Another quarter behind us for 2019. Let’s look back on accomplishments and plan for the next quarter.
What are the top three things you accomplished April through June? What are the top three things you plan to accomplish July through September?
Posts in Strategic Planning
Share Your Toxic Examples
We’ve been discussing toxic leadership and cultures this week. The military is not immune to this environment — in fact, it can be the worst.
During one of my assignments in the Air Force, I worked as a flight sergeant with a hand-picked unit. There was one senior NCO and one officer that oversaw the unit — we were lean and mean.
The officer was absent, simply put. He was more focused on school and getting ahead, so he was never seen — never interacted with the unit personnel.
Thus, the SNCO, ran everything. Everyone called him The Dragon. This guy invented “toxic.” His goal was to break down each NCO in the unit to the point where they would in turn break down everyone that worked for them.
He ran everything like a cult. He referred to people as “in his camp” or “not.” He would hold “camp” meetings at a bar off base (so he could get drunk and not busted) and he would give his sermons over whiskey and beer chasers.
The stories I could tell about The Dragon. See, in the military, you can’t quit your job to get away from a toxic culture. You just have to endure.
This needs to be solved … this toxicity needs to be eradicated from business and out life!
What toxic examples do you have?
Stuck in the Mud?
What do we do when we’re driving in the rain and get stuck in mud? At first we rock back and forth, saying, “I got this,” and we often succeed in getting more stuck.
Then we get help to push us out…
Not just any help, right?
If we saw a couple of young kids on the corner, they might be willing, but they’ll just get covered in mud trying and you’ll be more stuck.
No, we look for big burly guys to push us out.
But then along comes this one guy with a big truck. See, this guy…he knows everyone gets stuck here in the mud, so he hangs out with his truck when it rains. He’s not the biggest and baddest guy out there, but he has experience and the right tools. Unfortunately, he also charges a lot to get them unstuck.
Little does everyone know that this guy also has a store before you get to this section of road. There is a big sign out front that says, “All Season Tires For Sale! Helps Prevent Getting Stuck in Mud!”
No one ever buys these inexpensive tires from him, but almost anyone will pay for him high dollar to pull them out of the mud.
This is how business planning works. It’s fixing your roof when the sun is shining and its bringing in the expert who has years of experience at fixing roofs.
Leadership Development
Leadership is not easy! True leadership that is! Anyone can be put into a leadership position, but few are good leaders.
Although there are natural leaders that are born and do great without effort, most must train and develop leadership muscles because it is not a natural talent or skill.
Sending someone to a leadership conference once a year is not developing leaders…you’re wasting money. Invest in your leaders with a complete leadership development program that is consistent, tailored and focused.
Organizational Myopia, in siloed organizations, starts with leaders that do not know what to look for or how to solve it. Step one is to read the book!
How’s your leadership development program?
Silo Poster Child!
What does moving a manufactured home have to do with silos? In our case everything!
This story has become the poster child for my book, Overcoming Organizational Myopia!
My wife and I purchased a manufactured home for our horse property. There are actually quite a few moving parts to buying a double wide. One would expect these people to be experts at this.
The problem — silos creating organizational myopia.
It’s so bad, I, as a customer, can see every issue with these companies as plain as day.
First, let’s examine the major silos at work here:
1. Dealership. They are made up of three silos: 1) Sales – the people who sell the product; 2) Finance – the person who completes the formal paperwork; and 3) Project Manager – the person who is supposed to manage the delivery and setup of the home.
2. Factory. The Dealership and Factory are the same company. I see three silos: 1) Constuction – builds the home; 2) Maintenance – responsible for setup and warranty work; and 3) Trim Out – contracted company that finishes out the inside of the home onsite.
