Leadership

The 5 Challenges for Leaders

Andrew Cooke Coaching, Growth and Profit Solutions, Leadership, Management, Uncategorized

What are the top 5 challenges for leaders globally, and how can you deal with them?

Leaders are under increasing pressure having to deal with more, with less, whilst having to handle the 5 challenges of the modern business world.

This article looks at each of the five major challenges in turn, and identifies the key strategies that leaders need to develop to meet these challenges and, in doing so, become great leaders in turn and to develop leaders within the business at all levels.

Andrew’s 5 Challenges for Leaders

1. Dealing with the New Business Reality

2. Paradoxes Moving from “Either/Or” to “And”

3.Restore Confidence & Trust

4. To Collaborate & Empower

5. Building Individual & Organizational Resilience

Challenge 1: Dealing with the New Business Reality

The world for leaders is changing, and the rate at which this is occurring is increasing exponentially whilst its effects are being seen, and compounded, in 4 different areas:

  1. Volatility – the increasing rate, amount, and magnitude of change
  2. Uncertainty – the amount of unpredictability inherent in issues and events
  3. Complexity – the increasing amount of dependency and interac­tive effects between multiple factors and driver.
  4. Ambiguity – the degree to which information, situa­tions, and events can be interpreted in multiple ways.

For further information on this see How to Manage Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity – Part 1

To deal with these factors, leaders need to develop on an integrated basis, the following:

  1. Vision – having a clear picture of the purpose of your business and where you are going.
  2. Understanding – the leader takes the time to stop, look and listen to what is happen, this is beyond their functional expertise and beyond just their business.
  3. Clarity – the leader needs to spend the time and effort in deliberately working to make sense of the chaos that exists.
  4. Agility – the ability to communicate openly across the organization and to move quickly to apply solutions, the rapid prototyping of ideas & actions to develop solutions.

For further information on this see How to Manage Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity – Part 2.

Challenge 2: Paradoxes Moving from “Either/Or” to “And”

Leaders are having to make decisions and deal with increasingly juxtaposed areas: for example, do we mass produce or customise our offerings, do we focus on the short-term or the long-term etcetera. Usually this has been treated as an either/or choice or, at best,  achieving a blend between the two and effecting a compromise.  Either of these two ways are often sub-optimal and limit the future opportunities.

FROM

5 challenges for leaders - pic01 Leaders need to manage these paradoxical situations, and to meet both sets of demands simultaneously to survive and thrive.  Leaders need to achieve a balance between multiple sets of demands, requiring them to be able to quickly weigh and evaluate the situation, and to obtain multiple perspectives from others to incorporate in the development and execution of the appropriate strategy.

TO 5 challenges for leaders - pic02

Challenge 3: Restore Confidence & Trust

Research from Sirota has shown a steady decline over the last 5-6 years in the level of people’s confidence in their business, their leaders and the future.

This is reflected in the 2013 Edelman Trust Barometer, with nearly two-thirds of people 5 challenges for leaders - pic03only believing what is said by companies having heard it three to five times.  This reflects both the high level of scepticism and the fact that messages need repeating to get through the ‘noise’ of the environment.

Leaders need to restore confidence and trust in themselves, the business and the future.  This needs to extend to include the external stakeholders, not just the only internal stakeholders (e.g. employees).  In doing this leaders need to provide clear direction, clear and consistently understood message, and that everyone is aligned with this by ensuring the core values are commonly understood and applied throughout the business.  This needs to ensure that the systems & processes and reward systems actively support this.

Challenge 4: To Collaborate & Empower

To lead in an increasingly challenge environment requires leaders, counter-intuitively, to loosen controls to gain more control.  Being able to adapt and anticipate to the new business reality requires leaders to review and refine their goals, and to create an inspiring vision which is clearly articulated and understood to all levels of the business empower-network-leverageinternally, and to external stakeholders.  In doing this leaders need to be open to new ideas and perspectives, and to extend their networks of relationships. They also need to ensure that the business has the right core values, and that these are actively supported and built into how business is done.  This creates a strong, pervading culture that aligns people and what they do.

