Posts in Business Consulting

Do you have a personal coach?

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Have you ever heard of top executives having executive coaches? Heard of people doing life coaching? What were your thoughts around people that have personal coaches…do you wish you had one?

Aren’t you worth it?

Why don’t you have a coach…I’m not talking about a mentor, I’m talking about a full-blown coach that you pay to provide you direction and advice, that helps you build personal and professional plans, and who holds you to standards and tells you like it is?

I can imagine that you think it’s too expensive to have your own coach…well, aren’t you worth it? We pay hundreds of dollars for gym memberships and sometimes personal trainers that a large percentage of people don’t use. We buy business books by the droves that generally sit on shelves and collect dust.

Why not consider hiring someone who is going to develop you so that you can do better at work, which could result in more pay and responsibility?

Are you already so good that you don’t need someone to coach you? Why are very effective executives turning to coaches? Aren’t they already very effective?

Why would you want a personal coach and what would you expect from them?

If you want to be more successful at work and at home…period…then hire a personal coach.

This is a paid consulting position…you are literally paying them to help you get better at everything you do. They aren’t going to do it for you, but they are going to point out your blind spots and guide you in fixing them.

Recently, I was sitting next to a senior executive that I’ve been working with during a meeting. He had a part where he got up and spoke. When he sat back down, he leaned over and asked, ” How did I do?” I looked him dead in the face and said, “We need to work on your ‘ums’.” His response back was, “Did I cover everything?”

The coach in me was screaming that it really didn’t matter…his message was lost because of his delivery approach. I told him, “Yes.”

A coach is not only someone who will tell you what you need to work on, but will show you why you need to work on it, will help you develop a plan to overcome your blind spot, and will hold you to your plan. Just when you think you are there, your coach shows you to the next step.

Recently, my boss was promoted in the position he’s been in–an in place promotion. Within a couple of weeks, we sat down over lunch and I asked him, “What’s next?” Clearly they didn’t promote him to continue to do what he’s been doing…now is the time to take things to the next level. The next morning we laid out a plan for the rest of the year and every other week we discuss his progress on that plan.

This is what you should expect from a coach.

In reality, coaches, are not as expensive as you might think. Sure you can hire extremely expensive coaches, but in reality, a personal coach should cost about as much an hour as a really good fitness coach. However, you’ll be paying every few days for that fitness coach because you’re going to need to work out at least three days a week and sometimes even more. A personal coach really only needs to meet with you occasionally, I mean you don’t want this person hanging around you all day…that would get creepy and probably a bit annoying. So, you really only need to meet with this person for a couple hours every other week at most.

What would you–what should you expect from a coach:

If you are paying someone to help you grow, then you should expect them to be honest and forthright. If you cannot accept constructive criticism, don’t bother hiring a coach. If your coach isn’t making you feel a little uncomfortable, then they probably are not helping you.

They should be able to align themselves to your needs…not your wants. If you hired me as a coach, and told me you wanted to become a better public speaker, I’d simply tell you to go to Toastmasters and you don’t need to hire me. What I would tell you, for the cost of nothing, is that you need to stop hiring people and telling them what you want. You need to tell me where you are going and ask how can I help you get there–better yet, you know you want to go somewhere, but you need help figuring out where you need to go. A good coach helps you understand what you really need and then helps you get there. Wants are immaterial.

Your coach should point out the barriers that you need to overcome to get where you need and then help you build you a plan to overcome those barriers. Those barriers might be you, your family, your boss, your coworkers, your job…it doesn’t matter. The coach should help you plan to overcome the barrier. When I say “help you plan,” I mean “help.” If your coach builds you a plan, throw the coach out of your office. If the coach isn’t showing you how to identify your obstacles and showing you how to plan to overcome them, then they just want to be your crutch not your coach.

Once you have a plan, your coach should be holding you to task. If they don’t know how to implement plans…you have the wrong coach. Having a plan is great, but not knowing how to implement the plan is like not having the plan at all. As a matter of fact, you’ll be even more frustrated because you have a plan. This is not to say that because you have a plan, suddenly everything starts falling into place. Plans take hard work to implement and the results of strategy are never really visible.

