Dr. Shailesh Thaker - Best Management Training Blog - Top Management Consultants

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I read an awesome book by Chip and Dan Heath called Switch - How To Change Things When Change is Hard. I really enjoyed their previous book Made to Stick.

What I like about Chip and Dan’s books are that they are founded on real research and have some depth to them. Although I love reading business books, I am finding that many of the books I read are fairly shallow. This one is not shallow.

One of the key concepts that the book uses is that of the elephant and the rider. The elephant is that part of you that is automatic and does things without thinking. Although they don’t call them this, I would call these habits (or in my case I like to think of them as success habits). The rider is the self discipline which can cause the elephant to do certain things.

One concept of the rider is the rider actually does not have an inexhaustible supply of energy so when the rider has to do too many course corrections, the rider simply wears out and the elephant ends up taking over and doing things the way the elephant wants to do them. I think it’s an interesting concept to thing in terms that self-discipline as a limited resource and as such we need to figure out how to use it well.

The gist of the message is use the rider to develop habits so the elephant has the right habits.

I have always said change is opportunity and I have always loved change at one level. However there is clearly a part of me that does not like change

The book has many practical examples on how to make a switch (or change). They include :

* Follow the Bright Spots - Investigate what’s working and clone it.
* Script the Critical Moves - Don’t think big picture, think in terms of specific behaviors
* Point to the Destination - Chang is easier when you known where you’re going and why it’s worth it.

Motivate the Elephant

* Find the Feeling - Knowing something isn’t enough to cause change. Make people feel something.
* Shrink the Change - Break down the change, until it no longer spooks the Elephant.
* Grow Your People - Cultivate a sense of identity and instill the growth mindset.

Shape the Path

* Tweak the Environment - When the situation changes, the behavior changes. So change the situation.
* Build Habits - When behavior is habitual, it’s “free” -it doesn’t tax the Rider. Look for ways to encourage habits.
* Rally The Herd - Behavior is contagious. Help spread.

I interviewed Dan Heath:
Can you describe any tie ins and differences between Made to Stick and Switch. After Made to Stick - why Switch.

When Made to Stick came out, we had the opportunity to work with a lot of people who were trying to make their ideas stick. Most often, they were trying to create some kind of change: a museum director who wanted to inspire other museums to be more accessible to the visually impaired; an entrepreneur who wanted IT directors to adopt his software; a teacher who wanted to change the culture of his private school.

So that was our “duh” moment—the realization that people were using the book’s ideas to lobby for change. Made to Stick discusses effective communication, and that’s one tool that a leader needs in creating change, but it’s not the only one. So we set out to research the question, “How can you improve your odds of changing things?” And in combing through the psychology literature, we began to find really compelling answers—answers that sometimes surprised us. For instance, psychologists have found that our self-control is exhaustible. It gets fatigued, like a muscle. So one consequence of that is that we shouldn’t try to change too many things at once, if we can avoid it. Because when our self-control is exhausted, we’ll find change very difficult.

In short, we got excited by the research and stories we found, and so we started writing Switch.

How did you find working with your brother? Has writing the book made you closer or not? (I was in business with my 3 brothers for many years so it is a point of curiosity.)

It has been a great experience. In the beginning, we had some kinks to work out in our workstyles—Chip is a planner and I’m a procrastinator, so you can imagine the resulting “issues”—but we’ve been collaborating closely for over 5 years now, so it’s smooth sailing these days. The books have given us something to work on together, which is nice. Some brothers fix up muscle cars; we write non-fiction books. Before we wrote Made to Stick, we’d talk maybe once a month, and now we talk almost every day.

People come across different friends at work place. These 10 people are  moving around the work place. Have you ever come acorss such people?