To drive better communication and coordination between departments, and to reduce internal turf-fights and conflicting objectives, the vision needs to be shared and cascaded appropriately at each level.  Furthermore, in doing this, leaders across the business and at all levels need to be empowered with the responsibility and authority to achieve their goals, to be equipped with the necessary skills and capabilities to carry them out, and enable them to perform by providing the necessary support to actively developing both their skills and potential as leaders and those of their reports.

Challenge 5: Building Individual & Organisational Resilience

In dealing with new business reality leaders need to help their people and their organisation to build resilience and agility.  This includes the ability to move quickly, decisively. effectively and proactively whilst capitalising on existing strengths, developing new strengths and identifying current strengths which may become weaknesses or liabilities as the business and market environments change,

resilience pictureThe importance of developing people resilience, including engaging people emotionally whilst growing and developing them, and providing them with a sense of purpose and belonging, is reflected in the findings of the 2012 American Psychological Association Workplace Survey reported.  In this it reported that 41% (over two out of every five employees) of employed adults feel stressed out during the workday.

The top 5 sources of stress were identified as:

  1. Low salaries
  2. Lack of opportunity or growth or advancement
  3. Too heavy of a work load
  4. Long hours
  5. Uncertain or undefined job expectations

Furthermore, less than half of employees reported:

  • Being satisfied with the growth and development opportunities offered by their employer (46%)
  • Being satisfied with the employee recognition practices of their employer (48%).
  • Feeling they are receiving adequate monetary compensation (48%).

The importance of having employees who feel valued is also important:

  • Employed adults who report feeling valued by their employer are significantly more likely to report they are motivated to do their very best for their employer (93% vs. 33%).
  • They are also more likely to report they would recommend their workplace to others (85% vs. 19%).
  • On the other hand, those who do not feel valued are significantly more likely to report that they intend to seek employment outside of their company next year (50% vs. 21%).

Summary

In dealing with these five challenges leaders need to have an integrated and disciplined approach.  At its essence is the ability to empower, enable and equip people and leaders at all levels in the organisation.  Critical to doing this is building the necessary skills and capabilities into their day to day work.

To develop the necessary individual, team and organisational agility and flexibility leaders need to develop and embed the skills into how they work, allowing experiential learning to occur as they learn and apply the new skills in addressing and gaining traction with key challenges and opportunities.  Providing the on-going support to help the teams and individuals is essential to this, and by enabling people to teach what they have learnt to their peers, team members and reports they can gain mastery and continue to deliver sustainable results.  This produces not only in-house skills and capabilities, but creates leadership bench strength and an on-going leadership pipeline on which the organisation can draw to meet current and future needs.

Click here to find out more about Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions.

Five Strategic Tips for a Profitable Future

Andrew Cooke Business Growth, Continuous Improvement, Customers, GPS, Growth, Growth and Profit Solutions, Growth Solutions, Leaders, Leadership, Leadership Development, Learning, Management, Profit, Uncategorized

Future Profit

A recently published book, Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential guide to competition and strategy (Magretta, 2012), compiles and applies the work of management guru, Michael Porter.   Full of useful insights, here are five pearls of wisdom that can if applied, create a more robust, more profitable and sustainable business.

Tip 1: “Strategy explains how an organization, faced with competition, will achieve superior performance. The definition is deceptively simple”

Performance is not about your competition, it is about achieving superior performance, every day, regardless of what is happening with your competitors or markets.

Tip 2: “Competitive advantage is not about beating rivals; it’s about creating unique value for customers. If you have a competitive advantage, it will show up on your P & L”

To create unique value is not about you beating your competitors, it is about you delivering (through superior performance) the unique value by focusing on your customers’ needs.

Tip 3: “Strategic competition means choosing a path different from that of others”

If you accept that the competitive goal is superior performance, then it makes sense to achieve that performance using methods different to the competitors. You have to be able to differentiate yourself not only in the customer’s eyes but in how you achieve that differentiation – in how you deliver value to the customer.

Tip 4: “The value proposition is the element of strategy that looks outward at customers, at the demand side of the business. The value chain focuses internally on operations. Strategy is fundamentally integrative, bringing the demand and supply sides together”

A strategy is about achieving a position.  Here it is to achieve superior performance whilst delivering superior value to the customer.  You need to be able to focus on how you will drive that superior performance, and what this means in terms of superior customer value.  In this, you need to continuously improve the efficiency of your internal operations.