I have been working with an organization as a strategic business advisor–essentially a business coach to an entire organization–for a little over two years. Soon after I started, I laid out a long-term vision for that organization, which I’ve been slowly revealing to them. A good coach should know where you are going even if you don’t. About six to eight months ago, the person this team reports to, commented that all the things in the organization that were occurring were happenstance. I quickly corrected him…I laid out every strategic action the organization and it’s leadership had done in the last year and a half that led them to being in the right position strategically to seize the opportunity when it appeared.

The best coaches help you strategically position yourself to seize opportunities and then they can rewind the film over the actions that got you there. This is because you seldom see the fruits of strategy…strategy activities are normally too high level. You need someone who can tic and tie the actions to the results, which can almost seem random.

So, do you have a personal coach? If not, aren’t you worth it? Perhaps today you should take your first strategic step for the rest of your life…

Getting to know your customers

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Knowing the customers that you provide goods and services to is key to delivering what they need before the know they need it. That’s pretty obvious for most people who run a company, but how do you get to know your customers?

Go to them…

In USAA, our customers are US Military active, reserve, retired, veteran, and their families. Our HQ is in San Antonio–always has been. Every Friday, a new crop of Air Force basic trainees graduate at Lackland AFB, San Antonio, TX.

Last year, I took our leadership team out to a graduation and this year we’re going again. Today is special because the son of one our employees graduates today!

Look for opportunities to get out amongst your customers and learn more about them. For us, that is easy, but with a little thought, I’ll bet you can figure out ways to get to know your customers.

Employee Engagement, Organizational Commitment, and Dedication

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Yesterday I shot out a blog about being dedicated to what ever you do. It got me thinking about (which I do a lot) employee engagement and organizational commitment.

Several years ago in a self-directed Bachelor’s class, I did a study and research paper on Organizational Commitment. Over the last few years, Employee Engagement seems to be the new buzz word. I think; however, that they are slightly different.

Clearly when we talk about commitment, we’re talking about how dedicated the employee is to the organization and maybe a little of dedication back to the employee. I always like the analogy between the chicken and the pig. The chicken is dedicated to breakfast and the pig is committed.

My paper focused on the level of commitment that military members have to their job (i.e., their country) and how they are willing to sacrifice their lives for that commitment.

Engagement is much more a two-way street and doesn’t even sound like dedication to me. If the pig is committed and the chicken is dedicated, then the orange tree is engaged. Engagement seems more about involvement and choice versus an expectation to come to work and give it your all.

Have we sold out our expectations to employee engagement over organizational commitment? I want heroes at work who will work hard and dedicate themselves to the company and the mission. I’m not looking for the ultimate sacrifice, but clearly I would more desire employees that are willing to invest in their jobs versus ones that are simply more involved.

Just a little consideration on a thoughtful Thursday about the bar we seem to be lowering when it comes to employee expectation.

Mapping your process

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As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, process mapping is very important. Their are many reasons to map your process to the step-by-step (I have never liked talking about mapping at a “level”–just map the steps.

1. Take out a pad of paper. Yes, we’re going old school here.

2. Determine what starts and write it down. If this is a process that you do over and over, then break out the startup procedure as a separate one time process. For example, maybe you have to run a specific workflow program and once it’s opened and you’re logged in, you work out of it. That startup procedure is actually a deprecate process done at the beginning of work on the key process–map it separately.

2. Write down every single step on your paper, one line at a time. If you have to open computer files, write down where they are located. Take screen shots if you are using software or opening programs.

3. Group steps into an action. For example, you might need to “Run Operations Report,” but the steps start with opening the reporting tool, getting to the appropriate report, selecting the parameters for the report, running the report, and saving the report to a specific directory with a specific name. This activity, “Run Operations Report,” becomes a process step and how you do it are the steps you listed.

