I recently attended the Wisconsin Red Cross Brave Hearts award gala, grateful to receive the military award for last fall’s 1700-mile Fallen Hero Honor Ride.
The stories of the award recipients were extraordinary. I met a 9-year-old girl who saved a friend’s life at school using the Heimlich and a sixteen-year-old who engineered a blood drive after last year’s Waukesha tragedy.
One recipient, noting that many clients weren’t getting regular health check-ups, added a doctor’s office to his barbershop to ease comfort and access. Inspiring was the 911 operator who kept a person calm after her car went into the water of a freezing lake until first responders rescued her, and so was the woman who stopped her car after seeing an elderly lady collapse on a busy street, keeping her safe until the ambulance arrived.
A Milwaukee police detective was off-duty getting a bite to eat when a gunman robbed someone and then tried to get into a car with children in the back. The detective distracted the robber from the kids and was shot twice in the abdomen. As he lay wounded in the street after protecting children, he had the presence of mind to call in the vehicle license plate as the attacker tried to escape in another car.
Above: Chris Kolenda accepting the military award for last fall’s 1700-mile Fallen Hero Honor Ride at the Wisconsin Red Cross Brave Hearts award gala.
These are extraordinary examples, and I bet you have people in your company going above and beyond, doing something special for another person, and making people feel appreciated. These people are zappers – they give you energy and help you soar to new heights.
What steps do you take to recognize and appreciate them?
Our minds are so tuned to threats and risks (the amygdala) that we can pass over the everyday good people do.
When that happens, you miss an opportunity to highlight examples of your values in action. People tune in to what you praise as well as what you criticize. Your employees want to receive appreciation, so they will adopt the positive behaviors you bring to their attention.
Sadly, many leaders ignore the awesome and treat uncovering a problem as discovering buried treasure.
You have to nip problems in the bud, or they grow.
You will have fewer problems and more success when you treat discovering awesomeness as joyful eureka moments and dispassionately dispatch awful behavior.
Who’s been a hero in your company today? I would love to hear about them! Send me an email and tell me more about your hero!
https://chriskolenda.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/FRPhoto_230511M_C_359_social.jpg10001500Christopher KolendaChristopher Kolenda2023-06-02 15:00:002023-06-07 12:58:16What are you doing to recognize your Heroes?
My parents, David and Joanne, and three siblings—Dan, Laura and Mark—all taught me the importance of perseverance and determination, the will to succeed at whatever you put your mind to. We would always challenge one another to be the best that we could be.
Determination helped me endure some terrible experiences.
I learned that I needed to use them to empower me … or else be destroyed by them.
In this podcast you will discover:
Ways to surround yourself with the right people, so that you will be challenged to be your best
Ideas on how to emerge stronger from terrible experiences, so that you can empower others
How to use empathy, so that your team can learn and grow in a dynamic situation
Insights on Determination, so that you have a guide for when to stick to your guns and when to make a bold change
How Did You Start Using Your Talents?
I was a skinny and awkward kid. By the time I got to high school, I was bullied by classmates and molested by two priests. West Point was a place where I was exposed to many different opportunities. I decided I was going to do the toughest and most difficult things I could possibly do — like boxing and close quarters combat — because I was never going to go through again what I experienced in high school. And that led to Airborne School and Assault Ranger School—some of the toughest schooling and assignments that the Army had. I was also determined that no one in the units I led would have to feel the way I had. As a consultant, I help leaders make sure that the most vulnerable people in their organizations have the confidence and back-up to contribute their best.
The Most Impactful Turning Point?
Some of the best role models and mentors I had were from the history department at West Point and were either infantry or armor officers. Because of their personal example—the way they taught and led and cared for the students in their classes—they truly inspired me to want to be like them when I became an officer in the Army. I decided that I wanted to come back to West Point and teach one day because I aspired to do the same thing for other cadets that these fine men did for me.
The Most Powerful Lesson Learned?
I learned several essential lessons from my parents and siblings: the importance of perseverance and determination along with the will to succeed at whatever you put your mind to. We would always challenge each other to be the best we could be. Another key lesson from a great teacher I had in high school was the value of honoring each person, including myself, and the vital importance of empathy.
Steps to Success from Christopher D. Kolenda, Ph.D.
Use perseverance and determination, along with the will to succeed, to achieve whatever you put your mind to.
Find a group of people where you can challenge each other to be the best you can be.
Honor each person, including yourself.