Tip 5: “There is no honor in size or growth if those are profitless. Competition is about profit, not market share”

This tip serves as a reminder that we need to be the most profitable, not the biggest in top-line revenue or headcount.

Consider these five tips in a context of your own organization. What should you do to meet the requirements of all five? Is your current strategy going to work for you in the coming next few years?

What has worked or not worked for you? Share your knowledge, share the wealth!

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Click here to find out more about Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions.

Five Strategies for Growing Successfully

Andrew Cooke Business Growth, Growth, Growth and Profit Solutions, Growth Solutions, Leaders, Leadership, Leadership Development, Learning, Management, Strategies, Uncategorized

Not all growth is good growth, five tips to help you ensure that growth is good

Do you want to grow your business?  If so, do you know how you are going to grow the business?  And are you aware of the difference between good growth and bad growth?

People often want to grow for growth’s own sake.  This is more about taking on risk than taking on growth.

Strategy 1: Control Your Growth

You need to manage growth, not have it manage you.  I suspect more companies have failed through poorly managed and unplanned growth than any other reason.  At times you will also want to slow growth to allow you to “catch up” with yourself.  Fast and successful growth is rare.  You need to be able to absorb the lessons you learn as you grow and incorporate them into your next steps.  In doing this you also need to consider some of the risks that are associated with poorly controlled growth, these include:

  • Cash flow risks – growth consumes cash, and rapid growth consumes cash rapidly. If you are not careful you can find yourself with insufficient cash to cover your operating costs; you also run the risk of trading whilst insolvent.  It only requires one unexpected cost or one delayed customer payment to push you over the edge.
  • Operational crunch – to produce the volume required to support your growth can be difficult.  Equipment and/or people have to operate beyond what is practical, and things start to come apart at the seams with increasing inefficiencies and attendant risks.
  • Poor customer service – you have more customers to look after and not always the available people or resources to do so.
  • Rapid expenditure – with more orders coming in you may be tempted to spend more on people, infrastructure, and resources.  You want to invest, but not over-invest or leave yourself exposed.
  • People risks – existing people will be worried about the rapid changes, stressed by an increasing workload, exhausted by an expanded role for which they may not be suitable or experienced, and worried if you will be able to pay them each month.  St the time you need them most you may find your best people, who are the most marketable, may leave.
  • Decision-making changes – with rapid growth people need to step back from an operational focus to a leadership role.  There is a risk that leaders can become disconnected from what is happening at the front-line and make decisions based on the incomplete or inaccurate information.
  • Leadership shortfalls – people who may be operationally adept may lack the necessary leadership skills, business acumen or interpersonal skills to lead effectively.  This can cause problems and compound existing risks.

Strategy 2: Go for Good Growth, Avoid Bad Growth

Good growth is aligned with your purpose and what you are trying to achieve.  Bad growth is not aligned.  Often the problem of bad growth is that you are prepared to take a short-term gain but sacrifice the long-term future.  For example, taking on a big client who has a poor reputation for paying on time leads to serious cash flow issues later and takes a disproportionate amount of your precious time in managing the relationship and fire-fighting. This can also impact your team, lower morale and create stress and pressure.

Make sure that what you do, who you partner with, and who you sell to are aligned.  Good growth is about servicing the need of selected and targeted clients – not any client with a checkbook.  For good growth, you need to say no to opportunities to keep focused and aligned.

Strategy 3: Growth Means Letting Go

If you want to grow you need to prune back.  As the demands and needs of your business change so I remember, as a child, playing on the monkey bars.  The only way you can forward on the monkey bars is to let go with one hand, swing forward, and grasp the next rung. So you need to repeat it to get to the other end. Business is just the same. Let go to grow.

Strategy 4: Lead Your Growth

Growth is about change, and change is about leadership, not management. You need to lead your people and share with them the answers to three questions:

  • What are we changing from and why?
  • What are we changing to and why?
  • How are we going to do this?

Doing this remove any vagueness or information vacuums which can cause stress and rumors and stories (often inaccurate) in an attempt to fill the gap.