4. If at any point in your process, you have to determine what something is or if it’s this way or that, that is a decision. On a process map, decisions become diamonds–what I call, “The Dreaded Decision Diamond.” These become exceptions in your process–things that work differently. Usually they are based on defects in something your received to work on. They stop your flow of thought and make you do something different–not normal. Make sure you account for all of these what if situations in your written process and show each other process as a separate process.

5. Determine the stop of the process–when the work is done. Starts and stops are ovals on a process map. Walk through and combine activities into process steps and decision diamonds and type it all up in an outline format.

6. Now find someone with the software to put it on an actual process map and store it. The cola map and underlying process should be on your desk for you to refer to as often as needed.

It is really just that simple.

And then the magic happens…

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Process improvement always starts with process mapping. Honestly, it amazes me the number of times I start working with a process that has a problem and the first thing is either it’s not mapped, the current map is horribly out of date, the map they have is wrong, the map isn’t followed, or (and sometimes and) the map isn’t mapped low enough.

If you haven’t written down the step-by-step of how you do something, you are bound to have a “magic happens” moment in your process.

I don’t care what it is–even if you only do it a few times a year, you need to write down your steps.

I do a lot of strategic planning for my clients and even I have a three-step model, which in reality are three phases. Within each of the phases I have a list of steps and deliverables and for each item I have a process. And this is a very fluid type process.

If I didn’t write Dow. The phases and steps to a level of detail, I would probably forget key pieces of the strategic planning process until it was too late. You can’t be standing before the senior leadership facilitating and discover that you forgot to conduct that assessment you need.

Even one-time processes I write down the steps to a pretty significant level of detail–this is called a project waterfall.

When you have a process that hasn’t been mapped sufficiently and isn’t used and referred to regularly, then their are parts of your process between the start and stop where the magic simply happens.

I don’t really care to hear about how difficult or how little you understand about mapping, this should be a skill everyone should have.

Come on, it is really simple–write down every single step of your process on a lines piece of paper. You will be amazed at what it actually takes to get the job done. You will probably need to use more than one price of paper.

Make sure, if you are using a computer that you write down everything to include what directories you open, the web addresses you go to, and the files or programs you open.

Simply saying, “Run an Operations Report,” is too little of information. The box on a process map might be that simple, but the steps should be step-by-step. Using screen shots can certainly help.

“I don’t have time to map my process to that level of detail.” Really, you didn’t just say that to me did you? If you ever use this excuse, you should be fired! That’s like saying, “I’m too busy to ensure I do my job right every time.” I really don’t see how anyone would accept an answer like this. Honestly, you just don’t have the time not to take the time to get it right the first time and every time–there, now you have too much time on your hands!

Leaders…if I hear one of you say, “We don’t need to map our processes to that level,” I’m going to vomit! Do you know why we invented “levels” of mapping detail? It was for leaders. This way consultants could scope out process mapping work to a level of detail that the leader will pay for. Hey person in charge, if your people who are doing the process don’t know how they do it step-by-step, what are you paying for. Oh wait, I know–Magic!

Ok Harry Potter, how do you ensure more than one person does the job the same? How do you train new people? Seat of your pants operations. There is a place waiting for you in the Knowledge Management Blunders Hall of Fame.

To summarize, map your processes people–know what you do and how you do it. You might just learn something about what you do every day.

Using a maturity model for large problems

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I really only started learning about maturity models about five or six years ago. I had heard of them, but didn’t know what one was. Over the last couple of years I have applied and seen the positive effect of a maturity model on a major problem.

What is a maturity model? I’m glad you asked. Basically a maturity model provides a measurable framework to systematically and deliberately improve the thing you are looking at.

Probably the most popular maturity model is CMMI, which was built off the original maturity model call CMM. It is used to measure the maturity of information management domains. CMM was created to evaluate IT contractors for the Air Force. Today there are maturity models for many things

Two years ago, when I was just starting to work in document management with USAA, I learned about the GARP assessment, which is a records management maturity model. The name changed recently, so look it up under ARMA it interested. Also, a past consultant called DOCULABS provided their assessment of our document creation activity with a nine vector model. As I researched more, I saw several document-related models, mostly focused on stovepiped parts of the document life cycle or strictly on the electronic content management domain.

