Planning – The Key To Execution

I know that I keep banging on about Organisational Alignment but it’s fundamental to the execution of any business strategy.  If management cannot articulate where the organisation is now, its destination and the journey, how can everyone in the company play their role in getting there?

I was talking to a past client recently who runs a business network and he was saying that his members are planned out and any mention of strategic planning provokes reactions such as “not again – been there, done that!” or at best stifled yawns.  I’m sure that their reaction is due to the following …

• They see strategic planning as looking at the future through rose coloured spectacles with little relevance to what they are focusing on tomorrow and next week
• They have got over the novelty of creating mission and vision statements that didn’t seem to achieve much
• They view planning and execution as two separate exercises
• They’ve spent far too long debating what they want to do and far too little time  debating how they are going to do it
• They have this view that strategic planning is something they do in the good times – in the tough times, the focus returns to the short term
• The environment in which they operate is changing so rapidly that any strategic plan is bound to lose its currency as the assumptions on which it was based no longer hold true
• They did their strategic plan “three years ago” and its not time for a review yet

Let’s take these points one by one.

Yes – one of the major mistakes made by strategic planners is that they do not graft the future onto the present.  The first priority of any strategic plan is to nut out how you can do better what you currently do.  Otherwise, you might not have a future.

Don’t worry about mission and vision statements – there are many more important things to consider.

The key to effective execution lies in the quality of the planning.  The seeds of success or failure in execution are sown the moment the planners sit down to plan.

Time spent assessing the implications of “this is what we are going to do” on every function within the organisation is frequently woefully inadequate.  As a consequence the barriers to execution continue to mount until the plan is quietly abandoned.

What is more important – having a plan for growth and good times or one for survival and tough times?  Does having a plan for survival make it any less of a plan?

If the assumptions on which your plan is based no longer hold true, then change the plan – don’t spit the dummy and abandon strategic planning.

If you had new tyres fitted to your car which the suppliers guaranteed for 60,000kms and you had two punctures after 20,000kms, would you drive around on flat tyres for another 40,000kms?

Organisational alignment is the first of the five requirements for effective execution.  Each one is dependent on the factors that precede it.  So what’s the first one – organisational alignment – dependent on?  The quality of strategic planning, of course.

So the logic runs like this.  You only get rewarded for what you do – your ability to execute.  The most fundamental requirement for successful execution is organisational alignment and that in turn is dependent on the quality of the planning.  Thus having a relevant up-dated and widely communicated strategic plan at all times is the basis of success.

The Value Of Values

In a recent blog, I questioned the value of Mission and Vision statements and suggested that, more often than not, they had little influence on an organisation’s performance, however that performance is measured.  I have much more time for Values statements but they have to meet certain criteria.

• They should be specific to your organisation
• The staff should have a role in their formulation
• They should guide decision-making and behaviour at an individual and corporate level
• They should be adhered to by everyone – no exceptions

My experience suggests that statements of Values “work” better with private companies than public ones, with SME’s rather than large corporations and where the values originate from the founder(s) of the company.  They tend not to work when they are the end result of a retreat attended by executive management as part of a campaign to bring about change in an organisation’s culture.

One of the best known statements of Values was the one enunciated by Thomas Watson Sr, the founder of IBM.  His Basic Beliefs were:

• Excellence in everything we do
• Superior customer service
• Respect for the individual

However, even these Basic Beliefs had a use-by date.  Their pervasiveness led to an internal focus on the Company to the extent that IBM management lost touch with the external realities of changing customer needs.  “Excellence in everything we do” led to an obsession with perfection and handicapped new product commercialisation; “superior customer service” came to mean nothing more than the servicing of IBM hardware and software at the client’s premises and “respect for the individual” meant that anyone could veto a course of action, no matter how well supported by others, simply because one didn’t agree with it.  It was left to Lou Gerstner, the saviour of IBM, to develop a new set of values that were ultimately to be condensed into just three words – Win, Execute, Team.