Strategy 5: Go Slowly

Business is not a sprint, it is a marathon. Paradoxically, by going slower you will get there faster – and with your risks better managed, and you be better prepared for them.

To grow, and to grow profitably, control your growth, go for good growth, let go to move forward, lead your people to growth and to grow well grow slow.

Please feel free to re-tweet, re-blog, email and share this article with others who may find it of use or interest.

To view or download a PDF version of this blog click here.

Share your thoughts and ideas here, or email me at andrew.cooke@business-gps.com.au

If you found this article of use or interest please don’t hesitate to share it with others.

Click here to find out more about Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions.

The “X-Factor” and Business

Andrew Cooke Growth, Leadership, Perception, Performance, Uncategorized

Who are the people in your business with the “X-Factor”? How do you uncover them?

The X Factor (Australia)

For those of you living in Australia, this evening saw the launch of a new series of  ”The X-Factor”. For those of you not familiar with the show it is a competition aimed at uncovering new gems of singing talent through a series of auditions, with the final winner receiving a recording contract.  I’ll be honest, this is not something I usually watch – but I did tonight, and I was glad I did!

The ”X-Factor” is that indescribable, innate quality which we cannot define, but which we know when we see it, which marks somebody as having incredible talent and potential.  In tonight’s episode there were two outstanding acts – Siane Hawke, a 14-year old student from Darwin and another student, Bella Ferraro.  What struck me about both girls was not only that they had immense talent, way beyond their years, but that they were unaware of how special they were.  Refreshingly modest they seemed genuinely surprised at the reaction they evoked from the judges and the 5000 people in the audience.  They are ordinary people in ordinary lives – but that may change for them in the near future.  It certainly won’t be the same for them after this.

My question to you is this.  Who in your business or organisation has the “X-factor”?  How will you uncover these gems and help them to recognise themselves? How do you ‘audition’ people to do this? How will you support those that you uncover so that you can build them and reach the fullness of their potential?

Happy auditioning!  You may be helping someone else live their life to the full – and that is the mark of a true leader!

Let me know how you do it. What has worked, what hasn’t, and what would you do differently next time?

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Click here to find out more about Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions.

3 Ways to Improve How You Work

Andrew Cooke Efficiency, GPS, Growth, Leadership, Management, Performance, Productivity, Profit Solutions, Uncategorized

improve2

We are often so busy doing the work that we forget to take a step back and give ourselves the time to focus and re-energize ourselves.  Here are 3 tips for improving your personal effectiveness, no matter what you do.

1. Boost your personal efficiency
When looking at profit improvement potential (or waste) in a business it is often said it is easy to identify 30% of your current overheads as ‘waste’. The same can be said if you audited yourself for your levels of efficiency. 30% of what you do on a day-to-day basis is a waste. Outside the box ways to boost your efficiency are required. Some key tips are:

  • Hire a Virtual Assistant to prevent you performing tasks you don’t have to
  • Stop doing many of the things that are not in the 20% of things you do which create 80% of the benefit
  • Build processes and document all aspects of your business you currently do ‘naturally’ so you can delegate more of what you do
  • Use the latest technology platforms such as Ipads, Livescribe pens, and various apps to better collect your notes, ideas, strategies and increase your speed in finding them at a later date

2. Protect your energy levels
Think of the networks of people in business and personally you associate with on a regular basis.  Are these people providing you a boost in your energy levels when you connect with them or are they taking away your valuable energy levels (acting as what we call ‘Energy Vampires’)?  If you have the balance wrong and have a large portion acting as ‘Energy Vampires’ it can have a detrimental effect on your ability to implement change and deliver the outcomes you are seeking.  Perform a quick audit on your circle of business and personal contacts; what do you have to change?

3. What is your ‘theme’ for the next 12 months?
Having a theme for your plans for the next 12 months can help focus more acutely your team, customers and importantly yourself on what’s important when driving strategies/actions. Themes could include: “Innovation”, “Growth”, “Efficiency”, “Profit”, “Downsize”, “Consolidate” or “Improve Life Balance”.

What has worked or not worked for you? Share your knowledge, share the wealth!

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Click here to find out more about Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions.

