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Advices for executives

Mar22
2012 Leave a Comment Written by hotrao

Aimee Groth and Kim Bhasin at Business Insider wrote a good article on the best advices received by 22 executives.

Here are my favorites and why:

  • Gene Ross, the man who recruited Lundgren (CEO at Macy’s) at Bullock, told him: ”You’re not going to do this forever. There’s a finite amount of time you’re going to be doing this. Do this really, really well. And if you do this really, really well, everybody will see that, and they’ll move you onto the next thing. And you do that well, and then you’ll move.” From a 2009 interview with The New York Times“. I like, because gives the sense of urgency and the fact that you should strive to do your best within your current role 
  • Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and CEO, Goldman Sachs, boss at Goldman during the 1980s told him: ”First, it’s good to solicit your people’s opinions before you give them yours. And second, your people will be very influenced by how you carry yourself under stress.” From a 2009 interview with CNNMoney. Is a valuable one because stress management in an executive counts the same as being able to reach goals.
  • Mickey Drexler, CEO of Gap at the time, told Maureen Chiquet, Global CEO, Chanel: “I’m going to give you some important advice. You’re a terrific merchant. But you’ve gotta learn to listen!” From a 2008 blog post at Harvard Business Review. Because listening is different from hearing and getting advices passes from here.
  • Berkshire Hathaway director Thomas Murphy told to Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO, Berkshire Hathaway,  ”Never forget Warren, you can tell a guy to go to hell tomorrow — you don’t give up the right. So just keep your mouth shut today, and see if you feel the same way tomorrow.“ From a 2010 interview with Yahoo!. Because instinct not always pays.
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Assessing change management acceptance

Mar18
2012 Leave a Comment Written by hotrao

We talked often on change management, but after having started the change, which is the best way to assess the level of acceptance and internalization of the new “behavior” in the different target groups?

Defining acceptance level and its importance

First of all we need to focus on assuming a common definition for “acceptance level”: my proposal goes to interpret it as the attitude and the ability of professionals to adapt to new modes of operation. Simple and clean.

The importance of an accurate measurement of the degree of acceptance and internalization of the change is necessary in any change project, and becomes more important toward big changes.

And the acceptance becomes even more important if changes impact not only the organization, but also the behavior of the person: in this case the effort required for the employees in terms of adaptation to new conditions is therefore rather high than the normal and often justifies even more attention in change management.

As many times mentioned, change adoption follows a curve (representing the evolution of ”typical” individuals reactions toward a change event.) that starts from a situation of equilibrium, goes through enthusiasm, uncertainty, resistance, adaption and a new situation of “higher” equilibrium obtained through the understanding and “adoption” of change impacts.

The methodology

Assessing the level of acceptance passes through a more than normal approach:

  • gather the data
  • analyze them
  • define the actions needed.

To gather the data, the best way is to have a honest discussion within a meeting (e.g. training,…) because in this situations people tend to avoid becoming polemic (they are exposed in person) and the meeting itself can give a first hand impression of the group feeling.

Meetings should be  organized for homogeneous groups of people and no more than 10-15 people per each one, to avoid a “mass effect” that avoids people sharing their opinions or  reinforces the overall sentiment.

What you should focus to observe:

  • the way the people involved are placed against the change, such as very negative reactions, in obvious discomfort or confusion.
  • the way people react to change (curiosity, adversity, pro activeness,…)
  • level of understanding of change.

Once this “first hand” data is gathered, is also possible to assess in depth after some time with a questionnaire, the use of which cannot substitute the meeting. The reason for this is quite simple and deals, again, with the knowledge of change and of its impacts: the more people know about what is happening, the more they will feel to be involved and will to contribute; a questionnaire without “personal” interaction, make people feel the distance toward leadership and make them perceive a sense of abandonment.

After all data are gathered, they should be analyzed to understand:

  • the overall sentiment toward change
  • the level of acceptance of change

and to determine specific actions to reinforce or correct the overall path.

 

Posted in behaviour, communication, Other - Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Become a great leader

Mar17
2012 Leave a Comment Written by hotrao

David Witt at Blanchard leader chat posted an article about Jim Collins new book “from good to great”.