Learn to be empathetic, to see things from the eyes of others; seek to understand, first, then to be understood.
https://chriskolenda.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/pexels-анна-рыжкова-3077882-scaled.jpg17072560Christopher KolendaChristopher Kolenda2023-05-26 15:00:002023-05-26 19:40:58Determination is a Powerful Tool
What’s the difference between a strategy and a plan?
Afghanistan, 2007. We were executing our plan perfectly. All of our metrics indicated that we were on an upward trajectory. We were working hard, creating efficiencies, and consistently improving. We felt good about our performance.
And yet, we were not succeeding.
That was exactly how I felt after the first 60 days as a commander in Afghanistan. We were winning every firefight, but the enemy kept growing. Something was amiss.
When we begin talking, many of my clients express the unsettling feeling that something is missing – and that missing “something” is creating a gap between high performance and success.
The normal approach to this problem is to stay on the trajectory but work harder, in the belief that this will lead to incremental progress and greater efficiency.
The problem, however, is that high performance does not necessarily equal success.
This is a difficult truth to swallow, especially for leaders. To admit that is to recognize that the plan is flawed; that factors beyond our control affect the outcome. What we are directing our employees to do, what we are prioritizing, and what we are measuring may all be off-target.
Leaders excessively concerned with execution can begin to drink their own Kool-Aid, believing that blips in performance are evidence of success. This can reinforce the blinders and refuel the desire to do the same things over and over again, but expecting different results. The technical term for this is confirmation bias.
This is where strategy comes in.
Strategy helps you expose disconnects between success and performance, ask the right questions, and adjust as the marketplace shifts under your feet.
Strategy identifies your purpose and direction. A plan details how you execute that direction. The common term “strategic plan” is an oxymoron, like fitness exercise or financial investing.
The upshot of the unhappy strategic plan marriage is that you do both poorly; you wind up with a 5-year plan that has no chance whatsoever of becoming a reality in today’s volatility.
You need both a strategy and a plan, and the latter needs a much shorter timeframe (1 year or less) than more companies assume.
Here are three critical differences between a strategy and a plan:
A strategy faces outward, first. A plan faces inward
A strategy considers factors you don’t control; a plan focuses on what you do control
A strategy measures success; a plan measures performance
Let’s break these down.
A strategy faces outward, first. A plan faces inward
A sound strategy begins with diagnosing the marketplace and your place within it. This establishes your startpoint. Your mission is your destination.
This context is dynamic. The marketplace is constantly in flux, influenced by factors like technology, social and political changes, government policy, competitor choices, and so forth. Your strategy should identify those factors most likely to affect your outcomes. How you believe they will unfold and shape the future becomes your assumptions.
Once you have outlined the context, you can develop your theory of success – your path from start point to destination. A good strategy process will produce more than one theory of success, so you can choose the one you think is best.
Your plan faces inward. It focuses on how to execute the chosen path.
*THIS 5-D STRATEGY PROCESS® IDENTIFIES THE KEY STEPS
A strategy considers factors you don’t control; a plan directs what you do control
A strategy is not a crystal ball that foretells how your organization can achieve a desired end-state. Nor is it a blueprint of the bridge from the present to the future. These analogies are too deterministic and self-centered for a dynamic and uncertain marketplace.
A strategy is a hypothesis, a best guess that relies on assumptions about the future and factors you do not control. A proper strategy is explicit about these assumptions, allowing you to monitor them as the future unfolds.
Revising your assumptions is a sign of wisdom. When you do so, you may need to modify your strategy.
*DISCUSS THE VALIDITY OF YOUR ASSUMPTIONS DURING YOUR QUARTERLY BOARD MEETINGS
Now that your strategy outlines how everything fits, you can make an implementation plan to direct the activities under your control.
*HAVE THE PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE FOR EXECUTING THE PLANS DRAW THEM UP. MORE OWNERSHIP LEADS TO BETTER EXECUTION
Strategy measures success; a plan measures performance
Your goals are waypoints between your start point and destination and inform your strategic measures.
Your plan outlines the critical tasks necessary to implement your strategy. Measuring performance enables you to assess the strength of the execution.
Keep your impact and outcome measures separate from your performance measures. This is because impact and outcomes are influenced by factors you cannot control.
High performance on your implementation tasks and poor achievement of your strategic goals indicate that factors outside your control undermine your ability to succeed.
You need to understand these factors and adjust your strategy and plan accordingly.