Empowering Your Employees to Empower Themselves

Andrew Cooke Behavior, Behaviour, Employee Development, Employee Engagement, Employees, Leadership, Leadership Development, Management, Management Development, Teams, Uncategorized

How to create an environment that empowers people.

As a manager or leader, do you let your people assume more responsibility when they are able? Do you know when that is, or do you keep telling yourself that they aren’t ready yet?In my travels from organization to organization, I talk with thousands of people every year who want to be treated as “partners” rather than as employees. They want information to flow up as well as down. But, oftentimes, leaders do not want to give up control.

Marshall Goldsmith, the world’s leading CEO, tells a story of a CEO he knew who was the leader of one of the world’s largest global organizations. This CEO received feedback that he was too stubborn and opinionated. He learned that he needed to do a better job of letting others to make decisions and to focus less on being right himself. He practiced this simple technique for one year: before speaking, he would take a breath and ask himself, “Is it worth it?” He learned that 50% of the time his comments may have been right on, but they weren’t worth it. He quickly began focusing more on empowering others and letting them take ownership and commitment for decisions, and less on his own need to add value.

Your employees understand their jobs. They know their tasks, roles, and functions within the organization, and it’s time for you to let them do what they need to do to get the job done. But there is a critical point that is often missed: It isn’t possible for a leader to “empower” someone to be accountable and make good decisions. People have to empower themselves. Your role is to encourage and support the decision-making environment and to give employees the tools and knowledge they need to make and act upon their own decisions. By doing this, you help your employees reach an empowered state.

The process does take longer — employees will only believe they are empowered when they are left alone to accomplish results over a period of time — but it’s effective and worth the time. If a company has a history of shutting down or letting go of initiators, for instance, the leader can’t just tell employees, “You are empowered to make decisions.”

Part of building an empowering environment is dependent on the leader’s ability to run interference on behalf of the team. The leader needs to make sure people are safe doing their jobs. To make sure this happens, an ongoing discussion of the needs, opportunities, tasks, obstacles, projects, what is working and what is not working is absolutely critical to the development and maintenance of a “safe” working environment. You are likely to spend a lot of time in dialogue with other leaders, employees, team members, and peers.

Following are a few things leaders can do to build an environment that empowers people.

1. Give power to those who have demonstrated the capacity to handle the responsibility.

2. Create a favorable environment in which people are encouraged to grow their skills.

3. Don’t second-guess others’ decisions and ideas unless it’s absolutely necessary. This only undermines their confidence and keeps them from sharing future ideas with you.

4. Give people discretion and autonomy over their tasks and resources.

Successful leaders and managers today are willing to exercise their leadership in such a way that their people are empowered to make decisions, share information, and try new things. Most employees (future leaders) see the value in finding empowerment and are willing to take on the responsibilities that come with it. If future leaders have the wisdom to learn from the experience of present leaders, and if present leaders have the wisdom to build an environment that empowers people, both will share in the benefits.

There are much more things that leaders can do to build and environment that empowers people. Please send any ideas you have. I would love to hear them!

To view or download a PDF version of this blog click here

Share your thoughts and ideas here, or email me at andrew.cooke@business-gps.com.au

If you found this article of use or interest please don’t hesitate to share it with others.

Click here to find out more about Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions.

Improving Your Leadership Skills

Andrew Cooke Leadership, Personal Development ,

…the one thing to create a multiplier effect for your leadership skills

There are a broad number of leadership skills that you are expected to have and to develop. However, this takes time and effort and you cannot develop these skills in a classroom. You have to develop them in real-time and quickly.

The “key leadership skills” that are commonly cited include: inspiring and motivating others, problem-solving, delivering results, good communication, driving innovation and strategy, providing direction and goals, developing others, internal and external relationship building….

So how can you develop these skills quickly and effectively, and in a way that leverages your experience and helps you to improve what you are doing?

Simple. Ask questions!

In a blog post by Johannes Bayer he looks at some of the key questions that you might ask for each of these key leadership skills.  I have included his ideas here (thank you, Johannes!).

In a nutshell, the process is:

  1. Define the skill you want to improve
  2. Create a list of many questions you can use to demonstrate this skill
  3. Narrow the list down to a handful of key questions.