David suggests 3 ways to start building you leadership style. Following is my comment:

  • Help your team discover its larger purpose: True. Keeping people focused on something bigger avoid the normal shift toward self centering.
  • Be careful with rewards and recognition: I agree is fundamental to take care of achieving a good balance between team and individual rewarding. I also add that if point can be tricky, the most difficult part to reinforce your leadership is to deal with failures: in this case, defend your group toward externals and discuss internally in an honest way of what has gone wrong
  • Keep an eye on your personal behavior: as everything dealing with leadership, you are a role model. Be sure not to play a character, and be consistent with your actions.

This post as a comment also here.

 

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Being busy

Mar12
2012 Leave a Comment Written by hotrao

Denise Landers at key organization has wrote an article on the always on approach.

What Denise writes is that in general terms working hard and being “always on” can bring to more problems than other.

Just to be clear, we are not talking of temporary peaks, but of sustained periods over time.

I agree on the points she raises. I would have liked to leave a message there to reply but wasn’t able to do so :-) , so I report my comment here:

Being always on is wrong since sooner or later brings you to an unsustainable level of stress and avoid you to recharge to be work effective.

Unfortunately most of the times happen to be too much involved in this attitude you do not realize that you’re going beyond the limit.

And being part of a globalized environment doesn’t help too much in taking your time, especially if you are working in a multinational corporation.

Some quick tips from myself:

  • use your working time: despite the requests, try to avoid the “follow the sun” approach. you have your day that ends up sometime, no need to accept calls after it ended just because someone is waking up on the other part of the world
  • avoid reading emails after you quit working (and yes this includes also peeking just to see that last update :-) )
  • if you’re off, put an out of office to remind that you will be available just in case of urgency: won’t scare all the people but at least will avoid the most to call you
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Defining HR management

Mar11
2012 Leave a Comment Written by hotrao

Introduction

HR management is often seen as a fuzzy word with different things behind, especially if you are talking with people from other areas.

If we remain on the obvious level of defining HR Management as dealing with HR everything goes well, but what’s behind?

Defining the objectives

First of all we will try to define the main objectives of HR management.

The main goals of Human Resource Management are to:

  • Provide leadership and assistance in handling business issues related to people and more in general to the workforce, because in an increasingly competitive world the workforce is bigger in terms of players and can include temporaries, externals, internships,…
  • Support management in becoming more efficient in handling issues related to people and in leveraging the “people” assets of the organization
  • Support management through the development of competitive strategies and tactics that enhance individual and organizational effectiveness.
  • Support management in achieving a balance between satisfied employees and reasonable costs

All in all, seen like this, HR function is more a strategic partner then ever more then being an administrative counterpart. This because is a fundamental tool to enable:

  • internal effectiveness
  • change management
  • sense of belonging
  • clear communication (in some cases)
and to drive business results.

Defining functions

So in order to achieve the objectives stated before, let’s try to analyze the specific functions performed by HR:

  • Increasing employee productivity:
    • Improving performance
    • finding and hiring the right people with the right skills
    • reducing risky areas (absenteeism, turnover,…) or managing them.
  • Re-balance the quality of working life:
    • Increasing job satisfaction
    • Job enlargement
    • health management (reducing stress, accidents and illnesses).
  • Promoting company image
  • Ensuring legal and regulatory compliance: Reducing or eliminating the costs of fines, reducing or eliminating litigation or legal action
  • Manage payroll and social contributions timely and accurately

 

Posted in Other - Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Complaints a good or bad sign?

Mar04
2012 1 Comment Written by hotrao

As a first approach receiving a complaint by a customer or a colleague is a bad thing, because is the sign that something happened between what you provide/behave and what he expected.

But going a little bit in depth and trying to understand better, we can see the glass half-full by saying that a complaint is by some aspects a confirmation of the relationship between you and your customer or your colleague.

Let’s think on this for a moment: if you do not care of something you do not loose time giving bad feedback.

If this kind of feedback comes to you is one more chance to recover the relationship and try to revamp the perception of your service or behave.

So when happens, try to really understand the purpose of the complaint and don’t behave superficially or with angry: instead put yourself in the right mood for better understanding what went wrong and how you can revamp the relationship.

Posted in behaviour, communication, Other - Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Setting up a quick demand management process

Feb26
2012 Leave a Comment Written by hotrao

Demand management for wikipedia is “[...] In business, the term is used to describe the proactive management of work initiatives (demand) with business constraints (supply). [...]“, that means a complex process to evaluate the possible work request towards the available capacity.

