If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
From the Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
How to achieve success in life and in your professional life, how to grow, be happy and live longer
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
New to the boss's seat: The 7 elements of successful leadership transition
1. Explore expectations offensively
"Just go ahead. I have complete faith in you." Behind this sentence are a number of unspoken expectations. Ignoring them can jeopardize your new position because they are the benchmark by which you will be measured. For this reason, it is important to follow a few simple steps:
Actively ask about expectations: ask your line managers, your colleagues, your staff
Scrutinize expectations closely and differentiate between them, as they are often contradictory: fact-based suggestions vs. emotional wishes.
Use discussions and meetings to work out specific and joint tasks. Important: not every expectation is a task! And: you can never meet every expectation.
2. Develop key relationships
To secure power and influence within a company, it is important to develop good relationships with those people who have influence and/or a right of veto on important decisions. These are primarily..
Your disappointed competitor: never ignore him or her, but show understanding and find a basis on which you can work constructively together.
Your predecessor: never voice criticism of his or her work - that's a boomerang!
Your staff: don't try and show off everything you know, and don't try and play the "savior".
Your colleagues: respect their performance and get them involved in your plans as early as possible.
Make time to network!! Concentrating exclusively on the job and not actively relating to your new 'stakeholders' is a big mistake. The result is resistance and reservation towards the ideas of the new manager.
3. Situation analysis
Five perspectives have proven useful in the analysis of the initial situation:
Perspective 1:
The rules and self-perceptions that guide people
The social architecture of the organization
Rules, things that are taken for granted and stories
Perspective 2: The issues that occupy the organization
Resolvable and unresolvable issues
Urgent and less urgent issues
Long--term issues
Perspective 3: The facts that determine actions
Results
Strategies
Costs
Breakdowns/complaints
Perspective 4: The innovation potential available
The willingness to change
The positive climate for change
Perspective 5: The resources one can build on
The strengths of the employees and the organization
4. Goals
The staff are waiting for a plan that will take the company forward and fill them with pride.
The staff are the manager's "customers", so you should create a customer-oriented set of goals for them. It is important in this respect to distinguish between stability goals and change goals (e.g. for creating a positive climate of change). The difference between task-based goals (e.g.: increased sales, higher earnings or improved quality), team-based goals and personal goals is also extremely important.
You should paint a picture of the future, i.e have a vision. Visions not only point the way forward, but also create a momentum of their own by offering the staff something they can identify with.
Relatively surefire ways of getting into difficulties include:
Pouncing on problems that need to be solved urgently
Demanding rapid change by pointing out problems
Launching yourself into the job before you have formed a picture of the overall situation
5. Climate of change
There are three things that are critical for creating a positive climate of change:
Asking appreciative questions
Reflexive questions: Questions which are asked not just to gather information, but to create new information
Resourceful questions: Ask about problems in the past which have been solved, etc.
Questions that point to the future
Dealing positively with skepticism
This can make many managers feel threatened, but skepticism shows that employees are interested in the subject. Otherwise they wouldn't get involved at all.
Important: Voiced skepticism is not the same as unvoiced skepticism!
Desire for something new
6. Initiation of change
Something is needed to start the ball rolling (e.g. a conference)
You also have to appeal to the staff on an emotional level.
The launch event needs a key theme that fits the strategy.
The launch must immediately be followed by specific action. Otherwise it will fizzle out into nothing.
The strategy of "small wins and large gains" is about finding initial steps that produce immediate success and therefore set important changes in motion. They are a way of creating trust in the change process relatively quickly.
The right timing is particularly critical. Change activities should not be started until the staff are agreed upon the imminent changes, the process of developing important key relationships has at least been started and a clear plan / a specific objective has been set for the initial steps. Experience indicates this will take around 2-4 months.
7. Symbols and rituals
Symbolic management is the skilful and systematic combination of symbols and rituals to create a persuasive message.
The symbolic value of actions is particularly high at the start of a new job, when the employees still know little about the values and the self-perception of the new manager.