So, without anything to leverage, we built our own holistic document management majority model, which we call the DM3.

The point of this blog though is to focus on the important tool.

How a maturity model works. Basically, it’s a pretty simple table. Across the top you define a set of levels for measuring the maturity. I have seen three and five-level models. The DM3 is a five level model. The first level is the very basic level of maturity, like the item doesn’t exist and the highest level of maturity is the best it could be. Our levels range from AdHoc to Best in Class.

Then, along the left edge of the table is a list of major functions or capabilities. We used very holistic things like Strategy and Organization with a short definition of what they mean. Our model has six functions, but some have more and maybe you’re only looking at the maturity of one thing.

At each level, you define what the function or activity would look like. Thus you can easily determine what the best and worst would look like for your model. In our AdHoc level for Strategy, we’re basically saying that what strategies exist are developed in an AdHoc fashion at best and nothing is linked–basically everyone is following their own strategy Nd thus there really is no strategy. Best in Class would mean there is one single definitive and well developed strategy with a fully funded and detailed roadmap. When you are dealing with a big issue like document management for a Fortune 200 company, this is pretty important.

The beauty of the model is that you now have a stake in the ground to measure where you are today and clear expectations of where you need to go. This is especially helpful if you are dealing with a really big issue. We have found the DM3 to be a great tool to measure, plan, and communicate. Our hope is to share this device for broad use and then it also becomes a benchmark against all companies dealing with document management.

For you there might be a model already developed that you can quickly adopt. If not, they are really quite easy to design and use. Perfecting one can; however, take some time.

Good luck and I hope this information is helpful. Let me know if you use a maturity model of any type in your dealings?

An opportunity to vent regarding ASQ

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Well, thank you American Society for Quality (ASQ) for providing me with a topic for today’s blog.

My faith in ASQ has been restored.  All I can say is that when something doesn’t seem right, challenge it.  That’s really what ASQ is all about anyway. (see recent blog)

I have been an extremely active member of the local ASQ Section in San Antonio for many years, not only attending most meetings, but speaking at several of them.  I’ve been on their standing list for the last three years to call upon at the last minute if they need a speaker and I speak at least twice a year.  I’ve been a member of ASQ since early 2000, soon after returning to the states (retired from the military in 2008).  I even attended the world conference last year and had planned on attending this year–I offered to present at the world conference this year, but ASQ wasn’t interested in my topic.

I’ve been going to school for a long time–11 colleges to date–due to military moves and earning four degrees.  I’ve been a management consultant for the last 20 years (internal and external) and my recent Master’s Degree is in Quality Systems Management.  I also have earned Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, Black Belt, and Master Black Belt certifications and I have two Change Management certifications–Prosci and a Master’s-level certification from Georgetown University (Change Management Advanced Practitioner).  Additionally, I’m trained to be a PMP, but never bothered with the certification.

There are three main categories of membership in ASQ, Full, Associate, and Student.  Full Membership in ASQ provides little difference from Student, except price–Associate cost less then Full, but more than Student, but has very little benefits.  Because I’ve been a student the entire time I’ve been an ASQ member, I always selected the Student membership category.  It has pretty much the same membership benefits, but is much cheaper.  This year’s renewal would have gone from student to full since, for the first time in many years, I’m not a student, but I am considering starting my PhD in Organizational Psychology this year, which would have made me a “student” again.  However, I didn’t “chose” the category because of the price, but simply because I’ve been a student for my entire membership and plan to continue with school in the future.  After all, it is a category of membership, right?

This year, instead of staying with the Student category, I thought I would apply for a special category–the Senior membership category.  I had thought that with my experience, education, and involvement with ASQ, that would be the right decision at this point in my life.  I had actually hoped to someday be considered a Fellow with ASQ, but you have to be a Senior member for three years minimum first.  These advanced memberships are for loyal and longtime members that serve as the backbone of the Society.  Regarding Senior membership, ASQ says, “Leadership and professional achievement do not go unnoticed by ASQ.”