The most critical criterion of all is the last one – if you are going to develop a values statement everyone has to abide by it, particularly executive management.  If any member of the executive management engages in behaviour that is at odds with the set of Values – and is not brought to account – a credibility gap is created as it appears to the rest of the organisation that there is one set of rules for them and another for us.

I recall a friend of mine who worked with a large organisation that had recently developed a set of Values.  He only began to suspect that his days in the organisation were numbered when a colleague drew his attention to a job advert in the Financial Review which bore an uncanny resemblance to his own.  He confronted his boss who was relatively new to the company and with whom he had had some disagreements and his boss confirmed what my friend suspected.  He went to the HR Manager to voice his disgust at his boss’ actions and was met with indifference.  Both the HR Manager and his boss had failed to act in accordance with the company’s Values statement.

In such circumstances, it doesn’t take long before the value of Values is worthless.  I’m not suggesting for one moment that the organisation begins an inevitable descent into anarchy but what I am saying is that the positives that were to be generated by the Values statement will quickly turn to negatives.  As always, actions speak louder than words.

Teamwork – You Can’t Create It

I recently came across a letter in the “agony” column of Management Today, the Australian Institute of Management’s house magazine.  It read as follows:

“I recently went on a team building exercise with my work colleagues.  We went on endurance walks and played paintball combat.  Everyone else seemed to be having fun but I found it rather banal, especially the sermons about “all working together” given by the professional facilitators.  One of the aspects that I did enjoy was getting closer to my boss’s boss, and we developed a first name relationship.  This did not carry over once we returned to reality, however, and she left soon after, which seemed to make a mockery of everything that she endorsed on our week away.  Does my scepticism mean I am not a team player?”

For me, the key phrase in this letter is “once we returned to reality” because this type of exercise is totally irrelevant when it comes to building teamwork in a work environment.  It is also expensive and, in our opinion a complete waste of money.  If you want to reward your staff with a week away like this, that’s fine - but don’t expect them to behave any differently when they return.

Teamwork is a highly dependent variable.  It cannot be created - it can be developed and nurtured over time if you follow these steps:

• Step 1. The organisation needs to have clear goals and strategies to achieve them.
• Step 2. Not only does the organisation need to align its external and internal environments but its people need alignment too. Everyone needs to understand where the organisation is now; everyone needs to understand the destination and the journey and everyone needs to understand their role in getting there.
• Step 3. Divide your staff into teams - or workgroups as we prefer to call them - so that each workgroup numbers less than 10 people.  There must be a rational reason for each workgroup’s formation.  Perhaps the workgroup collectively looks after some process such as order fulfilment or product development.  Perhaps it looks after a group of customers or a geographical region.  The key criterion is that each workgroup must have the same customers, whether they are internal or external to the organisation.
• Step 4. The members of each workgroup must share a common purpose that is related to the purpose of the organisation as a whole.
• Step 5. Each workgroup must have a common goal that is related to the organisation’s goal.
• Step 6. Each workgroup must have a common structure and process.

In Towards Ten Thousand, we identify 25 characteristics of effective teamwork but Steps 4, 5 & 6 are the three basic requirements.  None of these bare the slightest relevance to endurance walks and paintball contests.  Indeed, one of the most important characteristics of teamwork in a corporate context is that teams collaborate with one another.  We are looking for “win win” situations not “I win, you lose”.

In short, the activities recounted in the above letter have no roll in building teamwork in a work environment.  Our answer to the reader’s question - “does my scepticism mean I am not a team player” is an emphatic no! Indeed, it seems to us that your reaction to the activities indicates that you are ahead of your colleagues in understanding what is really required to develop teams in the workplace.

Does Your Organisation Have A Vision? Does It Matter?