*MINDING THE GAP BETWEEN SUCCESS AND PERFORMANCE WILL HELP YOU ADJUST FASTER THAN YOUR COMPETITORS
Back to Afghanistan. Executing our plan was making things worse because our assumptions were wrong. We adjusted our strategy and created a game plan that we reviewed every 90 days.
Getting the strategy right enabled our paratroopers to succeed in Afghanistan by motivating a large insurgent group to stop fighting and switch sides.
A sound strategy helps my clients create sustainable growth and impact.
To learn more about the difference between a strategy and a plan (and why a “strategic plan” tends to be a reverse Goldilocks), see our short video “Strategy versus Strategic Plan.”
https://chriskolenda.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/pexels-andrea-piacquadio-3771097-scaled.jpg17072560Christopher KolendaChristopher Kolenda2023-05-19 15:00:002023-05-19 12:17:523 Critical Differences Between a Strategy and a Plan
The Bucks and Bruins show why you should not fixate on outcomes.
You shouldn’t compete to win.
The teams with the best regular season records in basketball (Milwaukee Bucks) and hockey (Boston Bruins) lost in the first round of their respective playoffs. Not a single #1 seed in Men’s College basketball made it past the Sweet-16.
Are they failures?
I love Buck’s star Giannis Antetokounmpo’s answer to this question: these setbacks are steps to future success.
You compete to get better, not just to win.
WHY IT MATTERS: You cannot control outcomes in most sports or business because other factors are at play. Assessing a season or someone’s job performance based on outcomes makes you prone to mistakes.
When you judge success solely on outcomes, chances are you reward luck and punish excellence.
You can’t necessarily control outcomes, but you can control the processes you use. You are better off evaluating how and how well your subordinates executed their processes, and consider outcomes as a guide to whether your processes are sound.
This double-axis chart shows why.
Plenty of people and organizations get good short-term outcomes despite faulty processes. WeWork and FTX are recent examples of luck, good timing, a rising tide lifting all boats.
When the tide went out, everyone saw they were skinny-dipping.
Bad processes and bad outcomes are like someone getting their just desserts. The leaders in these organizations tend to have poor support networks and follow bad decisions with stupid decisions.
The lower right quadrant is most interesting. You can have a good process but not get the outcomes that you want. Sometimes the cause is bad luck. A competitor made a smart move; a new technology arose; a pandemic hit; Jimmy Butler scored fifty points in game 4 and hit an improbable buzzer-beater in game 5.
You also might have a great process that does not work in your situation. When I was doing some work with the Cleveland Browns, one of the coaches told me that he worked at Army in the 1980s when I went to school. We went 2-9 my freshman year.
The head coach got the staff together and said, “this is our fault.” They were using a pro-style offense that worked in other places but not with service-academy athletes. They switched to a better talent-to-offense match, the wish-bone, and went 8-3-1 the next year.
You might also have some implementation challenges to address.
You’d be foolish to fire someone who executed the processes you approved simply because they did not achieve the outcomes you wanted.
The upper right seems like the happy place – good processes and good outcomes. The key here is to avoid complacency. Sears had good processes and good outcomes, so did Blockbuster and ToyRUs. They stopped innovating and are now out of business.
You might also have some implementation challenges to address.
You’d be foolish to fire someone who executed the processes you approved simply because they did not achieve the outcomes you wanted.
The upper right seems like the happy place – good processes and good outcomes. The key here is to avoid complacency. Sears had good processes and good outcomes, so did Blockbuster and ToyRUs. They stopped innovating and are now out of business.
Compete to get better instead of fixating on wins and losses.
Evaluate people on how well they execute what’s under their control and not on external factors they cannot.
Use outcomes to expose gaps and implementation failures in your processes; address those, and don’t overreact to bad luck.
P.S. Golfers say that a double-bogey is a bad shot followed by a stupid one. The Bucks followed a bad playoff experience with a worse decision in firing their head coach, Mike Budenholzer.
https://chriskolenda.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/pexels-cottonbro-studio-5739229-scaled.jpg17072560Christopher KolendaChristopher Kolenda2023-05-12 15:00:002023-05-11 17:45:39Don’t Base Success on the Outcome
The Pressures of Low or Negative Margins and Employee Turnover will Create a Downward Spiral for Many Small Businesses
Small Business Failure
The combination of inflation, poor first-line leadership, and expensive mistakes spell trouble for low-margin small businesses. I think we will see small businesses fail at historically high rates in 2022.
