defensive. Create a positive way forward. Fight personal attacks with forward progress.

Outcome vs. Emotion.

Don’t get drawn in…
One of my favorite quotes is: “If you get drawn into an argument with a stupid person, he will drag you down to his level, then beat you with experience”.
–unknown.

Whether it is a stupid person or an evil genius, you are better off to stick to the high ground and stick to the non-emotional facts. Keep it simple. Don’t react to emotional attacks, it only gives them more hooks to drag you down.

Focus on the Desired Outcome. We talked about how to defined a clear desired outcome — and how this shifts the focus to a less controversial, less emotional point in the future. What to do next is way more contentious than “What are we trying to accomplish big picture, long term?”

Outcome vs. Opinion. Remember, your opinion is not more valid in an argument. We talked about how to shift the discussion from conflicting opinions to desired outcomes, so you can get to work on achieving a useful outcome.

Get the Data

The Voice of the data. When you collect the data you can speak with the voice of the customer or the voice of the market, not your voice. You are not smarter than your adversary, but 100 customers are.

The Value of the data. When someone is attacking you, blocking you, or not performing, keep a log of it. What are the specifics? When? What? What was the impact? This helps you assess if it indeed is a big deal, or if you are overreacting because it bugs you. If it is a real issue, then you will already have the data record to address it objectively.

Be super-specific. We talked about how to define a very specific outcome. Make sure you spell out how it will be measured, by who? Have a check list for what completeness and quality look like. Allow no wiggle room. That way if you are not satisfied with the outcome, you have a super-clear, completely objective way for communicating the gap.

There are ideas for doing this in the webinar worksheets.

Don’t give away power. When you are fuzzy in defining the outcome and the measures, you give away power. You’re left saying, “That’s not good enough”, but by not having a super-clear way to say why, you risk sliding back into a disagreement with the person, not the outcome.

Sell the Outcome

Recruit Support. You need to build your power relative to your adversary. You need to actively sell the business value of the outcome you are proposing. We talked about how to recruit support so that you are favored in a stand-off.

Credibility. You will find occasions when you and your adversary have an equally strong case. There are two factors that tip the scales in your favor.
1. Which proposal is more likely/trusted to be executed?
2. Who has more personal Credibility

Short and Long Term View. I can say that in my career, the times I got my way against adversaries included both using these desired outcome, facts-oriented techniques in the moment, AND as a result of having taken care to build my credibility over the long term.

Build a Relationship

We are all people. Even though your adversary is probably the last person that you would want to have lunch with, do it anyway. Try to find some reason to respect them. Try to find a common interest outside of work. Even a small human connection will make work negotiations easier and reduce back-stabbing.

Want more?

Listen or download the podcast – Influence Difficult People
Download the complete webinar – Influence Difficult People
(includes the presentation and the worksheets from the webinar)

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What Good General Managers Do

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

Aritlces in the series so far:

People
Listen: Stay Connected to Reality

Process
The Gap Between Committed and Done
Failure & Motivation (today)

Profit
Communicating

Delivering on time

Many organizations struggle to get things done, as promised, on time.

Clearly tracking execution, which I talked about last time, is the critical first step to even knowing if you are are getting things done or not.

The question is, once you know what is slipping, what do you do about it?

What do you do when your team fails to deliver what you want? When they fail to execute on what you all keep talking about?

Conflict and difficult conversations

You can’t be a good General Manager and avoid conflict.

Great leaders know that part of the job is providing honest, fair, feedback to people, and enforcing consequences when deadlines and commitments are not met.

Motivation requires consequences.

Every time you avoid addressing an issue with someone who is not delivering, you destroy some trust, especially with your high performers.

In addition to degrading trust, an environment with no consequences offers no motivation or reward for performing. People think:

Why bother? Nothing happens if you don’t deliver on time, so why knock yourself out?

Lack of consequences is actually is de-motivating because people need their work to matter.

A good general manager will use every tool in the box to get people to personally care — to get people to emotionally invest in going the extra mile for the business.

Without measures and consequences, anything else you do for motivation is hollow and pointless. The work has to matter. If failing to get it done on time doesn’t matter, the work doesn’t matter.

Enforcing Consequences

So how do you do it?