The questions should help you elicit ideas for yourself and from others to: generate and gain insights; to expand your thinking and that of others; to generate new ideas and thinking; to leverage your experience; to help you gain traction and overcome inertia; to challenge the status quo; and to learn.

For the key skill, you are looking to improve what are the top 3-5 questions from your list which will have the greatest effect for you and others?

Here are a few examples too of how this might look like

To improve this skill You may want to ask questions like these
Inspiring and motivating others
  • If I gave you 4 hours each week to work on anything you like what would it be?
  • What roadblocks can I remove for you?
  • If you could change 1 thing to make you happier at work: what would it be?
Problem-Solving
  • What exactly is the problem? Why is it a problem? How big is it?
  • Has someone else solved this problem already? If yes, how can we use this?
Delivering Results
  • What are the key factors that influence the results I need to deliver (data, process, people, turnover, price, customer satisfaction….)?
  • How does world class performance look like and how do we compare?
Good Communication
  • What questions should I have asked but did not?
  • Let me understand your communication preferences: what are they?
  • What questions/comments do you have for me?
Driving Innovation and Strategy
  • If you had to do this in half the time / with half the funds / half the resources / … how would it work?
  • What does the customer value that’s not in our product?
  • What is in our product that the customer does not value?
Providing Direction and Goals
  • What is the #1 goal to focus on this year?
  • What are priorities vs sideshows?
  • What should guide all decisions we make ($, quality, client satisfaction, data…)?
Developing Others
  • Which of your skills are we not using?
  • What have I done today to develop others?
  • If you were in my place, what would you do?
  • How do you add value around here?
Internal and External Relationship-Building
  • What questions can I ask colleagues / clients to get into a deep, meaningful conversation right away?
  • What was the achievement that makes you most proud this year?
  • What key challenges are you working on right now?

Use this approach to help you develop your leadership skills.  Even more importantly, share this approach with your peers and reports – a great leader helps others to surpass himself or herself. So what have you found of most value in this blog post? What will you do as a result?  Share this here and we can learn from each other!

To view or download a PDF version of this blog click here.

Share your thoughts and ideas here, or email me at andrew.cooke@business-gps.com.au

If you found this article of use or interest please don’t hesitate to share it with others.

Click here to find out more about Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions.

The Three Areas of Leadership Focus

Andrew Cooke Leadership ,

Self-focus, others focus and a wider world focus

The Three Areas of Leadership Focus Being a leader is continually demanding role. To be effective you not only need to know what to focus on, but also what to not focus on.  This is made more complex is that you need focus on and understand yourself, your people or team, and the business environment in which you operate.

Self-focus and others focus on developing your emotional intelligence, and a wider world focus develops your strategic, management and innovation thinking and capacity.

To develop your self-focus you need to develop your self-awareness and your self-control. Your self-awareness is being aware of your ‘inner voice’ and self-control is about keeping and maintaining your attention where it is needed. To develop your self-awareness you need to develop your ability to interpret your gut instinct, whilst also being authentic – being able to look at yourself objectively and compare that to how others perceive you.

To improve your others focus is about focusing your attention on other people, not yourself, and to do this you need to build your empathy and create relationships.  There are three distinct types of empathy:

  • Cognitive empathy—the ability to understand another person’s perspective
  • Emotional empathy—the ability to feel what someone else feels
  • Empathic concern—the ability to sense what another person needs from you

You need all three types of empathy and to be able to draw on them as and when you need. This helps you to build strong relationships with other people and helps you to have influence.

Finally, developing a wider world focus helps you develop your strategic thinking and allows you to pursue new ways forward, and to spot and take advantage of opportunities and changes before others. This is especially important as the business environment is becoming increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous; this has meant that you can no longer get the same results from what you have always done. You need to change and anticipate the changes.  So type of focus also needs you to develop your creative thinking which includes that you have:

  • Vigilance – that you remain alert for relevant information while immersing yourself in all kinds of input
  • Selective attention – you focus on one thing while filtering out everything else
  • Open awareness – when you keep yourself open to new possibilities as you explore the environment around you.

Each of the three areas of focus – self, others and the wider world – comes together for the greatest effect.  Do this for yourself, but also help others to develop their focus in each of the three areas – this will provide you with leverage and opportunities!

To view or download a PDF version of this blog click here. 