Inflation of 4 percent or higher will persist due to supply chain challenges and demands for higher wages. The Biden administration’s Build Back Better initiative, if it passes, will heighten inflation even as it invests in (hopefully) high-payoff programs. Inflationary pressures are going to reduce margins. In some cases, small businesses could find themselves completing projects and selling products at a loss.
The so-called great resignation will continue because COVID has reduced people’s tolerance for poor leadership, toxic work environments, and poor work conditions. Some people are leaving their jobs to upgrade their skills and enter new lines of work. Most seem to be switching jobs within their current industries.
The best talent will find their way to companies that have good leadership, healthy cultures, and quality work environments. Provided that these companies can innovate successfully to outpace inflation and higher costs, they will thrive in an upward spiral of better talent, higher quality products and services, and greater continuity.
Small Business Failure
The pressures of low or negative margins and employee turnover will create a downward spiral for many small businesses. CEOs will work longer hours and get consumed in problem-solving, which heightens the risks of expensive mistakes. They’ll lack the bandwidth to innovate, so the margins will continue shrinking until the business is no longer sustainable.
You cannot do much about inflation (except raise their prices), but you can take these steps: 1. Fire managers who are driving employees away, 2. Invest in leader development so that you attract and retain great talent, 3. Reduce the likelihood of expensive mistakes by having trusted advisers who will help you avoid falling in love with your own plans and getting high from your own fumes, and 4. Innovate to create higher-margin products and services.
Programs that Accelerate Success
CEO Mastermind group is for Milwaukee-area small business leaders and consultants who want to accelerate their growth in 2022. We meet monthly for lunch, and you get unlimited access to me. I’m limiting the group to 8. Six places are remaining.
FOCUSED is my 8-week mastery program for small business leaders and consultants to put the action plans in place to make 2022 their best year ever. The next program begins in late January; there are only eight spaces available. Click here for more information and to apply.
Innovation Mindset is a new 8-week program for consultants and small business leaders that I intend to launch in January, based on interest. This program gives you the tools to address (and help your clients address) the challenges facing small businesses in 2022 so that you can create an upward spiral that propels your business to new heights. Please reply to this email if you are interested.
The Trusted Adviser Program is my most intensive 1-on-1 program. Within 90 days, you’ll gain habits that create breakthrough success. You get personalized coaching and support, strict accountability, and commonsense action steps that get results. Get the details here.
Exclusive Events
The next Antietam & Gettysburg exclusive event takes place March 15-18. This program is for seven leaders and consultants who want to turbocharge 2022 with innovations. We use critical points on the battlefield to discuss decision-making, gaining buy-in, improving agency and initiative, and how to avoid getting high off the smell of your own gunpowder. We finish with an innovation workshop where you will develop action steps to gain decisive competitive advantages. There are four spaces left.
Books
LEADERSHIP: THE WARRIOR’S ART, second edition, is on the streets. We expect leaders to anticipate and shape the future so that your team can succeed. To do so, you need imagination grounded in a practical perspective. That’s what you get with this book, which is why it’s been in print for over 20 years.
Zero-Sum Victory: What We’re Getting Wrong About War is my latest book about strategic decision-making. I use the disasters in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq to give you the tools and mental models to avoid the traps and own goals that have created quagmires for the United States. You’ll gain ways to improve agency, bridge silos, pivot smartly, avoid breathing your own exhaust, and many other outcomes.
https://chriskolenda.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/failure-3096225_640.jpg426640Christopher KolendaChristopher Kolenda2021-12-06 05:39:312022-02-07 06:33:232022 Prediction: Small Businesses will Fail at Historic Rates
Accountability means being answerable to someone for something important.
When you lead with accountability, you keep your commitments to your vision and mission, your employees, your customers, and your partners.
Lack of accountability leads to neglect, poor performance, abuse, and backbiting.
When you uphold accountability fairly, you show that you are sincere, you set the example, and you don’t play favorites.
Accountability improves commitment to your vision, mission, goals, and values.
Accountability reduces your need to micromanage and spend energy on compliance.
Accountability is possible when you make your goals and expectations clear.
Accountability improves when you share your goals and expectations.
An accountability group accelerates your performance because you are sharing your goals with people who are committed to your success.
Accountability gives you the focus to work on your business.
Accountability strengthens your promise to sharpen yourself so you can lead to greater success.
