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All Leadership Organizational Effectiveness Vision

The Big Picture: Leaders Ensure Alignment

This week I have been posting about attracting Top Talent. When Mark Miller and I wrote the Talent Magnet Field Guide one of the things we discovered the best of the best are looking for in an employer is, “A Bigger Vision.” In other words, they want to be a part of something great. Today Mark has agreed to guest post on one of the best practices from the Bigger Vision section. I hope you will read it and do a ‘vision alignment check’ in your organization.  

The Big Picture: Leaders Ensure Alignment

What’s the hardest thing a leader has to do? Honestly, I’m not sure.
For me, it varies with the circumstances of the day. However, if I pull up and stop fighting fires and escape the entanglements of growing bureaucracy, I think I might vote for Ensuring Alignment.
Having seen our organization grow from less than two dozen staff to almost 2,000, I can say the task of keeping everyone aligned is mind-boggling. However, regardless of the difficulty factor, I believe Ensuring Alignment is one of the leader’s highest priorities – and one with incalculable returns.
For these reasons, I was not surprised when we began sorting through all we learned from our Top Talent research project about their expectations for their leaders, and landed on this idea of Ensuring Alignment as a leadership best practice. No organization drifts toward a big vision – you drift out to sea or over a waterfall, but you don’t drift to greatness.
Here’s an excerpt from the Talent Magnet Field Guide on this topic…
When organizations work together, they set themselves apart. Clearly, alignment accelerates impact. Leaders who want to position their organizations to accomplish a Bigger Vision must Ensure Alignment; only then can they harness the collective energy of those they lead. Without alignment, energy, productivity, and impact will suffer.
[Tweet “”When organizations work together, they set themselves apart.” #TalentMagnet”]
[Tweet “”In high performance organizations, alignment accelerates impact.” #TalentMagnet “]
Picture a tug of war. If leaders can get everyone in the organization on the same side of the rope pulling together toward the vision, their competition is in trouble. When everyone is in sync, not only is the existing workforce energized, but potential talent will be drawn to the team.
Alignment permeates every aspect of a high-performance culture. Leaders know they must model the way and continually work to train team members to embrace the vision, mission, values, systems, and strategy if they hope to execute at a high level. If they succeed, everyone wins. Additionally, they position themselves to be an employer of choice for Top Talent.
As a leader, you must choose where to invest your time. You can thrash away neck deep in the weeds of busyness or you can make a strategic decision to build an aligned culture. Choose to Ensure Alignment and you will be a step closer to becoming a place so attractive, Top Talent will be standing in line to work for your organization.

About Mark Miller
Mark Miller is the best-selling author of seven books, an in-demand speaker and the Vice President of High-Performance Leadership at Chick-fil-A. His latest book, Talent Magnet: How to Attract and Keep the Best People, Mark unveils the three critical aspects of a true talent magnet, and explores the deeper meaning of each in a clever and entertaining business fable.
 

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All Leadership Organizational Effectiveness

How Do You Scale Culture?