People’s views about Vision statements vary widely.  Those organisations that spend hours of executive time crafting them must clearly subscribe to the view expressed by one of spy novelist, John Le Carre’s characters who was wont to say - “visions are like the stars; we cannot reach them but we are inspired by their presence”.  In contrast, Eileen Shapiro in her excellent book - Fad Surfing in the Boardroom - defines a Vision statement as:

Vision

What Moses experienced when he wandered for too long in the desert; coordinated and persistent hallucinations characteristic of dementia and paranoid schizophrenia

My own view is closer to that of Eileen Shapiro’s.  What’s the purpose of them?  Presumably to inspire theiraudience with a call to action.  But who are they targeted at?  It can’t be the customer - most organisations do not publicise their Vision externally.  Perhaps it’s the shareholders - do they feel comforted by the Vision statement in the Annual Report? Do they think that a company with a Vision statement is better run than one without?  What about an organisation’s suppliers?  Do they have a preference for dealing with customers that have a Vision statement?  I doubt it.

No - my perception is that they are targeted at the organisation’s employees in a largely futile attempt to achieve greater employee engagement - to enhance the employee’s emotional connection to the organisation that results in greater discretionary effort.  The problem is that they are just words and on my hierarchy of influence, words are way behind “actions” as a way to positively influence attitudes and behaviour.  Indeed in a disturbing number of cases there is such a gulf between the lofty Vision and the reality that the Vision statement becomes a symptom of the credibility gap that separates executive management and the rest of an organisation’s employees.

My guess is that the only group who get excited by a Vision statement is the group of executives that created it in the first place - those that spent hours of debate over the nuances of each and every word.

I have a little more time for Mission statements providing they are simply a summary of the organisation’s activities, the markets they serve and the products and services they provide.  Yet all too often they meet Eileen Shapiro’s definition.

Mission statement

1. A short, specific statement of purpose, intended to serve as a loose musical score that motivates everyone to play the same tune without strict supervision;
2. Frequently, an assertion of underlying commitment to some amalgam of “total quality”, “low-cost producer”, “empowered workforce”, “excellence”, “continuous improvement” and other bizbuz shibboleths that, although written for a specific organisation, are equally applicable to an aircraft manufacturer, a software development firm, a community hospital, a department store chain, or a local dry cleaner;
3. In some companies, a talisman, hung in public spaces, to ward off evil spirits.

 Don’t you love it?

The only thing I really have time for are Values … but that’s the subject of another blog.

Whatever Happened To Leadership?

Despite the millions of words that have been written or spoken on the subject; despite the DVD’s, despite the training courses, I have yet to see any convincing evidence that the quality of organisational leadership has risen.  On the contrary, my anecdotal evidence suggests that it has in fact declined, the reason being that the current organisational environment is not conducive to the practice of leadership.  Let me explain.

Leadership is a selfless exercise and the corporate world has become less selfless.  Too many managers seem preoccupied with their own aggrandisement to devote much time to the interests and welfare of those who respond to them.  Yet there is ample empirical evidence to suggest that, in the words of Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner who wrote “The Leadership Challenge” that “successful leaders, by using their own power in the service of others rather than in the service of self, transform their constituents into leaders themselves - and end up with extraordinary results”.

Given that we all know what to do - and are very conscious of leadership shortcomings in others - why don’t many more managers practice the attributes of leadership?  There are three reasons, each of which reflects the realities of modern corporate life.

1. Short-term mindset

   Most organisations operate for the short-term - they want results NOW.  They pay too little heed to the human and long-term cost of their achievement.  As a consequence, their best people leave in search of an environment that values them and their contribution.

2. Short-term tenure

   People’s tenures in the same managerial positions or the same organisations are so much shorter these days.  Most are never around to reap what they sow.  Based on the superficial evidence of short-term results, they are either promoted or leave for another organisation.  Their promotion is self-confirmation that their management style is the right one and so they continue to be promoted until their past eventually catches up with them.