3. Delivery and Setup. Although used as a local contractor by all the dealers, they are a subcontractor that does site prep, delivery, setup, hook-up, and special stuff, like decks and skirting. As far as I can see, as a customer, they have at least seven silos, but they actually have silos within silos. The first silo is the Project Manager – this one guy is terrible, so bad in fact, I didn’t even know he was out PM for this effort. The first person we dealt with, forms a second silo. I’m not sure what to call him, but he’s kind of like Sales, but he was the first person who surveyed the site, determined requirements, and put together the bid. Of course, they have a Finance silo – one single person to take your money (everyone has one of these). Then, you have the Site Prep silo, Delivery silo, Setup silo, and Utilities silo. The Setup silo uses subcontractors and each of them (we dealt with three, that do the same job) are their own silo. I suspect there is at least one moresolo, made up of subcontractors, that handle the siding and decks, but haven’t dealt with them yet.
If you have read my book, I’m sure you can already see where the myopia might form. Let me tell you, it’s been pretty obvious working with this effort.
Myopia Issue #1. Dealership makes promises, yet financial paperwork is different. Here’s how you know you’re dealing with myopia. We signed an agreement with the salesperson. When we go to signing the 1,000 pages of documents, what we agreed to is not reflected in the paperwork. Comment, “Oh, I didn’t know that. I’ll have to check with the salesperson.” Impact: wasting company’s and customer’s valuable time at signing, getting with salesperson, validating what was written down and agreed to, and redoing paperwork to sign.
Myopia Issue #2. Dealership Project Manager only cares about getting the house built and delivered. While it’s being built and delivered, its costing them money. After it’s delivered, it’s someone else’s problem. Even though, they should ensure the customer’s end-to-end experience is flawless. Impact: Customer has to deal with several people across the three major silos to actually move into their new home.
Myopia Issue #3 — Everything After the Sale. Since the Dealership PM only cares about getting the product off their books, they dump the effort at that point. Now, I, as the customer, am forced to deal with all the silos related to the Factory and the Delivery and Setup subcontractor. This is where it really gets UGLY!
With the Delivery and Setup silo, two major myopia issues impact this company and resulted in a big fat 0 for customer satisfaction! First was a PM that is totally clueless. This guy didn’t just drop the ball; he lost it under the bleachers. The PM was so bad, that we didn’t even know he was our PM. Impact: Customer (that’s me) acts as PM and spends hours working with every silo in the company! The second major myopia issue is Communication (or, the Lack There Of). Since, I’m the PM on this effort, I worked with every single silo. In every interation the silos complain about and/or demonstrate a complete lack of communication across the company. Impacts: Project delays, constant defects, and unhappy customer.
Since the Dealership PM drops the effort after delivery, the other major silo we are forced to work with is the Factory. So far, it’s been the finishing effort on property. Their major issue is a lack of end-to-end process ownership. How this manifested itself is as follows. The finishing crew comes out to basically Make Ready the home for move in. They have to close up the two halves of the house, fix all the damage from moving, and repair stuff the Construction silo screws up. This was a constant game of Passing the Blame. These guys passed so many bucks that they’re horribly in debt! They blamed everything on the Delivery and Setup and Factory silos, so essentially they could get out of doing tons of work. Impacts: Work left no lt completed, more delays, and tons of rework by “warranty.”
Now, just think…they haven’t even finished the setup of this home and we have yet to move in. Consider this timeline so far. Its May 14th. On April 1st, we closed on the sale of our other home. On April 4th, we agreed on the purchase of this home. On April 8th, we closed on the purchase (paid cash). On April 15th, the house was ready (it was already being built when purchased). It wasn’t delivered until April 29th! It’s now May 14th and yesterday they “finished” the finish work after passing off unfinished work. Also, no utilities have been hooked up and we don’t even know when that might happen.
Leaders…Take a look at your operation. Is this what you see? You have silos in your company…they are inevitable and you actually want them … no, you need them to operate! However, it’s the myopic behavior, as demonstrated here, that forms out of silos gone wrong.
Need help identifying the silos and the myopia? I’m an expert at it. Every business you deal with throughout the day has these issues.
I hope this helps you better “see” how silos exist, organizational myopia occurs, and what its impact is like.
Coach vs Consultant
When people ask me what I do, I tell them that I am a Personal and Professional Business Coach and Consultant.
But isn’t a Coach and Consultant essentially the same thing? I don’t believe so.