For the past year I have spent a lot of time thinking about and attempting to scale my company, InteGREAT Leadership. The journey has been challenging, but very rewarding as we continue to expand our reach to organizations and teams.
I recently ran across a scale question that trumps expanding a business. Someone asked, “How do you scale a culture?” It is a great question. My friend Mark Miller has written a new book, Leaders Made Here, on building a leadership culture. You can pick up a copy at the bottom of the post. Today, Mark has agreed to tackle the question of scaling culture with the following guest post.
[Tweet “”Culture is what people actually do with a high degree of predictability.” via @leadersserve”]
How Do You Scale Culture?
Scale is an interesting challenge. It is the aim of countless organizations, but real scale is hard to achieve – not as unlikely as a finding a unicorn, but really hard to do well. My perspective on this topic is limited: I’ve worked for one organization for almost 40 years. Now, we have grown from about $150 million to almost $8 billion during that span, but I’m convinced scaling assets is not nearly the challenge as scaling a culture. This is something we work on daily.
What is a culture? My working definition for decades has been the same: the collective habits of the people. Not the aspirations of leadership. Our culture is not what we wish it would be, it is what it is. However, I do believe leaders can change a culture and this can certainly include aspirational elements, but a culture is what people actually do with a high degree of predictability.
Here’s a tangible example. One of the elements of our culture is that when someone says, “Thank you,” we say, “My pleasure.” No, we’re not perfect and we’re not robots – it doesn’t happen every time. But it happens a lot, millions of times every day. Why would I say this is part of our culture? Because it actually happens. I don’t say this because we want people to say “My pleasure,” it is only part of the culture because people say it with great consistency.
You may be wondering, what’s the point? Before I answer the question, please don’t miss the magnitude of this achievement. Our independent restaurant operators employ about 100,000 people, and the majority of them are under the age of 20. So, to have tens of thousands of young people saying “My pleasure” was really hard to accomplish. I didn’t even mention turnover. But, the really hard part is important. If you want to scale your culture across districts, divisions, states, territories, and even the globe, prepare yourself – it is really hard to do.
Here are a few ideas on how you can increase your chances of scaling your culture . . .
Be Clear – What are the key elements of your culture? How could you institutionalize these attributes? If life-long learning is a cultural norm, you could require everyone to have a personal development plan. Make no mistake, vagueness will scale and when it does, you have nothing but vagueness. Are you clear on the elements of your culture that matter most? Are you clear on the actions that can foster scale?
Be Selective – You can’t scale everything. I believe attempts to do so quickly look like micro-management. In his book, The Power of Habit, Charles Duggin talks about power of keystone habits – those habitual behaviors which have a ripple effect. Work to discover these for your culture.
Be Accountable – If you want to scale a certain behavior, determine how you’ll measure your progress. And by measure, I mean real numbers, not approximations or estimates. If you want people to say, “My pleasure,” find a way to measure it.
Be Relentless – We watched a video recently of our founder asking, reminding, and telling us the appropriate response when someone says thank you is … what? We practiced saying “My pleasure” in groups as large as 5,000 people. The interesting thing about the video – it was pieced together from clips over a ten-year period! What are you relentlessly and tirelessly communicating regarding your culture?
Culture is powerful – so powerful, Peter Drucker once said, that “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” If this is true, don’t you want to be the one creating the culture?
[Tweet “”Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” – PeterDrucker “]
If you are looking to build a leadership culture for your organization, I encourage you to pick up copies of Mark’s book, Leader’s Made Here, and read it with your leadership team.
 

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All Creativity Excellence Leadership

Go Big or Go Home!

Today’s guest post is from Mark Miller. You can connect with Mark on twitter @leadersserve.
Go Big or Go Home
The phrase “go big or go home” is probably considered a cliché in our culture. You’ve probably heard it for years, and recently with increasing frequency. The idea seems to be everywhere in our culture.
I think the GO BIG mindset has also invaded the thinking of most leaders, or even been there all along. This is not necessarily bad nor unexpected – “big(ger)” is usually a significant part of what leaders are paid to do . . .

  • Make the customer base bigger.
  • Make the sales line on the P&L bigger.
  • Make the profits of the organizations bigger.
  • If you’re in a non-profit setting, you want to make the donor base bigger.
  • Leaders also want to make a bigger impact!

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it really takes for something to “go big.” I’ve concluded there are a few pre-requisites for healthy, sustained, “bigger.” Here’s the first:
The success of all big ideas hinges on perceived value. 
And, here’s the tricky part . . . you, as the leader, do not get to decide. The people that the idea is intending to serve are the judge and jury. Yes, the customer, or potential customer, has the ultimate authority to decide if your big idea lives or dies.
And, to compound the challenge, many big ideas (products, services, and activities) have multiple customers. Be sure you know who your customers are – not just the end users. Each customer group can have unique, and sometimes conflicting, expectations.
If you want any of your idea to “go big,” be sure your customers believe it adds tremendous value.
How does the idea, product, service, or activity you are advocating add value?
[Tweet “”The success of all big ideas hinges on perceived value.” – via @leadersserve”]
To purchase the 15-part video series Mark and I did for high performance teams click here.