Once you have shown respect for the symbols and rituals of your predecessor, it is about making it clear that "I'm here now".
Often, it's not even a matter of creating new symbols and rituals, but just about questioning one's own habits.
Symbols and rituals are only effective if they are embedded in the overall context i.e. if all participants are prepared to give meaning to the ritual.
"Just go ahead. I have complete faith in you." Behind this sentence are a number of unspoken expectations. Ignoring them can jeopardize your new position because they are the benchmark by which you will be measured. For this reason, it is important to follow a few simple steps:
Actively ask about expectations: ask your line managers, your colleagues, your staff
Scrutinize expectations closely and differentiate between them, as they are often contradictory: fact-based suggestions vs. emotional wishes.
Use discussions and meetings to work out specific and joint tasks. Important: not every expectation is a task! And: you can never meet every expectation.
2. Develop key relationships
To secure power and influence within a company, it is important to develop good relationships with those people who have influence and/or a right of veto on important decisions. These are primarily..
Your disappointed competitor: never ignore him or her, but show understanding and find a basis on which you can work constructively together.
Your predecessor: never voice criticism of his or her work - that's a boomerang!
Your staff: don't try and show off everything you know, and don't try and play the "savior".
Your colleagues: respect their performance and get them involved in your plans as early as possible.
Make time to network!! Concentrating exclusively on the job and not actively relating to your new 'stakeholders' is a big mistake. The result is resistance and reservation towards the ideas of the new manager.
3. Situation analysis
Five perspectives have proven useful in the analysis of the initial situation:
Perspective 1:
The rules and self-perceptions that guide people
The social architecture of the organization
Rules, things that are taken for granted and stories
Perspective 2: The issues that occupy the organization
Resolvable and unresolvable issues
Urgent and less urgent issues
Long--term issues
Perspective 3: The facts that determine actions
Results
Strategies
Costs
Breakdowns/complaints
Perspective 4: The innovation potential available
The willingness to change
The positive climate for change
Perspective 5: The resources one can build on
The strengths of the employees and the organization
4. Goals
The staff are waiting for a plan that will take the company forward and fill them with pride.
The staff are the manager's "customers", so you should create a customer-oriented set of goals for them. It is important in this respect to distinguish between stability goals and change goals (e.g. for creating a positive climate of change). The difference between task-based goals (e.g.: increased sales, higher earnings or improved quality), team-based goals and personal goals is also extremely important.
You should paint a picture of the future, i.e have a vision. Visions not only point the way forward, but also create a momentum of their own by offering the staff something they can identify with.
Relatively surefire ways of getting into difficulties include:
Pouncing on problems that need to be solved urgently
Demanding rapid change by pointing out problems
Launching yourself into the job before you have formed a picture of the overall situation
5. Climate of change
There are three things that are critical for creating a positive climate of change:
Asking appreciative questions
Reflexive questions: Questions which are asked not just to gather information, but to create new information
Resourceful questions: Ask about problems in the past which have been solved, etc.
Questions that point to the future
Dealing positively with skepticism
This can make many managers feel threatened, but skepticism shows that employees are interested in the subject. Otherwise they wouldn't get involved at all.
Important: Voiced skepticism is not the same as unvoiced skepticism!
Desire for something new
6. Initiation of change
Something is needed to start the ball rolling (e.g. a conference)
You also have to appeal to the staff on an emotional level.
The launch event needs a key theme that fits the strategy.
The launch must immediately be followed by specific action. Otherwise it will fizzle out into nothing.
The strategy of "small wins and large gains" is about finding initial steps that produce immediate success and therefore set important changes in motion. They are a way of creating trust in the change process relatively quickly.
The right timing is particularly critical. Change activities should not be started until the staff are agreed upon the imminent changes, the process of developing important key relationships has at least been started and a clear plan / a specific objective has been set for the initial steps. Experience indicates this will take around 2-4 months.
7. Symbols and rituals
Symbolic management is the skilful and systematic combination of symbols and rituals to create a persuasive message.