This kind of approach is widely used in IT to prioritize projects, but, can be applied also in other contexts.

As in any other topics things can range from simple to very complex, either in term of tools or of process.

Today we will focus on a “quick and dirty” solution to gather data if you are starting from scratch.

First of all we will remain for a moment on the specific process that from a general point of view can be highlighted as follows:

  • Request definition:
    • This is the initiative form setup
    • is a critical point since the format of data, the quality and homogeneity of what is being requested are key inputs to establish a good process, limiting rework
    • At this point clear guidelines and a good form help in granting that this prerequisite is addressed the best way
    • It depends on the approach you’re setting, but in general terms is important to have similar requests coming from same area grouped into same “dossier”
  • Gather data and dispatch for verification:
    • Data should be gathered into a defined time frame having in mind that some of the request, being cross thorough organization, will need to be evaluated by more than one function
    • Timing is crucial, because in case you don’t process information fast, you risk to be collapsed by “all urgent” requests
  • Define solution and do estimates:
    • Requesting functions should give a first estimate of required resources which should be evaluated also at a central level
    • A business case should be attached to each request either by requesting function or by a central office to better understand the business impact, the economic profitability and the funding requests
  • Verification and approval
  • Planning

So what to request?

Here are the most common things you need to evaluate the project and some hints:

  • Short name and description: easy isn’t it :-)
  • Code: to be assigned by the governance office and is easier if has a “talking” code (i.e. MAN-INF-001 can represent a MANdatory INFrastuctural project coded as 001). The most you get to standardize the more will be easy to analyze
  • Proposed classification:
    • Classification of projects into different categories that really depend on the kind of demand you’re managing.
    • In IT a good classification can be:
      • mandatory: Projects needed to fulfill specific legal obligations or that are needed to fulfill the monitoring requirements
      • Business: projects that are identified in terms of returns: more revenues and/or lower costs
      • Risk Control: useful projects for the monitoring and management of risks
      • Structural projects
      • Other activities not required to rationalize why you can not make a business case justified by higher revenues or lower costs.
  • Requesting organization
  • Business sponsor if any
  • IT Area/s impacted
  • Start date planned
  • End date planned
  • Business case main points
  • Project advantages
  • Main impacts if project is delayed/not executed
  • Rating if project can be delayed, for example using a scale from 1 (highest) to 4 (bottom):
    • 1: absolutely not put off the project
    • 2: put off the project but with consequences
    • 3: put off the project but with consequences in terms of risks in the operation and
    • 4: put off the project with limited consequences
  • Rating in same scale above if project is not executed at all
  • Project dependencies


Posted in Economy, Other - Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Setting up a communication plan in IT – part 2

Feb20
2012 Leave a Comment Written by hotrao

In first article we focused on “principles” and characteristics a communication plan has to stick to in order to succeed in order to manage change in an IT department and more in general in a working environment.

Now we will focus on how to setup the plan.

Generally speaking plan should include:

  • to whom you’re going to address messages (i.e. the target/s)
  • what are you going to say (i.e. the messages/s)
  • through what media/event you are going to address them (i.e. the channel)

The target is the person (or more often the group) who is receiving the communication. As I said before, one of the biggest efforts is always to identify the target audience for the communication by defining homogeneous groups of people that will be affected by the content or implications of what we are going to communicate and same or different groups that need to be informed about what is changing.

Messages are what you’re going to say, and though they can have a common basis, they must be tailored for the different target groups.

But messages have also a customization throughout the life of change management:

  • first of all you should start by creating awareness, which has the objective of introduce the changes to come to specific audiences.  In this kind of message is critical to prepare target groups for future and so to clearly explain the purpose of the the change (i.e., prepare for what is going to change).  Specifically in IT, awareness should focus on the benefits to come and the sponsorship of leadership. The more you’re clear, the better you start.
  • then comes a “disclosure”, that means explaining in detail but in the simplest way the change that is coming. Message should be linked to previous “teaser” and must identify clearly the milestone/event to be the first step. In IT departments be sure to maintain a different level of detail consistent with the target you are addressing but always remember to have the big picture presented.
  • then, after having the target groups comfortable with what they are facing and what it represents for them, you should start focusing on selling the benefits deriving from change and detailed impacts
  • at the end of each successful milestone, you should address messages of achievement, in order to reinforce the change step by step.