Many managers get uncomfortable with enforcing consequences because they don’t know what the appropriate “punishment” should be.  When someone does something wrong, what do you do?

Do you fire someone for missing a deadline?
Do you fire someone for being late to a meeting?

Have the difficult conversation

You don’t need to fire people every time something goes wrong.  But you do need to address it. Don’t just accept this behavior.

I see leaders think, “Well this isn’t enough of a problem to fire the person…”, but because they are not comfortable having a difficult conversation, they do nothing.

You may not need to fire the person, but you do need to confront the poor behavior.

Examples:

Late to the meeting:

What part of “this meeting starts at 8am” did you not understand? This meeting starts at 8am and I expect you to be here at 8am. It’s 8:04. What makes you think it’s OK for you to be late?

Believe me, you only need to say this one or maybe two times, everyone in the room will be cringing, and no one in the room will want to hear it again. Your meetings will start on time.

(You need to be on time too.) Leaders who want their team to deliver on time, but don’t show up for their own meetings on time are sending a mixed message about the importance of commitments, and the standards of execution they find acceptable.

Missed deadline:

Acknowlege it.

This is unacceptable. You did not deliver. What happened? Do you realize the downstream problems this causes? What is your proposal to recover? How do you propose we now get this finished AND address the customer/sales/market issue this has created? How will you ensure this does not happen again?

Improve habits

Next time the person will try harder. The quality of execution will improve.

If you don’t do this, missed deadlines become a habit, and personal motivation to deiver on time will decline.

Will you become a tyrant?

I have had managers that were tough with consequences, and I have had managers that were bullies. These are completely different things.

You do not need to worry about becoming a bad person by calling out poor performance.

As long as you put the business outcome as the motivation for the conversation, and at the center of the conversation, you are not attacking the person as a bully would.

As long as you can ask yourself, “Is this conversation moving the business forward?” you are on high ground.

You can be kind to people and tough on results.

Move the business forward

Avoiding the conversation does not move the business forward.

Having the conversation does move the business forward.

Most likely your choice to NOT enforce consequences is creating bad habits, reducing motivation, degrading trust, and generally slowing you down.

A good general manager will realize that addressing missed deadlines and failures will build and organization that:

1. Builds trust, especially with high performers
2. Can learn from its mistakes
3. Will deliver on time, more predictably
4. Develops higher performing individuals
5. Creates products and services that hit market needs better and sooner

As a general manager, as in every leadership role, your job is to ensure that your team not only delivers, but that they become more capable over time.

Enforcing consequences and having the difficult conversations is an important tool to accomplish both.

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Good General Managers

This is the second article in my series,
What Good General Managers DO

I opened the series with a note that a Good General manager makes sure s/he has the following covered:

• People: Article #1 – Good General Managers and People
• Process
• Profit
• Communicating

Let’s not call it “Process”

Today I want to address a topic on process. But I want to re-label the word process to be “make sure to get stuff done”.

I am never a fan of process for process sake, but I am a big fan of taking the chaos and drama out of executing.

Set a High Standard of Execution

As a General Manager you have to set a high standard of execution.

That means you personally need to do what you say you will do, like be on time for meetings, make clear assignments with owners and deadlines, and then…

When something does not happen on schedule, enforce consequences.

If you say, “Oh well, we didn’t make it, so just keep going till you finish”, you are setting a sloppy standard of execution and you are not delivering on your commitments.

Today I am going to talk about the the getting things done part.
I will cover enforcing consequences in a future article in this series.

How I narrowly escaped disaster

I want to start with a personal story about this.

When I got my first big job, managing a group of more than 150 people with multiple layers of management beneath me, I did not have experience getting things done leading an organization of this size.

Enter the hero of our story…

When I first met with my direct staff individually, one man came into my office and said, “I am your process manager”.

What I said to him is one of the things in my whole career I am least proud of and most embarrassed by… I did not have the leadership maturity to recognize what an awful thing this was to say to someone who works for you, when you meet them for the first time.

I said, “Wow, I never had a full time process manager before”.  <yes, cringe>

So let’s just fast forward past the part where he assumed he was getting fired, to where I recognized that he was saving my job.