3. Time poor

   Lastly, people lack time, and leadership - good leadership - takes up time.  Faced with the choice between finishing a report or explaining to a staff member the rationale behind a change in corporate strategy, there are too few who would opt for the latter.  Submitting the report on time and there’s the prospect of a few more brownie points being chalked up against your name.  In contrast, spending time keeping your staff “in on things”, listening to their views, involving them in decision-making - this is an investment with no specific pay-back period.  It does not attract the attention of the boss and wins no kudos in the short-term.

Is your experience similar to mine? Post your comments below on your thoughts on leadership.

Managing Change – A Case Study

If it depresses me as an outsider to read of – and in some  instances experience – the impact of the current Qantas disputes, then I cannot  imagine how it must impact on the lives and families of those directly affected  by it.

I don’t wish to take sides – as I am quite certain that each  party has valid arguments to support their case – but I do want to take issue  with the Qantas management for their apparent reluctance to communicate with  their employees over the years that have preceded the present turmoil.

Over my career, I have had relatively little direct exposure  to industrial relations.  However, there  was one episode in the 1980’s that displayed many similarities with the present  Qantas dispute - namely a changing competitive and business environment, the  introduction of new technology, the out-sourcing of a critical service and a  union that felt that its power, influence and membership were under threat.

Read the full Case Study on the Plans To Reality Resource Centre

Employee Engagement Should Be The Result – Not The Focus

If I offered you one free ticket to a presentation given by acknowledged world authorities on each of the following topics, which presentation would you opt to attend? Remember, you can only go to one of them. The choices are:

• Teams and Teamwork
• Leadership
• Management of change
• Organisational alignment
• Communication
• Employee Engagement

I think it’s a fair bet to guess that you didn’t choose Organisational Alignment - not really sexy, is it. No doubt you’ve said to yourself at some stage or other - “I wish my employees were more engaged” or “we need to manage change much better than we do” or “our teams program seems to be running out of steam” but I doubt if you have ever said - “We need much greater organisational alignment”

But if you really think about it, none of these topics are independent and free standing - they are all dependent variables - none more so than the last on the list Employee Engagement. How can you expect employees to have an “emotional attachment to their employer that inspires greater discretionary effort” if they are unsure of the organisation’s goals, lack an understanding of where the organisation is now and really don’t understand what their role is in achieving them?

So it’s possible to arrange these factors in a hierarchy of dependency with each factor dependent on the ones that came before. Here’s the order:

• Organisational alignment
• Management of Change
• Leadership
• Teams & Teamwork
• Employee Engagement
• Communication

On this basis, one might think that Organisational Alignment, being first on the list, is an independent variable. Not so! The quality of Organisational alignment is dependent on the quality of the strategic planning and unless you get the planning “right”, your ability to manage change, develop leadership across all management levels, exploit the benefits of teams and teamwork and engage your employees will be severely restricted.

The definition of Organisational Alignment that I use is:

• Everyone understands where the organisation is now (the current reality)
• Everyone understands the destination (overall goal) and the journey (broad strategies for achieving it)
• Everyone understands their role in getting there

For the complete story on making it happen, see my book - Execution to Die For - the Manager’s Guide to Making It Happen. It’s available on www.amazon.com

Employee Engagement – Or Is It?

The definition that I use for Employee Engagement is that “it’s the employee’s emotional connection to an organisation that inspires greater discretionary effort”.  The significance of this definition is twofold. The first is that we are not talking about employees that just do their jobs, however efficiently.  We are talking about employees that go beyond the call of duty.  Secondly they do this out of loyalty to and appreciation of the quality of work life that their organisation provides.  So let me start by giving you an example of classic Employee Engagement.

Recently, I’ve become very conscious of the amazing come-back of Air New Zealand.  In 2002, Air New Zealand was on its knees after the Ansett debacle and few gave much hope for its survival as an independent airline.  In 2010, it was voted Airline of the Year.  It has one of the highest load factors of any airline in the world at 83.3% and in a market that is heavily dependent on tourism - and one would have thought low fares –  Air New Zealand’s Boeing 777 - 300ER’s have more premium seats than any other aircraft including A380’s.  Despite the natural disasters in New Zealand and Japan, the company’s net profit declined by 1%.

