Leadership Challenge on the Horizon

In the Monday, November 16th, WSJ there is an article entitled Businesses Mount Efforts to Retain Valued Employees. The gist of the article is that there is the potential for significant turnover and job-hopping in the labor market as the economy slowly recovers. Many employees have "stayed put," tied to their present company due to the severe economic downturn. In fact, the article states that fewer US workers quit their jobs since the DOL started tracking this data in 2000.



As the economy improves, it remains to be seen what the job outlook will be. Some economists have spoken of a "jobless recovery." Almost certainly, some hiring will begin to pick up in some sectors. As this happens, many employees are going to be enticed to test the waters in the job market.



Adversity can make individuals and organizations stronger -- depending upon how they handle it -- or it can take them down. To some degree, companies will be judged by how they treated their employees during adverse conditions. Employees that did not have options during the recession, but believe that their companies didn't sufficiently take care of them or keep them in the loop are going to "vote with their feet."



Communication is critical during difficult times and leaders need to be out in front of their people actively communicating and actively listening to their workforce. One company mentioned in the article scheduled employee breakfast sessions with senior leadership to open an effective dialogue.

Leaders of cash-strapped companies may look to alternatives to traditional compensation to demonstrate that they value their employees. Again, employees are watching and they will remember. Alternative work schedules, telework, career development planning, greater employee involvement in decision-making and recognition programs are all ways that leaders can build and maintain employee engagement.

Money is a basic need, but if a company can keep their compensation within the neighborhood of the going rates, leaders can use non-monetary tools to engage and retain their valued employees. While the WSJ article quotes a study that indicated workers care more about the cash and managers assume organizational culture and employee-boss relationships are paramount, I tend to believe that once a basic monetary threshold is met, culture and workplace climate are huge. When leaders build a culture that employees buy into and become passionate about, they look forward to coming to work and are proud to be part of something special. As Ray Davis plainly states, this passion starts at the top and it's the leader's job to infuse it throughout the organization.

When employees get energized and excited about their work - truly passionate - and they are given freedom within established boundaries, great things can happen. Again, it's the leader that sets the tone.

Companies that understand valuing employees is something that you practice every day down in the trenches and not just slogans that are chanted are in a good position to retain their top performers. For companies who, through their actions, have not valued their employees, it may be time to start ramping up their idle recruiting programs!

Execution

In The Leader of the Future 2, Joseph Maciariello speaks of a "spirit of performance" that focuses on doing the right thing and getting the right things done. Getting things done is about execution. Effective execution requires leaders to employ steadfastness, follow through, a sense of urgency, as well as the ability to make fine-tuning adjustments - appropriate course corrections - along the way.

In Winning, Jack Welch explains that you can have passion, energize others, make difficult decisions, have great people, but "the results stink." That is because effective execution is missing. Welch describes execution the ability to "put decisions into action and push them forward to completion, through resistence, chaos, or unexpected obstacles."

One of themes that seems to be in common with the Gerstner and Davis books is the importance of execution.

Lou Gerster, in Who Says Elephants Can't Dance, defines execution as "getting the task done, making it happen." He refers to execution as the most undervalued quality of leaders. He explains that most business strategies are not revolutionary or unique. What separates the best companies from the rest of the pack is their ability to execute the strategies. Gerstner asserts that execution is successfully played out day-in and day-out in the course of business activities. He also believes that what gets done is what gets measured or inspected - accountability.

Ray Davis says that one of the key attributes of successful growth companies is their ability to execute their strategies precisely. In Leading for Growth, he speaks of the necessity of discipline and that organizational discipline starts with the senior leader. Discipline allows the organization to aggressively pursue their strategy. Davis speaks of the messages that the leader must send and the cues that employees will take. If a leader has poor follow through on strategy and change initiatives, employees will become jaded and view such efforts as the latest "flavor of the month." Leaders that cause and reinforce a "this too shall pass" attitude are undermining their organization's effectiveness and potential.

In their book, Execution, Bossidy and Charan state that some leaders make the mistake of delegating execution. They argue that execution is not just a tactic, but a discipline that must be built into the organization's culture and the leader must be out in front leading the effort to instill execution in the organization's DNA. As Gerstner similarly explained, Bossidy and Charan believe that an execution culture enables the organization to have competitive advantage.

In thinking about execution in business, a sports analogy seems fitting: a football coach can draw up the most effective play ever created, but if his team cannot execute the play properly the team will not be able to put points on the scoreboard! It takes practice, discipline, learning, team focus, sychronized effort and dogged determination to execute the play successfully and push the ball across the goal line.

Transformational Small Business Leadership

I came across an interesting article the other day while surfacing the internet. Although it's a couple of years old, I found it to be very thought-provoking.

In the September 2007 article on americanexecutive.com entitled Creative Office Environments: The Future of Work, Bob Delille made some comments about his company that I found really interesting and very insightful.

I know Bob Delille, as he is a former basketball and tennis buddy. While I don't know him in a work setting, I do know of his character and his competitive nature. He likes to win (with class). Louis Gerstner's comments in Elephants about beating the competition and wanting to win remind me of Bob.

Back to the article -- Bob had an outside firm survey Creative's customers to find out their perceptions of Creative Office Environments. The survey found that customers believed that Creative was a great provider of products and services. For many leaders, they would be quite satisfied with these results. Bob was dismayed. He believed that being perceived as a great provider of products and services was a sure-fire way to be "commoditized right out of business."

Bob went on to say that his vision for Creative was to be viewed as a creative problem solver in meeting customers' office furnishing needs. At that point, Bob decided to build his company's business around creativity and innovation believing that intellectual capital was his long-term competitive advantage. I found this to be so cool and indicative of the principled, visionary leader that I believe Bob Delille to be. To successfully make this strategic shift in focus requires a change in how you view your employees' talents, how you develop them and how you set their expectations and how you motivate them - all requiring leadership from the top.

The article also speaks of a strategic shift in focus for the company that builds on Creative employees' ability to integrate technology and furnishings for comprehensive workplace solutions. To me, this was almost reminiscent of Gerstner's recognition that IBM had a unique capability to provide IT integration services. Creative employees are no longer narrowly viewed as salespersons or installers - they are innovators, integrators and problem solvers. The company is re-branding to be seen as experts in the "future of work."

At Creative, Bob led changes in their workplace and organizational culture to support his vision for the company. The article is a great example of a small business leader who has led his company through transformational change.

As listed on the company's web site, the organizational values are:

• Family
• Being the Best
• Hard Work
• Passion
• Trust/Relationships
• Growth

Having known Bob, I know that these values are his values and I absolutely know that he walks the talk. It's not an accident that "family" is at the top of the list. I also note the presence of "passion" on the list - the attribute that Gerstner spoke of in Elephants as being so important to success as a leader.

Great stuff and the insight of needing to move from a great provider of products to a provider of innovative solutions (capabilities-based business) strikes a cord with me.

Creative Office Environments article:

http://www.americanexecutive.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5964

Creative's web site:

http://www.creative-va.com/