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All Leadership Teams Teamwork

Create the Target Before You Shoot the Arrow

Do you have a target for what you are trying to accomplish? Today’s post by Mark Miller is a reminder that the target is the place to start.
I saw a cartoon years ago in which Charlie Brown shot an arrow at a fence and then proceeded to draw a circle around the arrow. At some level, he found this satisfying. This is not how great leaders think.
Having just returned from our annual meeting with over 5,000 chicken people present, I am thankful we took the time to draw the target before we shot the arrow. We will see what the attendees have to say, but preliminary reports are positive. I think the event hit the mark.
Here’s the leadership lesson that comes to mind as I reflect on the event. One of the reasons it was a success—not the only reason, but one of them–is that we decided what we were trying to accomplish before we created the event. We drew the target BEFORE we shot the arrow.
I’m wondering how often, as leaders, we fail to clearly define the target. I think about all the times my leadership efforts have fallen short … how many of those failures can be attributed, directly or indirectly, to an unclear target or goal?
There are many things leaders CANNOT do for their people. However, clarity regarding intent should never be in short supply. People must always know what they are trying to accomplish.
[Tweet “”The greatest gift leaders can give their people is clarity.” #Vision “]
The power of clarity transcends targets, goals, and objectives – it includes vision, values, and strategic intent, as well as other tactical issues. But what we are trying to accomplish cannot get lost in the process.
When you identify the target with crystal clarity, I think you may be amazed at how often your team will hit the mark.
[Tweet “”Clarity enables alignment, and alignment is a prerequisite for performance.” #ActAsOne “]
 
To learn the 4 essentials of building a high performance team pick up a copy of Mark’s book, The Secret of Teams, for those you lead.

 

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All Leadership Organizational Effectiveness

Hopefully You're not Beyond Crazy

Check out this week’s guest blog from my friend, Mark Miller. Mark is the best leadership thinker I know and has written a great post on how we can avoid being crazy leaders. Enjoy!
Beyond Crazy…
I’m crazy – yes, I admit it – and my family, friends, and colleagues can all confirm it. Like many leaders, I don’t live in the real world. We’re always pursuing and attempting to rally others to a future that does not yet exist. Our success is contingent on our ability to see what others do not see. I think that’s a really good kind of crazy! However, there is another form of crazy I want no part of:
Repeating the same activities and expecting different outcomes.
From my perspective, this is beyond crazy – it is certifiable insanity! The best leaders work diligently to avoid this situation.
Here’s one technique that may help you avoid this type of crazy: After-Action Reviews (AAR).
An AAR is a structured process in which participants evaluate what worked, what didn’t, and why. Football teams call it reviewing game footage, others a post-mortem, and some a project de-brief. It doesn’t matter what you call it, as long as you do it. There’s much you can learn from these sessions if they are approached with sobriety, candor, and integrity. The entire group must be willing to face the truth.
After you’ve done your best to sort out facts from fiction, reasons from excuses, and ideas for improvement, you can create a plan to ensure your next attempt — whether it be a project, a performance, a presentation, or a sales pitch — will be better than the last.
Learn from the past – don’t live there.
You will not drift to success; discipline will be required. After-action reviews, executed consistently, can accelerate your journey.
Stay crazy!
[Tweet “Learn from the past – don’t live there. via @leadersserve”]
[Tweet “”If you want something different, you must do something different.””]
 
If you need help building a leadership culture, pick up a copy of Mark’s new book, Leaders Made Here.