This remarkable turnaround has been led by their CEO Rob Fife.  Air New Zealand enjoys very high levels of Employee Engagement because it has clear goals and strategies to achieve them, excellent communication between all levels of management and staff and provides a fulfilling and fun place to work. Rob Fife relates this incident of Employee Engagement at work.

“I had an email from a mother of two young children.  She wrote:  “We were running late for a flight. The plane was fully boarded and our names had been called.  I was struggling with an eight month old and a three year old (plus luggage).  I ran down towards the check-in at the gate and was met by a gentle, smiling man who told me to relax and pass the baby and the bag to him.  He then led me down the aerobridge, chatting and asking about my day.  He didn’t stop at the door (I thought he was ground staff) - he took me and my girls onto the plane.  I said are you on this flight too?  And he told me he was actually the pilot.  His name is Brendan.  He had seen us running and me struggling with the girls and got out of his seat in the cockpit and walked out to meet me.  I was so touched.  He demonstrated what makes Air New Zealand so special. Go well and thank you again.  Kiri’”

This is the real McCoy of Employee Engagement but my work with customer and employee surveys suggest that the display of discretionary effort may be due, not to the employee’s emotional connection to the organisation but to the customer or to self.  Let’s take emotional connection to the customer first.  Where people have a long term and close business relationship with a customer who clearly appreciates when they go the extra mile on their behalf, it is this relationship that inspires greater discretionary effort.

Other employees are driven in their desire to give 110% because they are ambitious or competitive or because it’s part of their genetic make-up.  One might question whether it matters, given that the benefit to the employer remains regardless of the motive.  I don’t buy that argument.

If the employer does not provide a work environment that encourages discretionary effort, it will ultimately lose its best and brightest employees to other
employers that do.

Do You Set The Example?

Is there anyone reading this blog who answers to no one but who runs an enterprise with more than 20 employees?  If you meet these two rare but simple criteria, you might like to refrain from reading the rest of this blog as I’m talking about you - and not always in glowing terms.

For the majority of us, though, we are not at the top of the pecking order, but we do have others who respond to us and for whose performance and well-being we are held accountable.

Now here’s a strange thing.

We complain about the way we are treated by our superiors, but equally our subordinates complain about us!  And nine times out of ten, both ourselves and our subordinates are complaining about the same things!

What are they?

1. Management do not adequately consider the detailed implications of their strategic plans to assess their realism and practicality
2. Management do not explain the rationale behind the planned changes
3. Management do not involve those charged with the strategy implementation at the strategic planning stage
4. Management do not set clear realistic targets
5. Communication and feedback is lacking at both the pre and post strategic planning stages
6. When some aspect of the strategic plan is clearly not working as intended, it’s those charged with the strategy implementation that get the blame

I could go on but these are six of the most common.  Now, if lower management blames middle management, who in turn blame senior management, where does the buck stop?  With the CEO of course! And the most important role of the CEO? Contrary to what most people think, it’s not to get the strategy right - it’s to create the culture in the organisation necessary for effective execution.  And there is only one way to do that and that’s by example - personal example.

If you don’t consult and involve your fellow executives, you must expect them to commit the same omission with their own reports.  If you do not stress the importance of communication and feedback, your senior management won’t either.  If you take the view that only senior management need to be conversant with the Big Picture they will keep middle and lower management in the dark as well.  The CEO sets the tone.

What sort of organisation do you want to lead?  One that is beset with internal politics?  One where beating the internal competition takes precedence over winning against external rivals?  One where management at all levels bitches and complains about the lack of involvement and lack of communication?

Or do you want to lead an organisation that is aligned behind a common goal, one that exhibits a sense of community, one that truly values its employees and for whom people are happy to work?