10. Stop Sign
I want to slap him every time he dumps on my great new ideas.

9. FlimFlam
How does he keep tricking me into doing his work? Damn you, Flimflam!

8. Bulldozer
If only I could stick a muffler on his mouth.

7. Smiley Face
Maybe it’s not a phony smile on his face. Maybe it’s just Botox. Whatever it is, I hate it.

6. Liar Liar
I don’t have enough time left in the day to figure out who isn’t lying.

5. Switchblade
The only thing I can count on from this jerk is trash-talking me to the boss.

4. Minute Man
Dude’s grabbed so many minutes of my time he could build a week out of them.

3. Know-It-None
Blogs, Wikipedia, reality TV. This clown couldn’t tell fact from fiction if they were wearing name tags.

2. Spreadsheets
I’d like to cram his rulebook where the sun don’t shine.

1. Sheeple
I hate them because they make brainless meetings, sorting e-mail, and mind-numbing tasks appear so productive that I’m tempted to become one with the herd.

During my last review I asked my manager, who is a senior vice president, about a promotion. He indicated that he would begin to think about what a promotion for me would look like and discuss it with HR. At the end of our conversation he stated that due to a possible acquisition, I might expect a promotion in the next 6-9 months. Well the acquisition has not taken place, yet but I still want something to happen. It has been over six months; should I bring the promotion conversation up again? If so, what should I say?

The first rule of promotions it that you want one more than anyone else wants you to have one. So, yes, you need to bring this up again. But, before you do, you need to do the work your boss said needed to be done: Figure out what a promotion for you would look like.

The acquisition sounds like a delay tactic. It’s true that when big things are going on, companies sometimes set policies about not moving people around until things are resolved. But, if that were the case, it’s likely your boss would have mentioned it directly. A senior VP should know these things.

So, let’s figure out what a promotion looks like. This is not a case of a true or bona fide promotion, where there is a vacant job one level up and you get moved to that job and your current position is now vacant. This is a case where you take on new responsibilities, and to go along with them, you get a new title and a salary increase. (Hopefully. Plenty of us have taken on more responsibilities with no salary increase or title change. We’re hoping to avoid that here.)

Ask yourself, “What responsibilities would it make sense for you to take on?” Look around at what needs to be done, or who is completely overworked. Does it make sense for you to take on part of Jane’s work, or to take on a new client group, or a new function, or develop a new training program? Do you have the skills to do that new task?

If you do have the skills, then write up a proposed job description and then present it to your boss. He can, of course, reject it or change it, but it’s much more likely that you’ll be given the promotion if you’ve explained how doing so will benefit the company.

If you don’t have the skills but are confident you can acquire them, then write up a proposed job description and a proposed method for gaining those skills (classes/seminars, shadowing, being mentored). Then present both of those to your boss.

The key things here are 1. make sure you are doing the work to figure out “what a promotion looks like,” and 2. make sure you are demonstrating how this promotion can benefit the department/division/company.

When you’re writing this up, be aware of political missteps. It may make sense, logically, for you to take on part of Jane’s responsibilities (since she’s over worked), but understand that Jane may balk at giving some of those things up. Don’t expect your boss to instantly embrace your proposal and hand you a big fat increase that moment. Everything will still have to go through proper channels and your boss (and HR, including the compensation team that will determine if your proposed job description really is worth more money), and may or may not get approved. But, what you’ve just done is given yourself a huge step forward in the process by showing your boss why and how you should be promoted.

At first glance, Zappos.com, the online retailer, appears to have little in common with General Electric (GE), the multinational conglomerate. Hit hard throes of scaling down its financial services subsidiary, GE Capital, by an estimated 40%. Zappos, on the other hand, is tapping into changing consumer habits and ramping up for 30% growth over the next 12 months.

Yet surprisingly, these two organizations with their rapidly shifting environments face similar challenges in motivating and engaging their employees. For Zappos, it’s about creating and maintaining passion in a call-center culture. For GE, it’s about keeping people engaged in a changing climate.

Named among the 20 Best Companies for Leadership in a recent BusinessWeek.com/Hay Group survey, both GE and Zappos put a premium on selecting, developing, and retaining strong leaders at every level. What sets them and the other companies on the list apart, however, is not just their emphasis on good leadership, but also how they approach it. They carefully tailor their developing leaders to fit their unique business strategies and organizational cultures.
In Bad Times As Well As Good

While the data suggest there is no one best way to grow leaders, the companies that do it best share certain key characteristics. The top 20 companies address leadership development on multiple fronts, from articulating how leadership behavior needs to change to meet the challenges of the future to managing their pools of successors for mission-critical roles. And, despite the chaotic, crisis-strewn atmosphere of the past year, they’ve continued to make leadership a top priority.