Categories
All Creativity Discipline

Advice for Aspiring Authors

After yesterday’s post, How I made it from Remedial English to Fifth Avenue, I received a several questions about the writing process. Today my friend, and fellow author, Mark Miller agreed to guest post with some advice for aspiring authors. I could not say it any better than Mark does. Mark’s latest book, Leaders Made Here is now available as an INTEGREAT Leadership resource. The book lays out the five steps to building a leadership culture.
Enjoy Mark’s post …
It happened again this week – I received a call from an aspiring author. The longer I write, the more people I talk to who “have a book in them.” It happens so often, I have begun to wonder: Does everyone have a book in them? Maybe they do!
For me, I consider myself an accidental author. Had my friend and mentor, Ken Blanchard, not challenged me to write a book almost 20 years ago, I don’t believe I would have ever written a book.
Six books later, I still don’t think of myself as a writer. I often tell people I don’t write real books – I just tell stories. What I’ve discovered: there is a market for stories. But, whether I consider myself a real author or not, people call wanting advice.
I’m always delighted to hear about their dream. Some of them share deep and profound messages intended for a broad audience, while others are much more personal, maybe a book for their children.
In every conversation, I ask where they are in the process. Often, they have done very little. Then, they ask me a question: “What advice do you have for me?”
I swallow hard, because most will not like what I am about to say…
Until you have a first draft, you don’t have a book – all you have is an idea and good intentions. Write the first draft!
It doesn’t have to be good; it probably won’t be. However, after you have a first draft, you can begin the second.
When I wrote the first draft of The Secret, my wife read it and said, “It’s not half as bad as I thought it would be.” Success! At that moment, I had a book that could be edited, improved, and ultimately, 17 drafts later, Ken and I have sold over 600,000 copies in more than 25 languages. How is that possible??? It all started with a crappy first draft.
Give yourself a deadline and finish the first draft!
[Tweet ““We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” —Ernest Hemingway”]
 

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All Leadership Organizational Effectiveness

Leaders Made Here

Yesterday, I mentioned the launch of our new book, UNSTUCK which comes out on Monday. Today I want to tell you about another book that launched this week. The title is Leader’s Made Here, and it was written by Mark Miller. The book is the #1 New Release on Amazon for business & organizational learning. When it comes to leadership, Mark is my hero. He and I have co-authored on a couple of projects and I have had the opportunity to view up close his work with Chick-fil-A. Leaders Made Here is about building a leadership culture. Below is a post from Mark on this concept. I hope you will read it and then pick up a copy of the book. A leader is the architect of the culture. Whether you lead an organization, team, department, or family, Leaders Made Here is a great resource to help you in your efforts.
Building A Leadership Culture
Almost 10 years ago, I had the privilege to co-author The Secret with Ken Blanchard, a book about Chick-fil-A’s point of view on leadership. It was a lot of fun doing the book with Ken and even more fun talking to groups all over the world about leadership. What I didn’t expect was the question that I received over and over again… “We’ve read The Secret, what’s next?”
In the beginning, I wasn’t really sure what people wanted to know. Were they asking about my next book? Did they want to know my career plans or what time my flight was going to leave? Most often, it was none of the above. Leaders around the world appreciated the lessons we tried to convey in the book, but they had an intuitive sense, informed by their experience, that the book was not the end of the conversation. They were right.
What organizations desperately need is not just a point-of-view on leadership, they need a leadership culture. I define a leadership culture as a place in which leaders are routinely and systematically produced. In a leadership culture, it is not unusual when there is a surplus of qualified leadership candidates for an open position.
Here are five keys to creating a leadership culture.
Define it – Does your organization have an agreed upon definition of leadership? If not, that’s the starting point.
Train it – Having a definition is critical but insufficient alone. Can your leaders deliver on your definition? Some can, I’m sure, but training is probably required – at least for emerging leaders. Leadership skills are not innate.
Practice it – Do you give emerging leaders the opportunity to lead? Most of what leaders learn about leadership they learn from leading. Give them the chance to practice by actually letting them lead.
Measure it – This can take many forms – Performance reviews; 360 feedback; “Readiness for Next Opportunity.” Then there’s always the “9 Box” popularized by G.E. which evaluates leaders on two dimensions – performance and alignment with organizational values. You can even measure participation in leadership training.
Model it – If your existing leaders are not showing people what great leadership looks like in your organization; if they aren’t working diligently to demonstrate the attributes outlined in your definition of leadership, none of the previous ideas will have much impact.
How deep is your leadership bench?
Mark Miller is the best-selling author of 6 books, an in-demand speaker and an executive at Chick-fil-A. His latest book, Leaders Made Here, describes how to nurture leaders throughout the organization, from the front lines to the executive ranks and outlines a clear and replicable approach to creating the leadership bench every organization needs.
Buy a copy of Leaders Made Here and use the following link for a free copy to give someone else.
[Tweet “”Nothing improves without measurement. Leadership is no exception.” #LeadersMadeHere “]
[Tweet “”Leaders must model the attitude, commitment, and leadership behaviors they are advocating for others.” –@LeadersServe #LeadersMadeHere”]