If you know who Tony Robbins is, you’ll appreciate his breakdown:
https://www.tonyrobbins.com/coaching/coaching-vs-consulting/?gclid=CjwKCAjwiN_mBRBBEiwA9N-e_r9iYZdJVc4U2jQgJDs5KXqGQZ_dbrTFKCCX6FRZ0iD0CiNanUYsQBoCIl8QAvD_BwE
However, here is my simple definition of differences…
A Coach guides and advises you on taking action to solve problems, overcome obstacles, and achieve success.
A Consultant takes the action for you.
It boils down to two things: Capacity and Capability. Capacity means that you have the time and resources to take the action yourself. Capability means that you have the knowledge, skills, and abilities to take the action yourself.
You coach someone when they have the Capacity and Capability. When they don’t have one of the two, you step in as a Consultant.
What Was Your First Job?
What was your first job? Leave a comment below.
My first paying job was a paperboy. When I look back on this now, I can see the lessons I learned and didn’t realize it.
Capacity Management. No matter how many papers I would have liked to deliver (and make money from), only so many would fit in the bags on my bike. This is why paper routes were taken over by people in vehicles.
Accounts Payable. If I didn’t collect the money from the customers, I didn’t get paid. This taught me concepts, like: “fee for service,” and “deadbeat.”
Customer Experience. I got lazy and I dumped my papers in the bushes one time. Tons of people called and complained. I don’t mind being lazy, but that just caused more work in the long run. People don’t like lazy employees.
I didn’t think I was a Business Owner when I owned a Paper Route. Maybe if I had, I would have run it different? In life, we often do see us as “owning” anything when we work for a company…we turn over our rights to someone else. Maybe we need to rethink ownership, regardless of our role?
Where did you start and what didn’t you learn from it?
Great Find from Disney!
Have you ever seen this from Disney?
I know this was the first time I saw it!
On the Gallup Q12, Question #8 asks, “Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your job is important?”
I’ve studied the Gallup results and looked at many top performing and low performing companies. There are four things that drive engagement in an organization and mission / purpose is the number one.
If Question #8 is a disagree or strongly disagree, the rest of the survey will follow suit.
However, having a strong mission/purpose is only part of the story. Some organizations have done a phenomenal job identifying a very purposeful mission. Then, they fail to effectively communicate it and their leaders fail to live it.
How is your organization’s engagement around its mission and purpose?
Get the book today:
Overcoming Organizational Myopia:
Breaking Through Siloed Organizations https://www.amazon.com/dp/1945151005/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_p7UXCbNQ4RTBH
Scenario Planning for Alien Abduction
What if aliens teleported away all your employees?
Obviously, this isn’t realistic, but scenario planning can be a crucial benefit for your organization.
Looking at some of the challenges you currently face, such as have one person that handles a crucial job, or having limited access to people who can do important work that your company does. It’s situations like these that lend themselves to scenario planning.
In the example of someone one deep in a critical position, your scenario could be that that individual just got hit by the “lottery bus.” It’s great to take that concept and put it in front of your executive team. This allows them to really think about what they need to do to protect themselves from failure if something like that were to happen.
A lot of times businesses don’t think about what could happen, and these are the kind of things that really bite them in the butt when they do happen. Often, it’s things that were fine when you started business but now are making your life difficult.
Thinking about these scenarios is very helpful from a planning perspective. Make sure that you keep scenario planning realistic (i.e., not aliens stealing employees). I encourage you to add it to your business planning.
Facebook and Instagram Password Snafu
Looks like it’s time to change your Facebook and Instagram passwords … again!
It’s all over the news this morning!!! Facebook confirmed yesterday, that it stored “hundreds of millions” of account passwords in plaintext FOR YEARS!!!
The discovery was made in January as part of a routine security review. Facebook said, “None of the passwords were visible to anyone outside Facebook.” Facebook admitted the security lapse, after they discovered passwords were accessible to approximately 2,000 engineers and developers.
“This caught our attention because our login systems are designed to mask passwords using techniques that make them unreadable,” said Canahuati, in the recent announcement. “We have found no evidence to date that anyone internally abused or improperly accessed them.”
Facebook said it will notify hundreds of millions of Facebook and Instagram of the exposure.
Recommendation: Change your passwords now!