The channel is the way you can address the message. The effectiveness changes a lot on the type of audience. Take your time to understand the best mix of events and remote messages. Take also in consideration the use of gadgets and old paper to reinforce the belonging to the change.

Posted in behaviour, communication, Other - Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Setting up a communication plan in IT – part 1

Feb18
2012 1 Comment Written by hotrao

Dealing with change implies an important role of communication.

This sentence is true in any case, but, if possible, is more true if we are talking of the IT context. This because, mainly of two points:

  • IT is something “under the line” and so in some cases is not well perceived
  • IT impacts with one change a big population each time
  • Generally speaking, communication resides somewhere else than in IT departments :-)

Why communicating is so crucial?

As we covered in the previous set of articles (starting here) Initially, when any change takes place, in people arise a concern deriving from loosing what is current and familiar and the threat of what is still not known.

And here comes the point of communicating the right things in an effective way and treating this not in a naive way, but with a planning behind aiming at pursuing specific targets in terms of  helping impacted groups accepting change and understand the purpose and benefits of new initiatives.

This is not a one shot approach in many cases, but goes through a tutoring and information starting well before change taking place and accompanying the path with the a relavant amount of information and feedback.

In general terms, purposes of a communication plan aimed at IT are not different from those of a communication plan aiming at a different organization:

  • Bring on board and commit people
  • Minimize the risk of non acceptance
  • Defy concerns through better knowledge of changes and of their impacts
  • Ensure that communication is in place and occurs on both parties (i.e. from management to employees and  vice versa)
  • Have consistent and tailored messages addressed through the IT organization and outside.

One of the most important things is to have a clear understanding on who is leading, because on this person/role/function fall many important duties that at the end are one of the critical factors to succeed in change.

Again those responsibilities that follow are something reusable also outside the bits and bites world.

Program owner will be the one in charge of:

  • Identify stakeholders and target groups
  • Updating and documenting the the plan
  • Setting up a communication strategy that address the right messages in the most effective way through the correct channel
  • Give the wire frame for setting up each channel in terms of frequency and targets
  • Get, interpret and manage feedback coming from events and channels
  • Maintain alignment of messages through every needed update

Next time we will focus on how to setup the plan.

Posted in behaviour, communication, Other - Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Change management done seriously – Part 4

Feb13
2012 Leave a Comment Written by hotrao

Welcome back on the last article of this series on change management (you can find previous articles: part 1, part 2, part 3).

So now that we determined that mental models tend to influence our aptitude to change, how to deal with them in an environment that, by itself, changes at speed of light?

The natural resistance to change, we find in all of us and our collaborators, is in extreme synthesis created by mental models: an elaborate scheme, we had proof it is a winning one and costed us trouble, is a schema we do not want to pass over and adopt a new one.

To change the patterns we should have a good reason we interiorize and “we buy”.

On an overall basis happens that we evaluate everything on a pro-cons (or prizes and penalties) basis and we behave on the basis of choices that are made by this comparison; everything goes more or less on a routinary way until a cap is breached; the passing of this cap, that is determined by “prizes”  or penalties winning over the others, determines a  new situation we should deal with.

So, at the end, we abandon a schema when the effort to keep it alive and reinforce it in the new environment is bigger than the effort to develop (or adapt to) a new one.

Of course, as said many times, this thinking is made without our interaction and determines a complex situation to deal with.

In the recent past, the change was seen as a permanent competitive advantage, and that was the “driver” of any project which aimed as some kind of improvement. Now paradigm has changed, because in a rapidly changing environment as the one we are dealing with, the management can hardly have the chance to go for a successful long-term planning. Rather it is in a position of having to move quickly, and proactively.

Very often companies are well aware of where to arrive, but, quite simply have difficulties in determining the plan to go there, since every time they try to fix a point context changes.

So what to do in order to introduce something new in our organization?

First you should be convinced in first person that the change you’re bringing in is positive; if you’re not you’ll be the first cause of failure of change.

Then you need to understand behaviors of people and what determines them.

Then you have to work on building a shared vision: if you are convinced and act as a “sponsor” of the change, you must work on informing (nothing is most feared than not having the correct information) and training on what is changing.

After, you have to reinforce the positive acceptance of new models, easing and rewarding the adoption of new mental models.

 

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