The gap between assigning and doing

Here is what I mean…

I am really good at translating high level strategy into super-clear actions with owners and measures. I see the big picture, I see the opportunity for how to win, I see what is in the way, and I can prioritize the right concrete tasks that will ensure we make strategic progress.

So imagine the staff meeting where we do this…

Everyone is clear about what we need to do and why.  We have made assignments. And we have a schedule with measures and deadlines. Commence back-patting…

But then…

Everyone leaves the room and goes back to work.

All the new stuff is sitting on top of a workload that is already consuming all the time.

Because the assignments are so clear and committed, I assume the new work is being worked on. But it is actually at pretty high risk.

Too busy to do new things

The inertia in an organization to keep doing the current work is very high. The resistance individuals need to break through to plan for, and prioritize the new work, is also very high. This is where it all stalls.

This is where my process manager saved the day.

Tireless execution support

Capture: He would sit in those staff meetings and take all the notes about what was decided and committed and he would write it up, distribute it, AND turn it into a project plan with dependencies and timelines.

Daily Follow up: Then he would go around to every task owner, every week and say, how are you doing on this? He would exert regular, personal, visibility and pressure on what was committed.

Reporting: Then he would create a report and bring it into our staff meeting every week and let us know what was getting done on schedule and what (and who) was slipping.

With that “process”, he enabled me to make sure we all got done what we committed to. He made it easy for me to enforce consequences for being late (another key element of being a good general manager), because what was supposed to happen was spelled out so clearly.

This was invaluable. Without this process, would have failed to get stuff done on time. There is no question in my mind about this.

I really can’t emphasize this enough…

As the leader, I was feeling pretty good about my strategic thinking, and my ability to translate the high level goals into specific, concrete actions to get there.

But as the leader, I was also too busy with strategy, financial planning, communications, customers, traveling to multiple sites, and general corporate stuff, to be the one to personally go around and get updates from everyone, and create reports to track it all.

I can say without a doubt, without my process manager, I would have failed.

I would have failed to deliver, so I would have failed in my job. I would have failed to advance.

Happily ever after

But if nothing else, I am a fast learner. And I know how to get help.

So forever after, in every other executive role I stepped into, I made sure that there was someone on my team who had the natural strengths, skills, and energy to do this process work, to keep the trains running.

As the leader I made the strategy, goals, tasks and measures clear, and this person would do the daily, detailed, relentless work to make sure we executed.

Having a strong partner with me on execution made sure that my organizations always delivered what we committed to. The role was not always called “process manager”. For example one time it was my finance partner, and another, my chief of staff.

Hire your hero

Have this person report directly to you, and give them a lot of power.

This is not a low level administrative job. It needs to be someone who understands the business and someone who can understand the pressure you are under personally. They need to be able to enforce priorities when you are running out of time and you are not there.

It needs to be someone who can influence the people on your team who need to do the work, to do the work.

And even if you can convince a highly capable person not to report to you, it doesn’t work to have this role report into any one function because then the conversation about priorities is skewed. You have the proverbial fox guarding the hen house. The person loses credibility with the other functions, so you don’t get as much stuff done.

Delivering on time gives you huge competitive advantage in the market. You can be more responsive, more innovative, and win and keep more customers.

Don’t put on-time execution at risk. It’s too important. Get help!

So to add to our list of who you need help from:

1. Don’t try to be a GM without a mentor or a coach
2. Don’t try to be a GM without someone to help you track and measure execution.

Want more?

Stay tuned for more articles on What Good General Managers DO. If you are not a subscriber, subscribe now so you don’t miss anything.

Please leave your ideas and feedback in the comment box below!

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Just 2 days left to get Free membership

Summer is a great time to check in on your goals — to make sure you are making the professional progress you want.

If you have been thinking about becoming a member of Azzarello Group to get actionable ideas and guidance to optimize your career, now is a great time to join.

Join by June 30 and get 3 months Free

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See what you get
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Career Check-up

Summer is a great time to check in on your goals — to make sure you are making the professional progress you want.

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Join by June 30 and get 3 months Free

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If you’re not familiar with this program, this is unique development resource for your team.