The symbolic value of actions is particularly high at the start of a new job, when the employees still know little about the values and the self-perception of the new manager.
Once you have shown respect for the symbols and rituals of your predecessor, it is about making it clear that "I'm here now".
Often, it's not even a matter of creating new symbols and rituals, but just about questioning one's own habits.
Symbols and rituals are only effective if they are embedded in the overall context i.e. if all participants are prepared to give meaning to the ritual.
CONFLICT RESOLUTION STRATEGIES
Gerhard Schwarz identifies six fundamentally different strategies for dealing with conflict. We all have these six strategies in our personal repertoire, although the extent to which we use them varies greatly from individual to individual.
1. Escape
Man is good at running away – and has been since the earliest days of mankind. Our very first strategy is to avoid conflict; anyone who spontaneously reacts differently to conflict is in a minority! In a professional context, there are various ways of adopting the escape strategy: by ignoring conflict, actively denying it, declaring it irrelevant, deliberately not dealing with it, or by labeling others who openly refer to the conflict as "conflictive".
2. Destruction
According to Schwarz, this strategy was originally Plan B for when escape was not possible. In the early years of mankind, a fight was usually to the bitter end with only one of the combatants surviving. In a professional context too, we will frequently witness conflict that ends in a "it's him/her or me" ultimatum (and once it's over, one or sometimes even both of the conflicting parties looks for "an interesting new challenge" within or outside the organization).
3. Submission
The battle can also end without bloodshed if the winner accepts his opponent's submission as victory. Without submission, long-term cooperation - and thus the development of large organizations - would be inconceivable and so in everyday situations it usually occurs in undramatic forms: falling into line with the opponent's viewpoint and cooperating despite one's own objections come under the heading of this conflict strategy.
4. Delegation
The two parties agree to put their disagreement to a third party for resolution, in other words to delegate the decision. This third party may be a decision-maker (line manager, judge) or a mediator, or it may even be a set of rules or a law etc. The two partners agree not to pursue the conflict by testing their strength against one another. They allow a third party to make the decision for them, and undertake to abide by the decision even if they do not agree with it.
5. Compromise
This is the typical negotiating strategy. Both parties know that they will not get 100 per cent of what they want, and therefore seek to achieve the greatest possible win relative to the win of the other party. A compromise may be "50:50" but can also be "70:30", and the views of the two parties on this point may differ widely. Some compromises are only achieved through the attrition of the tolerance of the other party to the conflict, and the "rottenness" of these compromises then puts their durability in question.
6. "Consensus"
Schwarz's definition of "consensus" is a long way from the common usage of the word. Whilst the term is usually used to describe a solution which has the agreement of all parties, Schwarz uses the same word to describe a new, surprising resolution to the conflict which completely satisfies the interests of all parties. This kind of solution generally only arises during lengthy negotiations where the parties are being extremely open – because only by being very open about one's own interests is it generally possible to create a trusting atmosphere. As desirable as this "consensus" might appear, in some situations it will be objectively impossible to find such a solution, even with the best will of those involved.
Your personal repertoire:
The first two conflict strategies - flight and fight – are known as the "primary strategies". It is assumed that everyone uses both these primary strategies to some degree, and the extent to which they are used will not change greatly over the course of a person's lifetime. The other conflict strategies, on the other hand, will be greatly influenced over a person's lifetime by the experience he or she has of them. For example, in one work context compromise might be the predominant conflict strategy but if a person moves out of this environment to another job, if may be that he or she has to learn to rely more on one of the other strategies, such as delegation.
1. Escape
Man is good at running away – and has been since the earliest days of mankind. Our very first strategy is to avoid conflict; anyone who spontaneously reacts differently to conflict is in a minority! In a professional context, there are various ways of adopting the escape strategy: by ignoring conflict, actively denying it, declaring it irrelevant, deliberately not dealing with it, or by labeling others who openly refer to the conflict as "conflictive".