Accountability puts you back in command.
There’s a direct line from accountability to success.
Only you can draw it.
Leadership is the art of inspiring people to contribute their best to your team’s success (check out the free Leading Well masterclass) – accountability builds commitment so that people do what’s right even when no one is watching.
What’s your top takeaway from this article? Write me at chris@strategicleadersacademy.com.
Are you trying to put the eggs back together or are you making omelets?
There’s a world of difference between the two approaches.
COVID-19 and the economic shutdown have wrecked the economy and created new social expectations.
People are unlikely to gather closely together until there’s a vaccine or herd immunity.
Open office plans – Good riddance.
Work from home or from remote locations is no longer scary. More employees are going to demand these options. Your culture needs to treat in-office and remote as equals or you will have two classes of employees.
Online conferences and training are productive and far less expensive than doing them in-person. There are trade-offs, of course, but leaders now have options.
It’s tempting to want to put the broken eggs back together, to return to the way things were in January 2020.
For some leaders, that’s reasonable.
For many, though, it’s a fool’s errand.
You will miss opportunities to restore your growth as you cling stubbornly to past practices and expectations.
You won’t adapt your flywheel, so your competitors will pass you by as you spend time, energy, and resources trying to recreate the past.
Your top talent will leave because you are out-of-step with people’s expectations. It’s like asking Millenials to accept a Mad Men workplace. Not going to happen.
Imagine what it would be like to be making omelets while everyone else is fumbling around with the eggshells?
This is exactly where you want to be – ahead of the curve.
Here are some practical questions to help you do that.
1. What emerging social and economic trends are affecting your customers?
2. What steps can you take to meet these new needs and expectations?
3. What trends, such as remote workplaces, are affecting your culture?
4. What steps should you take to meet these expectations?
5. What resources do you need to take these steps?
You got it. Five clarifying questions that help you make omelets when everyone else is staring at the broken shell and drifting yolk.
https://chriskolenda.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/blog-eggs-header.png5361024Christopher KolendaChristopher Kolenda2020-06-01 18:14:592020-07-30 16:18:43What Are You Doing With The Broken Eggs?
We do not know what the post-crisis new normal will look like, but we can reasonably guess that distributed workplaces will be more norm than exception.
A distributed workforce creates distinct dilemmas for leaders.
Monitoring work is much easier when everyone is in one place. For some, the open-office was the ultimate micro-management tool. Even so, two-thirds of American employees report being unengaged at work (Gallup).
Micro-management ensures physical presence but does not seem to help much with engagement and productivity.
As more employees work from distributed locations, micromanagement becomes harder.
A discussant at a recent webinar told us about a manager who required his employees to work in front of a live web-conferencing camera, so he could see that they were working. Others report incessant check-ins in which people need to explain what they are doing each hour of the day.
Yes, that’s a ton of time lost in micromanaging.
Culture is another dilemma. There is a considerable risk that managers will treat distributed or telework employees as second-class citizens, which is terrible for morale.
Employees will vote with their feet and computers to a team that values their productivity.
Employee disengagement and turnover are a silent killer; they are the highest costs most companies face.
Here are three ways you can strengthen your culture is a distributed workplace.
First, Hire and Promote for Common-Good Fit.
There are a lot of essential cautions about hiring for culture fit, including undermining diversity and inclusion. Even if done well, hiring for culture fit is too-narrow.
Hire and promote people who demonstrate a commitment to your Common Good: Vision, Mission, Goals, Values, Standards & Expectations, and Strategy.
Second, Align Work with Strengths.
Leaders should design work to fit employee strengths, rather than treating everyone as interchangeable cogs.
People who report that they use their strengths each day at work are likely to be two-three-times more engaged and productive than those who don’t (Buckingham and Goodall, Nine Lies About Work).
Leaders who do this well use two frames.
Broad Framing. Use archetypes, such as SLA’s PROM™ Archetypes (Pioneers, Reconcilers, Operators, and Mavericks), so they have a clear mental picture of their team and how to put the right people in the right roles.
Pioneers are innovators, Reconcilers are consensus builders, Operators implement your plans to a high standard, and Mavericks solve big, wicked problems.
Narrow framing. Assign specific tasks based on particular strengths and inclinations. Programs like Tom Rath’s Strengths Finder can help leaders and employees identify the tight framing best for each person.
Third, Develop your Team Leaders.