“The best companies for developing leaders recognize the value of strong leadership in both the good times and the bad,” says John Larrere, who heads Hay Group’s leadership and talent practice in the U.S. “Culturally they just cannot do away with leadership development, even in a recession. They don’t see it as a perk but as a necessity.”

People at the Best Companies for Leadership sense the urgency to develop leaders more than their industry peers. In fact, while 94% of respondents among the Best Companies for Leaders say their organization actively manages a pool of successors for mission-critical roles, only 68.6% of the other organizations surveyed report the same.
“Positioning for the Future”

Indeed, leadership feels different at the Best Companies. In the survey, more than 64% of respondents from the top 20 say people in their companies are expected to lead even when they are not in a formal position of authority. At other companies, that figure hovers around 35%. And respondents from the Best Companies for Leadership are significantly more likely than those from other companies to believe they will emerge stronger from tough times. They say their leaders are more likely to be involved in leadership development. And they are twice as likely to say that everyone at every level of their organization has the opportunity to develop and practice capabilities needed to lead others.

In the survey, respondents were asked about their companies’ current focus. Among all the respondents, 65.1% said, “positioning for the future.” Among the Best Companies for Leadership, the figure was 81.9%. Executives at the Best Companies for Leadership confirmed this in follow-up interviews. “Our culture is committed to leadership development,” says Jayne Johnson, GE’s director of leadership education. “Crotonville [the site of GE's corporate university] opened in 1956. Today more than ever, we need our leaders going to Crotonville. It’s these very leaders who will make us successful today and in the future.”
According to P&G’s (PG) Chief Human Resources Officer Moheet Nagrath, the primary way of developing future leaders it to offer “Accelerator Experiences,” a program that provides developing leaders the experience of running a small business with huge strategic potential. “We continually move people across regions and countries,” says Nagrath. “The more discontinuous the experience, the more you accelerate growth. We have to move people around businesses for them to become well-groomed.” One benefit of this experience, he says, is that it helps people manage in the organization’s matrixed environment.
Mapping Backwards

Nagrath notes that at P&G, “We start with the destination role and then help future leaders acquire a deep understanding of the role. It’s about understanding the individual from a deep perspective. We look at the timing for when a leader should go into the destination role, and we map backwards from the destination role to where they are currently.”

GE takes a different approach, identifying talented leaders early on, and placing them in stretch assignments, often before they think they’re ready, according to Johnson. “And we support them, with over $1 billion a year in structured training. But today, change is such a continual force that even we at GE are taking a fresh look at how to develop talent.”

At Zappos, a challenge is developing leaders at a pace that will accommodate the company’s growth. “We are projecting 30% growth in 2010,” says Rebecca Ratner, the online retailer’s director of human resources. “We will need more supervisors. How can we best integrate them into the company in terms of how they treat employees?” Noting that Zappos managers spend “10% to 20% of their time doing team building outside the office, our challenge is figuring out how to assimilate people into what we do.”
Events Outside the Office

For anyone coming in from the outside, she says, it’s not a typical recruitment process, where they meet with three or four people before either being hired or rejected. “What we do instead is spend seven to 10 hours over four occasions at happy hours, team building events, or other things outside the office. We can see them and they can see us.” The process seems to be good for retention. “In 2009, we will have a 20% turnover rate,” says Ratner. That’s impressive for call-center employees. What keeps people at Zappos? “We pay 100% of employee benefits,” says Ratner. But there’s something more, something Zappos calls its “wow factor.”

Says Ratner: “We can’t ask someone to wow a customer if they haven’t been wowed by us.” In fact, Zappos is so eager to wow employees and make sure who they hire is really committed that the company offers people $3,000 after they’ve been trained to walk away if they feel they and Zappos aren’t a good fit. Ratner is quick to point out that almost no one takes the $3,000 walk-away money. But many trainees return for more Zappos training to become managers and supervisors. Ratner admits that one of her big concerns is how to keep the wow factor alive as the company adds more people and ramps up its leadership development.

