Leadership: It Takes Practice, But Learning to Say “Not Now” is Critical to Your Success – Part III
The past two editions of the Angle have reminded chief executives that saying ‘not now’ is important for themselves and for the organization. To wrap up the series, here are tips that recap what we’ve said.
· Have a strategic plan and have the items on the plan in priority order.
· Know approximately how many hours over what amount of time (days, weeks, months or years) it will take to accomplish each initiative.
· Keep yourself focused on the highest priorities.
· Keep your board focused on the highest priorities.
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It Takes Practice, But Learning to Say “Not Now” is Critcal to Your Success — Part II
As we pointed out a couple weeks ago in the Angle, “Not now” is a much better message for a chief executive to give themselves and their boards than is ‘no.’ This is especially the case when the message is “Not now because we have higher priorities. And, chief executives, to make sure you’re accomplishing all you and the board wants you to, remember:
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Leadership: It Takes Practice, But Learning to Say “Not Now” is Critical to Your Success – Part I
The most common concern expressed by chief executives at organizations with a small number of staff is, “I just don’t have time to do it all!” And yet they feel that to say ‘no’ to the board of directors is a nail in the coffin of their careers. So they work 80 hours each week and still can’t satisfy a board that thinks the executive can somehow manufacture time.
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Focus on People and Leadership: Effective Training is the Responsibility of the Chief Executive
An executive was recently lamenting the time and money his company had spent during the past year for employee training. He asserted that the solution could be in web-based training rather than bringing someone into the business. I listened for several minutes and then he sighed and said to me: “I know your company does a lot of training as well as consulting, so I suppose you think we ought to keep on doing what we’re doing.” I replied: “Frankly, no. You will be wasting time and money no matter what format you choose for training.”
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Focus on Process: The Allegory of the Ham
When is the last time you questioned how or why you do something in a particular way? Is it still necessary to follow a 16-step process in order to get a package mailed when you can now buy one-price boxes from the post office? Does it make sense to file documents by date when eventually you’re going to pull them all back together and combine data into a single summary report?
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Focus on Strategy: What Does Your Future Look Like?
In today’s economy, that can be a difficult question to answer. Funds are tight, people are nervous and things are moving along, but slowly. However, in order to rise out of the clutter of the great recession, organizations must have a vision for the future.
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Focus on Process: Using the “5 Whys” to Get to the Root of the Problem
Sometimes we can seem to keep making the same mistakes over and over again even when tweaks and changes are made to processes. When this happens, it can mean we are not getting to the root cause of the problem.
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Focus on People: Get Creative About Motivation
Over the past three years, there is not an organization that hasn’t made some painful cost-cutting changes in salaries, bonuses, retirement benefits, health insurance benefits, or staff size. And, even if the economists are right and we are pulling out of the Great Recession, employers know all too well that the “happy days” are not yet here again. In the meantime, finding ways to say “thank you” to employees has to remain a high priority.
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Focus on People: ROI for Professional Training
Among the many “soft” descriptions of the benefits of training is the nebulous phrase: “greater employee satisfaction.” That’s not enough. A professional training program is only successful when it meets two critical prerequisites: 1) training must have a significant return on investment (ROI); and 2) top leadership must be committed to training, regardless of who in the organization is being trained.
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