 
 
 

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All Leadership Personal Effectiveness

Activity is not the Same as Accomplishment

Every week I am reminded of how leaders get bogged down in busyness and how much it affects business. In today’s guest post my friend Mark Miller encourages us not to confuse activity and accomplishment. See if you can relate …
 
Are you busy? Me too. Unfortunately, activity is not the same as accomplishment, For some reason, I seem to forget this over and over again. I think busyness may be one of the most insidious and disruptive things leaders must guard against. Why is activity so dangerous? Here are a few reasons.
Activity can be addictive – Like other addictions, the previous level required to get a high no longer creates the needed buzz. So, we up the dose. What used to be exciting must be replaced by something even more exciting, demanding, or challenging. If we’re not extremely careful, activity will beget activity… and we’ll love it!
Activity can be distracting – If we’re busy, we may not be aware of more pressing issues and challenges. The harder we work on the wrong things, the greater the danger. We’ve all heard about the airliner that crashed while the crew was focused on a 10-cent light in the cockpit that was malfunctioning.
Activity can be counter-productive – I’ve written about this phenomena before in a post entitled, You Get No Credit for Doing the Wrong Things Well. The more diligent you are at the wrong activities, the further you are from your stated goals and objectives.
[Tweet “”You get no credit for doing wrong things well.” via @leadersserve #Leadership”]
Activity can cloud our judgment – If we’re busy doing, there’s a fair chance we’ll be too busy to think. Or, as is my case more than I want to admit, I do think but not deeply. I still believe a leader is paid, in large part, for their thinking. For me, my best thinking requires time and focus. Activity can be the thief in the night. We never really know what happened to our time to think – it’s just gone.
Activity can mask pain… for a while – Activity can serve as a painkiller for some leaders. The thinking goes something like this: If I stay busy on random things, or even good things, I can avoid the painful thing that screams for my leadership attention. This approach is like most pain medication – it ultimately wears off.
Activity can create a false sense of accomplishment – This is what trips me up all the time. I can assume I’m doing my job well because I’m exhausted! I can rationalize the tasks undone by counting all the activities I’ve checked off my To-Do list. The problem with this thinking is we only get credit when we invest our time on the right activities.
I think leaders have to be very careful not to get confused regarding what success looks like. Success is not a full calendar – our goal should be the productive use of our time to enable others to grow and accomplish predetermined outcomes. Non-strategic activity wars against our success.
[Tweet “”Busyness is the enemy of effectiveness.” #Leadership”]

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All Leadership Personal Effectiveness

I Think I Know Your Problem…

This week’s Friday post comes from Mark Miller. His practical post surfaces and solves the greatest problem most of us have. See if you can relate.
 