Surely no one would want to lead the former?  Yet the former is all too common.  The reality is that in any market sector there are a limited number of strategies that the organisation can adopt.  The key to performance is strategy implementation.  I am reminded yet again of the Harvard Business Professor who asked his students - “what do hospitals do?”  His students responded – “they cure the sick”.  “No, nurses and doctors do that”, was the Professor’s counter response.  “The role of the hospital is to create the environment in which the best doctors and nurses want to work”.

What’s the environment like in your organisation?

A New Year’s Resolution – Communicate

If I ask people whether they enjoy their work life and the response is negative, there is an odds on chance that they will cite lack of communication as one of the key reasons.  This anecdotal evidence is supported by the findings from bpi’s Employee Feedback Surveys.  Among the 60 odd statements that make up the survey, many relate directly or indirectly to communication.  Three of them are reproduced below.  Respondents are asked to rate their degree of agreement with each statement on a scale of 1 - 10.

• We are sufficiently informed about decisions that effect us
• We are sufficiently consulted by decisions that affect us
• We are sufficiently involved in decisions that affect us

What we consistently find is that:

1. The average rating indicates disagreement with each of these statements; and
2. The last statement has the lowest rating of all

How important is communication to an organisations well-being? 

In the Wagon Wheel Way™ communication is the grease on the axle that keeps the wheel rolling.  No grease and the wheel seizes.  Or if you prefer a biological analogy, communication is the Central Nervous System of any organisation.  If it’s damaged, paralysis is the result.

Macro versus micro communication

One needs to distinguish between macro and micro communications and between communication that takes the form of a debate and that which is used to inform people of decisions that have been made as a consequence of that debate.

Macro communication tends to be associated with the dissemination of information whilst micro communication mostly involves debate and feedback between individuals.  Macro communication is more about “telling” whereas micro communication involves a lot of listening and decision-making.

What to communicate

The basis of effective execution is organisational alignment and organisational alignment has three components to it.

• Everyone knows where the organisation is now
• Everyone knows the destination and the journey
• Everyone knows their role in getting there

The more people involved in determining the above the better.  Remember the axiom that the more people that plan the battle, the fewer there are to battle the plan.

1. Everyone knows where the organisation is now 

   If you are planning a new direction for your organisation or merely needing to do  better what you already do, you have to be able to explain what has happened in your  business environment that has necessitated this re-think.  90% of people in your  Company will change if you give them a good enough reason to do so – but 70%  would prefer to maintain the status quo.

2. Everyone knows the destination and the journey 

   Organisations need goals that everyone can relate to.  I’m not talking about nebulous  visions.  I’m talking about Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Time-related Results.   People need to know how the Company plans to achieve its goal.  What are the one,  two or three major strategies?

3. Everyone knows their role in getting thereIf you want your staff to feel engaged to the organisation they work for, they need to  understand how their work relates to the achievement of the overall goal.  If they are  involved in determining this so much the better.

In addition to organisational alignment, there are four further factors that are crucial to effective execution and communication plays a vital role.  They are the management of change, leadership, teams and teamwork and employee engagement.  Here is a selection of the negative comments I hear and which are linked to communication.

“If they had only asked us, we could have told them that it wouldn’t work in the way that they envisaged”

“I watched “Undercover Boss” last night.  I wish our management would spend a day or so on the ward with us – then they would appreciate the lack of resources”

“I wish I understood why they want all this paperwork – what do they do with it?”

What to communicate is one thing, how to communicate it is another

Today we are spoilt for choice.  Web sites, blog sites, intranets, emails, Facebook, Twitter, news bulletins, in-house magazines and newspapers etc.  But I’ve deliberately left out the two most effective means of communication.

What are the two most effective means of communication?

Communication through listening and communication through action.  When did you last deliberately set aside time to wander around, engage your staff in conversation and simply listen to what they have to say?

When did you last spend a day with one of your service people responding to a customer complaint or sitting with your warehouse manager learning how your IT systems work in practice rather than in theory?

A lot of managers would tell you that they don’t have time to do these things.  The reality is that they don’t have time because they are too preoccupied dealing with the issues that arise from a failure to do these things in the first instance.