ABB, a leading provider of power and automation technologies, is also facing challenges posed by a double-digit growth trajectory, according to Julia Blake, vice-president for human resources at the company’s Power Products Division in North America. “We were growing our business and rapidly filling positions. Our challenge now is the rapid development of the organization’s bench strength,” says Blake. “We recognize that we need to accelerate development to get people ready to fill key positions. We want to get back into a growth surge and use development as a tool to retain talent as the business picks up.”

Survey respondents from the Best Companies for Leadership are 20% more likely than respondents from other organizations to say that people stay at their companies primarily for growth opportunities.
Three Types of Corporate Culture

Not only are the best-in-breed companies more urgent about leadership development; they also spend more time on it—and more money, too. In the survey, respondents from the Best Companies for Leadership were more likely to say that they invest in the development of even their mid- and low-performing employees. And when asked about time spent developing leaders, once again, the Best Companies for Leadership report investing more time than peer organizations in developing future leaders. While 16.4% of all respondents report spending 25 or more days per year developing senior leaders, 22% of the Best Companies for Leadership spend 25-plus days developing their top talent.

In an analysis of how survey respondents described their companies’ cultures, three categories of organizations emerged. Some, such as Zappos.com and Southwest Airlines, are modern, learning-oriented, fun workplaces. Other large, global giants, such as P&G and GE, are complex companies with cultures that are more traditional. And some, including ABB, are known as “collaboration for innovation” companies that accomplish work though self-organizing project teams and encourage employees to seek new approaches to solving problems.

According to Elizabeth Bryant, senior director of talent management at Southwest Airlines, the leadership-development process reflects the company culture. “It goes beyond formal training and is part of everyday life at Southwest, where employees at every level are exposed to leaders so they get to see how the leaders think,” she says. “Even informal mentoring and exposure to company executives helps to broaden people’s perspectives and stimulate their passion about the job.”
A Hunger to Learn

According to Jeff Lamb, Southwest’s chief people officer, the culture in which Southwest’s employees work every day is no different from the culture in which the airline develops its future leaders. “This kind of thing happens organically. There’s no course on how to get so engaged that you volunteer to come in on a weekend.”

Lamb insists that what makes the airline a great place for leaders is the same thing that makes it a great place for employees: “the freedom to be yourself … a lack of pretense; the hunger to learn.” He says it’s not about any kind of program or leadership training, or how well the company develops talent, but in “allowing people to enjoy their work.”

Concludes Hay Group’s Mary Fontaine: “The real thing leaders do is create environments that drive performance. Leaders engage and enable people. It’s that simple, but it requires a shift of focus from solely outcomes, production numbers, and revenues to motivating people so they’re passionate about helping the company achieve its goals.” Another key aspect of leadership, she says, is removing the obstacles that hinder them. She likes to quote a senior client at IBM, who says, “My job is to take the rocks out of the campers’ knapsacks so that they can run faster and further.”
METHODOLOGY

To conduct the 2009 Best Companies for Leadership study, Hay Group and Bloomberg BusinessWeek.com invited organizations from around the globe to participate. The survey was open to all employees of any organization and asked respondents to rate the leadership-development practices at their own organization. Separately, respondents were asked to nominate three organizations, regardless of size and industry, that they believed are the best at developing leadership at all levels.

A total of 1,869 individuals from 1,109 organizations completed the survey. Only responses on behalf of a parent organization were considered in the ranking process, resulting in a total of 740 organizations considered in the final ranking. In the case of multiple respondents on behalf of a parent organization, responses from those self-identified as “leaders” were combined, and responses from those self-identified as “employees” were combined, to allow comparative perspectives on the same organizations. For an organization’s final score, we calculated an average of the two group scores.

Respondents that completed the survey were from 98 countries, with 45% from North America, 27% from Europe/Middle East, 16% from Asia, 6% from South America, 3% from the Pacific, and 2% from Africa.

About Hay Group

Hay Group is a global strategic-consulting firm that works with leaders in the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors to transform strategy into reality. With 85 offices in 47 countries, we work with more than 7,000 clients across the world.