I Think I Know Your Problem…

What do you struggle with as a leader? Based on countless conversations with leaders, I think I know. I didn’t have language to capture all these conversations until recently. Here’s what I think… the number one issue facing many leaders is forgetfulness.
Now, this is an easy topic for me to relate to… I’m at the point in life I can hide my own Easter eggs. However, forgetfulness in a leadership context is no trivial matter. It can have catastrophic effects.
Let me explain my moment of clarity on this topic; it came just a couple of weeks ago while listening to Michael Gerber. If you don’t know about Michael, he is most famous for a book, actually a series of books, around the idea of the E Myth.
Michael was the first guy I know who popularized the powerful concept that leaders need to work “on” their business not “in” their business. He contends most business owners (and many leaders) are technicians who succumbed to an entrepreneurial seizure and started their own business.
He believes his “on the business” mindset is their way to escape the trap they are building for themselves. I think there is a lot of truth in Michael’s premise, but that’s not what caught my attention.
Michael was talking about why so many leaders get caught in the day-to-day tactical activities of their business. He contends they forgot what they wanted to build from the outset. He went on to say, a leader is someone who can remember what they set out to create.
Really? Could that be true? Let’s try to test his theory:
Do you know any leader who set out to build a team, a department, or an organization that when fully orbed would suck the life out of them? I don’t. Yet, that’s what so many leaders are actually doing. I guess they forgot the original vision!
Many leaders are creating a structure and a system in which they are indispensible to day-to-day operations. When leaders get trapped in the heads down activities of the daily grind, they forfeit the opportunity to build something bigger than themselves.
If leaders don’t invest time to work “on” their team, department or organization, they will become blinded to the truth they are not creating what they set out to build: an organization with ever-growing capacity for influence, opportunity and income.
The prescription I have shared with leaders to escape this trap is simple and yet, for many it is so painful it is just out of their grasp…
Invest time outside the four walls of your organization thinking, planning and working to build what you’ve always dreamed of creating.
[Tweet “”Invest time outside the four walls of your organization thinking, planning and creating.””]
Unfortunately, only time on task can bring the future into reality. Until then, you will be a prisoner of your current situation. All you need is some time to begin planning your escape. Don’t let the tyranny of today steal your future.
Start this week. Find 2 hours to work “on” your organization.
Your First Assignment: Working away from your office, write out in great detail what it is you are trying to build. And then, tape your description to your bathroom mirror for 90 days. Or, put it anywhere else you would like so it can serve as a constant reminder. To succeed as a leader, you must be able to remember what you are trying to build.
If you need any inspiration regarding what type organization you may want to build, that’s the topic of my book, Chess Not Checkers.
 

Categories
Leadership

Do You Need More Capacity?

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Over the course of the coming year you will notice several different forms of content on my site. Friday will be a day I focus on building high performance teams and organizations.Today, my friend Mark Miller has written the following guest post as an answer to the difference between the two. His post helps me as I wrestle with the need for increased capacity, which I wrote about here yesterday. Mark has been leading teams for decades and he has written widely on the subject. His book, The Secret of Teams is a must read if you are charged with leading a group.

TODAY’S CHALLENGE: TEAM VS. ORGANIZATION?

Today’s question comes from a leader who is familiar with some of my past work, specifically, The Secret of Teams and Chess Not Checkers. If you are not, here’s a really quick overview: one is about the power of teams and the other is about the largely untapped potential resident in our organizations at large. The question from this leader: “How are the two ideas connected?”

For many years, I had not even considered the connection. My initial efforts were to help leaders who were struggling with capacity issues. Let me explain.

Let’s establish an imaginary scale to represent an individual leader’s capacity.  To make the math easy, let’s set that at 100 units of leadership or 100 ul.
As long as the business or organization requires less than 100 ul, everything is great. Then one day, due to increasing complexity, volume, or customer demands, the business need for leadership surpasses the capacity of the individual leader. The new level required is now 120 ul.
Many of you have been here. Your first reaction may have been to work harder. That may increase your leadership capacity to 110 or 115, but your health, your family, and your quality of life begin to suffer – and you realize it is still not enough.
Ultimately, if you don’t address this leadership capacity shortfall, you will become the lid on your organization. That’s when many leaders decide a leadership team would be helpful. And if built and led well, it will! That’s the topic of The Secret of Teams.
With a High Performance Team, your collective leadership capacity may reach 500 ul. At this point life is good… for a while. Then, for any number of reasons – success, unexpected hardship, or just sheer complexity, the demands of your business increase again beyond the capacity of you and your leadership team. Let’s say the new level of demand is 1000 ul. What should a leader do?
My recommendation is to change the game. Rather than continuing to focus on leadership capacity alone, begin to pursue organizational capacity as well. This will require a transformation in thinking and action. This new strategy, to build and sustain a High Performance Organization, becomes the on-going job description of your leadership team. This is the journey I outline in Chess Not Checkers.
So, to my friend who started this post with a question, High Performance Teams create the capacity needed to build a High Performance Organization.tweet_bird Keep in mind, neither are the end goal – both are strategies to ensure sustained superior performance.
Enjoy the journey!
Mark
Integreat Shield
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