Ten Reasons Why People Hate the Boss

Read this post on CIO.com this past week.  It’s a quick slide show on some serious mistakes managers and leaders may make.  I found this intriguing both on the way they presented the problem and solution (1 slide for the problem and one for the solution), as well as how they followed the presentation secrets outlined in last weeks post on dramatically improving your strategic communication.

Dramatically Improve Your Strategic Communications

Two of my colleagues, Steve May and  Heidi Schultz, both suggest that a big part of a senior leader is the ability to communicate one’s key points of strategy in a variety of formats.  One of the most common forms of strategic communication is making presentations to groups.  Many of us, (alright, almost all of us), use a presentation tool like PowerPoint or Keynote to organize our thoughts and use as  a tool for our presentations to groups large and small.

Unfortunately, May and Schultz  note, many times senior leaders can fall into a trap of using these tools as a crutch or in a way where the tool overshadows the speaker.  I’ve been in many meetings, conferences, and other public venues where participants are either whipped by presentation slides or there is so much text on the slide that you simply want to say, “Just give me the slides and I’ll read them myself.”

Two posts may give you some guidance on ways to improve your presentation skills.  Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 rule and Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs gives any senior leader a concrete idea on how to make your presentation come more alive, communicate your guidance or key points more effectively, and dramatically increase your effectiveness.  The fact that they both come from Apple is no coincidence, I think.  Apple has consistently focused on design to market their products.  This extends to their various forms of communications as well.

I’ve tried their tools in my presentations and have found the transition from a text heavy format to more graphics a struggle at first.  However, I now find that using their tools and design models have forced me to know my content and key points in much greater depth than before and I have seen it translate to more confidence when I make the presentations I make to various groups and audiences.  Test them out and see if you find your strategic communications to various internal and external audiences become more engaging and interactive.

All the best,

Chris

21 Things Great Bosses Believe and Do (from Bob Sutton’s Blog)

As I was catching up on my reading this week, I ran across this blog from Bob Sutton on 21 Things Great Bosses Believe and Do.

I enjoy Bob’s work-he’s smart, irreverent, and generally hits the nail on the head.

Which one of these actions do you want to emphasize next week?

All the best,

Chris

Make a downpayment on the debt we owe our Veterans

I’ve found it awkward to try to thank someone on one particular day.  What makes one day more important to thank someone than other days.  And yet, I’ll add my words of thanks to our Veterans today.  I’m moved especially when I reflect upon what our Armed Forces has done for over 200 years, in wartime and in peace.

We’re an All Volunteer Force:  It’s easy to forget in this eight year war that the men and women who defend our country and our freedom are doing this out of their love of their country.  We are the largest and most effective fighting force on the planet and every one of the men and women who serve and have served in the Armed Forces since 1973 have volunteered to serve.  When I’m in the airport and see several young men and women in uniform, I try to stop and thank them for their service. If we are in the airport lounge together, I’ll strike up a conversation and their conversation runs to all the topics that young men and women discuss, from celebrities to pop culture to sports.  Then their flight is called, they grab their gear and go down the gate to their flight.  It’s difficult to remember that they are as young as they are.

These young men and women are being led by junior officers who in turn are being led by senior leaders at the highest levels.  In a single day, these service men and women could be in combat, rebuilding a school, engaging in diplomacy at the local level, and helping youngsters understand basic human kindness.

We owe a unpayable debt to Veterans and active service members that is large and growing.  Take a minute today and once a week to find a vet and thank their for their service, their sacrifice, and their willingness to volunteer to defend our country.

God bless each one of them.

 

Postscript 11/12/09.  Yesterday, I read a post by Mrs.Abbey Bishop, from Tom Peters blog here.  She is so much more eloquent than I. I wanted to add it to the growing chorus of thanks for our Veterans.

Building Time into Your Calendar to Think

(Crossposted on Leadertalk.org)

I heard the CEO of a Fortune 50 company speak about what the organization expects of senior leaders.  One of the points he made was that once you move to an executive role, you are expected to be able to dig into deep issues that will affect the organization both in the short term and the long term.  His next comment struck home: “You MUST make time in your calendar to think.  That  is what the organization expects of you. If you simply move from event to event, you are doing yourself and your organization a disservice.”

I’m sure I’m not alone in that I am guilty time to time of moving from one meeting to the next, scheduling them back to back and not making the time to do my homework to dig into the issue.  Mabel Miguel talks about a possible solution  to make time to think:

Use your commute time to think through a knotty problem.  Do the same if you are on a relatively short business trip (3 hours or less). Turn off the radio or iPod and simply think. Decreasing the white noise and clutter that swirls around inside your head is an effective way to get some clarity, focus, and attention.