Well, I submitted for the Senior membership category this week and I received this email from ASQ yesterday:

“Thank you for applying for Senior membership.  We are unable to process your application at this time due to one requirement has not been met.  You must be an ASQ Full member in good standing for at least one year prior to the date of application for advancement.  Your currently not an individual full member but are a student member.”

I seriously would recommend ASQ consider not using membership levels as their criteria.  Senior Member in my mind denotes someone with a high level of experience, education, and involvement with ASQ–punishing someone because they’ve been a student for several years (it’s a category of membership after all) really doesn’t make sense.  However, if a ‘full membership level for one year’ is their key “requirement” to be considered a Senior Member over experience, education, and involvement, then I’ll guess I’ll have to consider whether I’m with the right organization or not.  It would seem that money is more important to them than accomplishments.  Maybe I’ll simply let my membership drop since clearly the Senior membership in ASQ means very little in the grand scheme of things–people will look at it and simply say, “Oh, he just paid more money.”  Now I wonder if being an ASQ Fellow means anything either.

Needless, I’m very disappointed with ASQ–they seem to have lost focus on what is important as a professional organization.  What are your thoughts?

Consultant is a dirty word

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When someone uses the word “consultant,” what comes to mind?

The age old joke is that a consultant is someone that will take your watch and tell you what time it is.

Consulting as a rule has a bad rap because of a lot of bad consultants. It’s really quite easy to do a lot of interviews and research only to tell an organization what they really already know. Sometime this is valuable to the organization if you are honest in your assessment. That’s where really bad consulting takes shape–the consultant tells the client what they want to hear. This is a sure fire way to destroy your credibility.

In my 15 – 20 years as a consultant, it is pretty clear that you need to find out what’s happening in the organization and document the as-is. The most important aspect of this is to be honest, followed closely by really being able to understand an organization’s issues and operation fully. Delivering an as-is that is honest and complete can sometimes be difficult, but when done tactfully, I have yet to be thrown out f someone’s office.

The real skill is to know what are the top issues facing a company before you even start doing your assessment. If you’re calling me in, your number one problem is a lack of communication. You probably have leadership and management issues, there is a lack of formalized performance and process management, your organization lacks any formal employee development approach and probably is doing little to deliberately develop employees. You might have a strategy, but you came up with it in a conference room. Most of all, you know you have a problem but you have no clue why it’s happening.

So, before I start and assessment, I already know what to look for. Plus, I know what needs to be fixed and how to generally do that–plans vary based on the organization.

That leads to one of the most important things that a consultant can do–become one with your client’s mission and vision. If they don’t have it written down, ferret it out of them. Being part of the team focused on the purpose f the team and focused on where they are going builds a level of trust that you “get them.”

The other thing is that you have to have the ability to provide quick improvements, sometimes even during the interviews–solve the immediate needs and get quick wins. This means a consultant has to be an “executor.” Be willing to roll up your sleeves and turn a wrench or two when you see a bolt that needs tightening–no extra charge.

Lastly, you have to be able to turn that assessment into a gap analysis between where they are today Nd where they need to be–even if they don’t know where that is today. Out of that analysis you determine the things that MUST CHANGE for them to be successful. Most of all, I find organizations are doing well operationally, but on the business side they have. Lot of roadblocks. That’s because in order to safe on inefficient operations, they lean out the professional staff or neglect them altogether.

Consultants, focus on being a partner to your clients and delivering solutions that last not telling them the time with their own watch. Clients, look for the consultants that can already tell you what is wrong in your organization before they step one foot inside it. Also, have the intestinal fortitude to accept that you might be part of the problem and let the consultant tell you the truth.

High Performing Organizations

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I’ve been working in some way or fashion in the field of quality consulting since about 1990 when I attended one of my first Total Quality Management courses at Carswell AFB in Ft Worth TX. Since then I have worked in the areas of strategic planning, strategic communication, performance management, process management, human capital planning, resource management, and education and training. I’ve been in the lowest tactical to the highest CEO positions of military, non-profits, and companies and seen many things both doing and consulting in these areas.

So what?