Your workplace culture is not what’s written on the walls. It’s the total of what happens in the halls and on the zoom calls.
Your team leaders, all the way down to your first-line managers, are the ones who create your workplace culture, one interaction at a time.
You can strengthen your culture by improving the quality of one-on-one engagements.
Each leader, from CEO to first-line manager, should engage with their direct reports at least once per week. If you cannot do that, you have probably exceeded your span of control.
These one-on-ones are the most impact meetings in your organization because their quality directly correlates to levels of productivity and engagement.
There are four great questions you can use as a foundation for these weekly one-on-ones. SLA has created this tool that guides you through these simple questions. Use it with each of your direct reports.
Pro-Tip: Have your direct reports complete the worksheet and send it to you in advance of the meeting.
The distributed workplace is probably here to stay. These three action steps will help you strengthen your culture and morale as you lead your team through this crisis and create the foundations to prosper in the post-crisis new-normal.
https://chriskolenda.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/blog-distributed-workforce.png6281200Christopher KolendaChristopher Kolenda2020-05-19 18:46:582020-06-05 19:59:32The Fastest Ways to Strengthen Your Culture During the COVID-19 Crisis
If you could change one thing about your team’s productivity, what would it be?
So, what’s holding you back from making that change?
The twin crises of COVID-19 and the economic shutdown are hurting a lot of us — me and our team at Strategic Leaders Academy included. Postponed work, canceled conferences and speaking events, experiential learning events on hold; the list goes on.
There’s also the pain of not being able to visit elderly loved ones for fear of passing along a virus you do not know you have.
It breaks my heart that I cannot safely visit my father, who is fighting cancer so bravely. A loved one in our extended family recently passed away. Her family cannot give her a proper funeral.
A friend has had to put work on hold as his wife has fought COVID-19. She has beaten the virus; I am delighted to say! He’s loved spending so much time with his children — who also got other illnesses — and yet he’s put everything else on hold. All of this comes at a cost.
Everyone I know is experiencing some version of this and more.
What to do?
There’s opportunity in crisis if we dare to look for it. It’s tough amidst all the challenges to look for the possibilities.
That’s precisely why we are putting together this series of webinars: RAMP – The Major Crisis LifeCycle.
These webinars help you put an eye on the future. When you know what to look for, you find it more easily.
We want to help you identify the opportunities you need and the tools to find them.
Our first webinar identified five shifts from conventional thinking that can help you put some structure around these ambiguous opportunities:
From Firefighting to Gardening: how to focus on growth (working on your business rather than in your business).
From Fear to Trust: how to strengthen workplace relationships even as we telework and practice physical distancing
From Compliance to Commitment: how we can boost commitment to success and our culture. You’ve probably found that micromanaging is hard nowadays. You can expect people’s tolerance for being micromanaged to diminish after all this.
From Single to Multiple Decision-Making Approaches: how to organize your decisions, so you make quick ones when the timing and conditions are right, gain the insights and support from your team, and empower and delegate to people’s strengths.
From Crystal Ball and Blueprints to Intelligence and Agility: how to turn uncertainty into calculated risk, so you ask the right questions and execute quickly and precisely. The teams with the best intelligence and agility will prosper in the post-crisis new normal.
For the next five weeks, our webinars are going to drill down into these themes.
This week builds on the Firefighting to Gardening shift. We are calling it Double your Productivity: Organizing your Time and Team for Sustainable Success. This webinar will help you:
* Gain time for growth by using these practical delegation tips;
* Boost your results by reducing hyperactivity and creating your organizational rhythm;
* Slash wasted time and energy by letting your leadership emerge from the middle;
* Improve innovation with three techniques that promote your creativity and focus;
* Reset your trajectory by seizing this opportunity reform nagging issues that have been holding your team back.
RAMP Webinar #2: Double your Productivity is live at 12:30 am Eastern time on April 2.
https://chriskolenda.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/blog-double-your-productivity-header.png5361024Christopher KolendaChristopher Kolenda2020-04-01 18:29:002020-06-05 19:56:57Double Your Productivity
When biking, do you focus on the pothole or where you want to go?
I learned that lesson the hard way. The more I focused on the pothole, the more likely that I smacked right into it.
That all changed when I focused on where I wanted to go instead. I maintained awareness of the pothole but concentrated on the path forward.
Whew. No more face-plants or blown tires!
Major crises tend to have a specific life-cycle. We call it RAMP: React, Adjust, Manage, Prosper.