The program is delivered through:

• Monthly webinars on topics of effective business and personal leadership. Browse webinar topics.
• Worksheets to put the learning into action
• Live coaching from Patty in a member-only Coaching Hour each month

Personalized Approach

As members, your employees can personalize this program to:

• Participate at their own pace, on a schedule that works for them.
• Download specific resources when they need guidance or support on a particular leadership or business topic.
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Members who use this program have got promotions, raises and recognition.
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Companies who offer this program get lots of points for providing employee development!

Many companies use this as a primary employee development resource.

It’s low cost. It’s easy to provide, It’s easy to use. People love it.

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This program is a remarkably good deal. The quality of the content is unmatched.

It’s valued at over $1000/year. But since the economy is still struggling, I want to keep this priced so people feel comfortable asking for reimbursement or can pay on their own.

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Why a Personal Brand is useful

1. It gives you more confidence and energy in your work.

2. You consistently position and sell yourself better

3. You get a professional advantage

BUILD YOUR PERSONAL BRAND VALUE

In this month’s business leadership webinar we covered how to translate your personal brand into value that other recognize.

Listen or download the webinar to learn more.

Here are some of the things we covered in the webinar:

What’s the advantage?

More Confidence and Energy. Having a strong personal brand makes you feel more confident because you’ll use it to always put your best foot forward. You will feel less defensive, and more decisive in difficult situations.

Sell Yourself Better. We talked about how your Brand gives you the speaking points to be very clear about why people should value what you offer, and get that across quickly, clearly and consistently.

Professional Advantage. The most successful people have a knack for being able to talk their way into good situations. Because your brand gives you certainty about how to position yourself, you will be more persuasive and influential more of the time. That’s good for advancing, selling, and negotiating.

Your Current Brand

You Have Brand Today. You have a Personal Brand right now whether you know it or not. Do you know what it is? Do you know what are you known for? Is it want you want it to be?

Behaviors and Consistency. Aristotle once said: Excellence is a habit, not an act.
Your brand is granted to you by others based on the behaviors they experience from you most consistently. We talked about how to build your brand through behaviors.

Building Your Brand

Build on Your Strengths. The best way to build your brand is to start with your natural strengths. As humans we tend to undervalue our strengths. We discussed why that is, how to overcome this, and how to zero in on your natural strengths and build them in to your brand.

Be YOU. Your Personal Brand should be based on who you actually are, not a marketing-version of some other person you think you should be. It needs to be something you can live up to consistently. So if you define your brand with a big gap to reality, it will never actually be your brand because you won’t do it.

Find the Intersection. To translate your brand into what others will value, you need to get to know what is important to your audience, and tune how you speak about and behave your brand values to align with what they care about.

Define Your Playbook. A big part of putting your brand into action is to focus on your playbook. We all have one. Think about what you did the same in every job you ever had. We talked about examples of personal brand playbooks and how to create and use them.

Using Your Brand

Work in your power alley. Part of the reason that having a strong brand gives you more confidence and energy is because when you combine it with your playbook, you end up working in your power alley. You are doing great at what you are good at and it feels great.

Your Brand and Interviewing. Think about the power this brings to an interview. You can quickly establish your credibility. You build confidence in yourself and your prospect when you can articulate why you are good at what you are good at, and give compelling examples from your playbook of being at your best. No stumbling!

Your Brand and Your Company’s Brand

Does your brand ever change? Your core Brand values don’t change much, but the story at the intersection changes depending on your company or customers’ culture and what they value.

What if you don’t fit. If you feel like your brand does not mesh with the culture of your company this can be painful. In the discussion I gave some examples of how to use your Brand to put you on the high ground and go counter-culture in a productive way.

Want more?

Listen or download the podcast – Build Your Personal Brand Value
Download the complete webinar – Build Your Personal Brand Value
(includes the presentation and the worksheets from the webinar)

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A personalized program for you

Membership provides a personalized leadership development resource for you or your team. You can learn and use the resources at your own pace, on your own schedule.

Members get access to everything in the Member Library, and personal, live coaching from me in a monthly member-only conference call.

At only $179/year, it is an exceptionally good value, and the quality and usefulness of the content is unmatched.

If you join by June 30, you get 3 months free. Your membership won’t expire until Sep 30, 2011.

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