I’ll suggest another solution.  Make an appointment with yourself to prep before going into a meeting.  Build the time into your calendar and hold that time as being as important as an appointment with another person.  Use this time to dig into the issues and come up with ideas to resolve the challenge.  I’ll wager you’ll be more effective and your organization will reap the benefits as well.

What is strategy?

During a session with a group of senior leaders, we had a roundtable discussion of strategy, defining  strategy without jargon, and some key points of strategy.  After a fair amount of discussion,  we outlined the following key points:

1. Strategy is not the sole domain of those high in the organization.
2. Strategy is not code for “important” or “complex”.
3. Strategy must look outside the organization first to see what is needed (whether in the marketplace or with people with whom you interact).  You don’t want to be known as a terrific typewriter repair expert.
4. Strategy is an emergent pattern in a stream of decisions. (Thanks Atul!)
5. The focus for senior leaders is understanding drivers of performance, how performance drivers change over time, and how you react to those changes.
6. Strategy and strategic thinking  is  important at all levels of the organization.
7. Your biggest determinant of strategy is where you place resources.

 

 

6 Keys for Every Leader

Had a chance to hear a senior leader address a group of high potential senior leaders today.  This senior leader spent time talking about six keys that every senior person should keep in mind.  They are three pairs of characteristics:

1. Creativity and Problem Solving:  Creativity is not the exclusive domain of the artistic among us.  Creativity is the ability sets of information and put them together in different ways.  Problem Solving is the capability to get things done.  One nugget:  Vision without execution is hallucination.

2- Leadership and Management: Leadership is all about people.  Management is all about processes.  Leadership is about change and management is about process improvement.

3-Speak well and Write well:  Pay attention to some of the great public speakers. Watch what they do with their hands, their voice cadence, their postures, gestures, and how they use silence.  Learn to write with active voice.  Many word processing applications have a reading index that you can use to ensure that your writing is clear and crisp.

 

Many thanks to the participants who made this session as  valuable as it was!

All the best,

Chris

Every Leader Sells (Ideas) part 2

I was re-reading some notes this week and ran across this nugget from Steve Jones, former Dean of the Kenan-Flagler Business School.

In selling your ideas, craft your message, distill it to a  bumper sticker or headline, then go 2 levels down and hear what the story is-see if message is consistent with what you are saying.  Expect your team to do same with their groups 2 levels down.

Craft, Distill, Drop 2 Levels, Assess

Good bumper sticker, Steve.

All the best,

Chris

Every Senior Leader Sells (Ideas)

During a recent seminar with an organization’s top leaders, the COO outlined how critical it was that the senior leaders engage with their direct reports, their peers, and with those they work with externally.  He also noted at the beginning of his talk that he wanted to be sure to talk about a particular topic.  He spent time on the prepared talk and then transitioned into a key initiative that he had been talking about repeatedly in other venues.  I’ve been privileged to have the chance to hear him speak to different groups and he always makes time to talk about a particular topic.  What grabbed my attention was:

1-how he talked about the issue using a single PowerPoint slide that had only 4 words and a picture.

2-how consistent he has been with the message he was sharing

3-how he distilled his talking points that could be summarized in a bumper sticker that our grandparents could understand, and

4-how it appeared that he had never tired of this particular topic, even though I know he has talked about this topic repeatedly, even to the same audience.

I had the chance to chat with him and through that conversation, I learned once again that every senior leader is a sales person.  We sell ideas.  We influence others through our words and our deeds.  He noted that he has made these same remarks to similar audiences and laughed when I asked him whether it was redundant when he was sharing the same message over and over again.  He responded with “You have to get tired of hearing your same message.  Once you have said your remarks 50 times, it starts to sink in  to your leadership team that this is really important to you and that you have to move this up on your priority list.  The most effective way I can do that is to say the same message, over and over again, in every venue, with every chance I get.”

Good advice.

Chris

Trust

This past week, I re-read some of David Maister’s work.  I’ve never met Dr. Maister, but his work is very impressive.

One comment he mentioned that struck me was how trust was a blend of Credibility+Reliability+Empathy/Self Interest.

Credibility comes from technical or domain knowledge-you “know your stuff”

Reliability comes from delivering what you say you will deliver on time.

Empathy comes from being a good listener

The self interest part essentially means that you will put other interests above your own and put your clients’ needs before yours.

Pretty good advice for any sort of leader, whether in a public institution, a nonprofit, or in the commercial sector.

Chris