Organizations that fixate on the crisis tend to stay mired in it. They adapt too late to the new normal and often fail. The ones most likely to power through the crisis and prosper, put an eye on the future and begin working toward it.
By now, you have gotten tons of advice on crisis management from some very talented people and organizations, like Jan Rutherford, Stan McChrystal, Bill Watkins, Harvard Business Review, and McKinsey, to name a few.
You have put the best ideas into practice. You are starting to get on top of things again.
Here’s the problem with staying focused on crisis management: you fixate on the crisis rather than anticipate and shape the future.
You are at risk of staring at the pothole.
You need to keep one eye on the crisis; you need to set your other eye forward.
Crises tend to follow a life-cycle. It goes something like this.
1. React. Government, business, and nonprofit leaders, and others take measures to address the crisis. The novelty of the situation and inadequate information undermine decision-making. Some actions turn out to be insufficient; many wind up being excessive; others are spot-on. The back and forth is a normal response to uncertainty, but it is not the new normal.
2. Adjust. As the novelty wears off and better information becomes available, leaders adjust their policies for a more significant effect. They strengthen the inadequate measures and modify the excessive ones. Leaders and policy-makers are now making fine rather than coarse corrections. The downward spiral stops, and the situation begins to stabilize.
3. Manage. The crisis wears off, and the situation stabilizes. Sound policies are in place and need only minor adjustments. This situation is the New Normal, a post-crisis status quo. New rules, written and unwritten, govern the marketplace. Many organizations that survived the worst parts of the crisis get caught flat-footed here because they presume things will return to the pre-crisis status quo.
4. Prosper. The New Normal creates new opportunities and risks. Some of these are traditional ones in a post-crisis context. Others emerge as needs and interests adapt to the New Normal. Overall economic growth resumes.
Organizations that anticipate the New Normal are best positioned to power through the crisis and thrive afterward. High tech companies like Apple and Google did this well as the 2008 financial crisis subsided. Ford avoided a bailout.
Most companies and nonprofits adjust too slowly because they do not keep an eye on the future. They follow the pack, which always swings way behind the pitch. Companies like General Motors and big banks survived thanks to government bailouts. Others managed to make the big leap on their own.
1.8 million small businesses reportedly failed due to the financial crisis. The gap between capabilities and new opportunities was too big.
To help you follow the green line, we are putting together a series of free webinars.
During these sessions, you will:
Gain a clear eye on the future by discussing the RAMP stages and how they affect you and your business;
Boost your clarity and confidence as you exchange tips and insights with a high-performing peer group;
Slash engagement-distancing by examining ways to keep everyone focused, connected, and using their strengths;
Anticipate the New Normal by considering the key variables that will shape it;
Get ahead of the curve by framing likely New Normal scenarios and key indicators;
Improve your team’s post-crisis outcomes by using a simple set of intelligence and planning techniques that keep you agile and oriented on the future
Avoid the expensive mistakes of trying to crystal-ball the future and being locked into a losing plan.
The live webinar is on Friday, March 27, 3-4 pm Central Time. Register here.
When you are ready, here are four great ways to work together
Speaking: Do you want a professional keynote speaker to talk with your team on leadership, culture, and strategy? I’ve talked to business, NFL, academic, government, nonprofit, and military audiences. I always tailor the presentation to you, so the message inspires action for you and your team. I’m a professional member of the National Speakers Association, which means I have a proven track record of professionalism and performance.
Training: If you want an even higher impact for your team, training and workshops are a great way to go. I teach teams and organizations on a range of Leadership, Culture, and Strategy themes, to include: how to elevate your team’s performance, how to build a culture of excellence, how to slash employee burnout and turnover, how to develop a winning strategy and how to prevent expensive mistakes. Programs for you range from half-day primers to three-day intensives, to include offsite at places like Normandy and Gettysburg.
Self-Directed Courses: Do you want your team to stay engaged on these key themes but do not want to send them away to an executive education course? We have a suite of online programs that are perfect for you. The courses are excellent ways to follow-up a training event to keep your team learning at your own pace.
Consulting: Do you want to improve your leadership development programs, build a culture of excellence, and create a winning strategy? Unlike the big, gucci, consulting firms that are slow, bureaucratic, and stick you with junior MBAs, I work personally with you and your team, so you get results quickly and cost-effectively with no hassle.
(571) 303-8096
chris@chriskolenda.com