2. Destruction
According to Schwarz, this strategy was originally Plan B for when escape was not possible. In the early years of mankind, a fight was usually to the bitter end with only one of the combatants surviving. In a professional context too, we will frequently witness conflict that ends in a "it's him/her or me" ultimatum (and once it's over, one or sometimes even both of the conflicting parties looks for "an interesting new challenge" within or outside the organization).
3. Submission
The battle can also end without bloodshed if the winner accepts his opponent's submission as victory. Without submission, long-term cooperation - and thus the development of large organizations - would be inconceivable and so in everyday situations it usually occurs in undramatic forms: falling into line with the opponent's viewpoint and cooperating despite one's own objections come under the heading of this conflict strategy.
4. Delegation
The two parties agree to put their disagreement to a third party for resolution, in other words to delegate the decision. This third party may be a decision-maker (line manager, judge) or a mediator, or it may even be a set of rules or a law etc. The two partners agree not to pursue the conflict by testing their strength against one another. They allow a third party to make the decision for them, and undertake to abide by the decision even if they do not agree with it.
5. Compromise
This is the typical negotiating strategy. Both parties know that they will not get 100 per cent of what they want, and therefore seek to achieve the greatest possible win relative to the win of the other party. A compromise may be "50:50" but can also be "70:30", and the views of the two parties on this point may differ widely. Some compromises are only achieved through the attrition of the tolerance of the other party to the conflict, and the "rottenness" of these compromises then puts their durability in question.
6. "Consensus"
Schwarz's definition of "consensus" is a long way from the common usage of the word. Whilst the term is usually used to describe a solution which has the agreement of all parties, Schwarz uses the same word to describe a new, surprising resolution to the conflict which completely satisfies the interests of all parties. This kind of solution generally only arises during lengthy negotiations where the parties are being extremely open – because only by being very open about one's own interests is it generally possible to create a trusting atmosphere. As desirable as this "consensus" might appear, in some situations it will be objectively impossible to find such a solution, even with the best will of those involved.
Your personal repertoire:
The first two conflict strategies - flight and fight – are known as the "primary strategies". It is assumed that everyone uses both these primary strategies to some degree, and the extent to which they are used will not change greatly over the course of a person's lifetime. The other conflict strategies, on the other hand, will be greatly influenced over a person's lifetime by the experience he or she has of them. For example, in one work context compromise might be the predominant conflict strategy but if a person moves out of this environment to another job, if may be that he or she has to learn to rely more on one of the other strategies, such as delegation.
Quotes on development
If you want one year of prosperity, grow seeds.
If you want ten years of prosperity, grow trees.
If you want hundred years of prosperity, grow people.
If you want ten years of prosperity, grow trees.
If you want hundred years of prosperity, grow people.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Respect, support and challenge your partners and suppliers
Humans often look to the animal world for inspiration. Especially exemplary are ants, which organize themselves brilliantly and seemingly never run out of team spirit. This successful species enters into a partnership with other organisms so that both sides profit. For example, ants raise aphids and actively protect them from enemies. In return, the aphids give the ants a sweet nectar. To linger in the ant world: If the aphids were not protected and nurtured, there would be no nectar. Even in an ant colony, the customer-supplier principle applies: all ants have a fixed task, with which they support other ants with different functions. This principle makes the entire colony successful. Now let’s transfer this successful principle to our workplace. We too must build and nurture effective partnerships in order to be successful. For example, Suppliers provide on time delivery of parts, Stamping produces parts for Assembly, Assembly provides the product needed at the plants, etc. In Lean, these partnerships are characterized by mutual respect and support. One-sided, exploitive relationships usually don’t last long. They end up demoralizing one or both sides, which has a negative impact on teamwork, which in turn adversely affects performance and quality.
Are you ensuring parts are deliver on time to your customers (other OU, other plants)?
Are you a team player?
Are you following your standard work? (if not, imagine an ant going against the flow of all other ants)
Are you ensuring parts are deliver on time to your customers (other OU, other plants)?
Are you a team player?
Are you following your standard work? (if not, imagine an ant going against the flow of all other ants)
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