Over the last several years I’ve been really thinking about what makes companies successful. My upcoming book, Overcoming Organizational Myopia is based on a lot of that thought. What I see too much of is organizations looking for that silver bullet. I was in a recent meeting, where a leader said he was looking for that one single metric that when tugged upon it unravelled everything else going on in the organization. My answer would be really simple, that doesn’t exist. Being a top performing (you fill in the blank) takes a lot of work and it’s constant work.

The group I work for now has been extremely successful over the last two years. My boss is even going to be interviewed by Gallup because of their employee engagement success in their last UCount survey. One of the managers in the team commented that now we have to sustain it. My response was, no, now we have to make it better next year. In today’s day and age, sustaining is the death of a company. You have to get better. When I started with them in January of 2012, they had just won The Keepers of Quality award for their major organization. That was great, but there was a lot more they could do. This month, we share part of our two-year continuous improvement story with that sMe audience to discuss how we are building and encouraging an environment of continuous improvement–quality.

What is all this mean?

High performing organizations don’t just “happen.” It takes. Lot of hard work and it’s a constant journey. If you read business books like I do, you probably heard many ways to become that high performing organization. They tell you what it is, they tell you what you should do, and they tell you why. They fill your head with fantastic stores of Apple and Dell, turn arounds like IBM and Harley Davidson, etc. trust me, I have read them all–well a lot of them. The thing they don’t tell you is HOW.

Funny, there are so many How To and Self Help books on the shelf, but none give away the secrets to becoming a great organization. How To books sell too–my speech writing instructor and mentor, Joan Detz taught me that in 2005.

So, how does an organization really improve? That’s the thoughts that have been on my mind of late. My soon to be released book focuses on part of the story, overcoming the “silo effect” that plagues every business in the world. You know what I’m talking about…sand boxes, camps, teams…the way we organize and the way we group as human beings lead us to form silos–we become myopic in business. They problem is that it will ALWAYS happen–you can’t avoid it. Leaders and managers alike might recognize it and try to break it down, but it happens to all of us. Overcoming Organizational Myopia is a true how to book focused on the nine things that suffer in siloed organizations and how to overcome it–not solve it, but to overcome it.

But the key, I think is the “Golden Egg,” as James Farhat would say. That is how does any organization that wants to be high performing make it happen? If they were a car, how do they get their engine firing on all cylinders? That is my journey this year. My effort in 2014 is to not only define it, but to lay out the roadmap and provide holistic training to all, at whatever level they are at, to help them become better and grow.

A guy I worked with in Booz Allen used to comment about how the different teams in our office would fight over the pieces of the “pie.” He was talking about this perceived limited amount of money that was available to all of Booz Allen that we would fight to get a piece of. He believed that believing that the pie was a certain size was limiting our ability to go for more and this we had to take more of someone else’s pie to grow our own silo–back to the myopia view again.

In America today, I think many business look at the perceived pie and think they have to take from others to get a bigger share. That leads us to disruptive innovation, aggressive marketing, and like tactics to win over the market share pie. What if I told you that the pie doesn’t exist. The better you are as a high performing organization, the more people will buy your whatever? I believe that doing good work gets more work–it’s not about pies, but about becoming the best at what you do. This is true both of an organization and as an individual.

So, I leave you with these thoughts on this Tuesday morning. Myopia, pies, and high performing organizations. Let me know what you think. Tell me it can’t be done…that I don’t know what I’m talking about. I look forward to the debate.

For those interested, what does a high performing organization mean to you?

What is “visionary?”

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Last night I had a great conversation with a good friend of mine about visionaries. We talked at length about Hinduism, Maslow, and people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates (of all things). See, Gus is a Mac and I am a PC, so we often have some very interesting talks…especially over wine. This one centered around how visionaries impact innovation. Many years ago, I wrote a paper titled, “Formula for Innovation.” I built the notion that aside from Necessity, Risk is a major player in Innovation. That got us talking about how Vision … seeing several moves ahead like a chess player … can impact Innovation.

What are your thoughts regarding the “factors” that influence Innovation and how?