Learn more about our Best Companies for Leadership research

Editor’s Note: The following companies who ranked in the 20 Best Companies for Leadership according to survey respondents are clients of Hay Group: 3M, Procter & Gamble, Wal-Mart, Nestlé, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, IKEA, and Unilever

If you’re like most business leaders, you spent much of 2009 feeling down and just about out—an often-inescapable result of the worst recession since the Great Depression.

Odds are, you grappled with numerous challenges, uncertainties, and “don’t want to, but have to” decisions. As one weary bank CEO confided, “We’re barely hanging on, just trying to survive.” He wasn’t alone, either. Many executives and leadership teams shared similar sentiments with me. It was a difficult year, period.

Now, 2010 is here, and in the earliest days of the economic recovery it’s time to take the bull by the horns. Smart leaders will bypass the predictable New Year’s resolutions and, instead, start the decade with 12 essential questions:

1. What matters most?

The good news is, there’s no right or wrong answer. Yet, what was most important a year or two ago may not be the driving force in the business today. Press the reset button and, together with your leadership team, clarify priorities and commit to keeping them in focus.

2. What can I let go?

Adopting new strategies and approaches can require letting go of some old attitudes, habits, or behaviors. If something isn’t serving the business well, be willing to give it up. There is great power in purging, and you’ll make room for better ways of working.

3. What is one “problem” I can turn into an opportunity?

No need for rose-colored glasses—just view a current challenge through a lens of opportunity. Think about past successes in the business and figure out how to apply those skills to the issue at hand. Fact is, you grow by building on strengths, not “fixing” weaknesses.

4. What would really inspire employees?

Be careful about sending the message that you need people to hear. Think from your employees’ point of view—if they don’t feel understood, they won’t listen to you anyway—and resist the urge to tell them how they “should” think or feel. Also, inspiration doesn’t come only from motivational speeches to the masses. It starts with a leader who simply shows he or she cares.

5. What is our customers’ greatest pain?

Be relentless about knowing and meeting that need. Test your assumptions, but skip the complicated surveys. Instead, pick up the phone and ask. Listen and understand first—then get busy offering solutions.

6. What new business relationships will I pursue?

New opportunities come from new relationships. Inside and outside your industry, seek opportunities where there is potential for mutual benefit—not just “what’s in it for me?” Remember, too, that even in these boom days of social media, significant business relationships begin with real dialogue, not a tweet.

7. How can I think more strategically?

Skip the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) exercise. Strategic planning isn’t an event; it’s a discipline. Get serious about setting direction, always starting with a big-picture view of the possibilities. Resist the urge to discuss and deal with tactics, until you’re clear on what you want to accomplish. Even then, don’t check strategy off your list. Put it into daily practice.

8. How can I make swift yet smart decisions?

Now more than ever, you can’t afford to overanalyze. Clear the clutter—the “mind clutter” that plagues even the best leaders—and make way for swift, smart decision-making. Hint: Slow down your thinking on the front end—during the planning process—so you can make faster and better decisions later.

9. What leadership skill can—and should—I get better at?

Truth is, your personal effectiveness affects the success of the business. Pick the leadership skill that most needs your attention—listening, coaching, or problem solving, perhaps—and commit to improvement. Small changes really can make a big difference. Just ask your team and others on the receiving end.

10. What is my role, really?

Your success as a leader is largely based on how you view your role. Use the New Year as an opportunity to assess and adjust. If you want to raise your game, determine how you’ll play differently from now on. Envision yourself performing at the highest level. What will the “new” you do?

11. How will I recognize success?

You won’t know whether the business is on the right track if you haven’t determined some key markers or indicators. What’s more, not all measures of success are quantitative, so consider how you’ll know when a result “feels right.”

12. What is my biggest fear, and how will I face it?

Name it, and claim it. If you don’t, it can be damaging, even deadly, to you and the business. After all, what you resist, you empower. Own your fear before it owns you, and decide how you’ll confront it.

New year, new thinking. With smart leadership questions, you can find smart answers in 2010.