Share your thoughts and ideas here, or email me at andrew.cooke@business-gps.com.au

If you found this article of use or interest please don’t hesitate to share it with others.

Click here to find out more about Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions.

Using Peer Pressure to Create Alignment

Andrew Cooke Behaviour, Culture, Employee Engagement, Leadership, Performance

How to design and create peer pressure to align people and efforts.

Peer Pressure

Peer pressure is a useful way to get people to work together.  A working definition of peer pressure for the purpose of this is:

“Peer pressure is the influence exerted by a peer group or an individual, encouraging other individuals to change their attitudes, values, or behaviors in order to conform to group norms”.

In other words, the group or individual(s) are looking for their peers to behave in a desired manner to achieve given outcomes.

Key Steps to Creating Peer Pressure

1. What is the peer group? – for what group of peers are you looking to create peer pressure for?  Be clear on who they are.  If the people identified to belong to different groups then you will not be able to work with a group who have commonality – these may be in terms of roles, responsibilities, position etcetera.

2. Identify the outcomes you are looking for – what is it you want the peer group to achieve?  Be specific.  The tighter the description of what you are trying to achieve the better.

3. What behaviors are you looking for? – this works in two parts:

a. Desired behaviors – what are the behaviors that you want the group to exemplify and demonstrate in working to achieve the desired key outcomes.

b. Undesired behaviors – what behaviors do you not want to see portrayed by the group which, if they occur, will be subjected to peer pressure from the group to make the individual(s) conform to the desired behaviors.

4. Determine the metrics:

a. Outcomes – how will you measure your progress in achieving the outcomes you are looking to realize; how will you know when you have got it?  The metrics used need to be meaningful, relevant and commonly shared and understood by the peer group.

b. Behaviors – what will people be doing that need to be exemplified and demonstrated in achieving the desired outcomes.

5. Establish the process – make sure there is a clear process to guide and assist the group to achieve the outcomes and exhibit the desired behavior.  This process should align people with what is wanted and set the desired expectations.  Furthermore, this process should help to make the situation visible and tangible so those impacted can see what is happening.  Furthermore, the process should make clear:

The benefits to every one of adhering to the process

A. The costs to everyone if one or more people do not keep to the process.

B. The costs to everyone if one or more people do not keep to the process.

Case Study

The Situation

A company I worked with had a number of teams working on a variety of different projects at the same time.  The reports that were written, based on fieldwork, took time and effort to develop and needed to be cross-checked and submitted to a quality control process.  This involved a small report processing team of people who liaised with the team leaders.  A key aspect of this was for all team leaders to inform the report-processing team on upcoming work for the next week.  This allowed them to schedule the workload and ensure that the work was properly prioritized.

The Problem

Several of the team leaders, despite repeated requests, were either late in submitting the information or did not pass it on at all.  This caused problems for both the report-processing team who were given the work at the last minute, with no prior consultation, and then had to try to fit it into the workload that had already been scheduled.  This caused them difficulties and could also adversely affect the work of those team leaders who had informed the report-processing team of their upcoming work requirements promptly.

Developing Peer Pressure to Help in Solving the Problem

Step 1: Determine the Peer Group

This is the team leaders in charge of the field teams which compile the information used to create the report.

Step 2, 3 & 4. What are the Desired Outcomes, Desired Behaviours & Metrics?

Creating Peer Pressure - Case Study

Step 5: – The Process

The report-processing team developed a report which highlighted who had submitted information, when (whether on-time or late), for which project and the principal responsible.  All information was to have been submitted by midday on Friday.  Anything coming in after that was regarded as late and was detailed in the report that was emailed to all team leaders, their reports and the principals to whom the team leaders reported.

Sample of the Project Information Update Status Report

Creating Peer Pressure - Case Study Report

The report was sent out with a message to highlight the benefits of conforming to the group and the costs of non-conformance.  This was to help stimulate and direct peer pressure.

Sample Text

“Please find below the information submission report.  As you are aware providing us with the necessary information when required helps us to schedule the resources to ensure that reports are produced on time and to standards.

Please note that delays in submitting your information will not only make it difficult to schedule your work, and may cause delay, but may also negatively impact the work of your colleagues.  Please help them by submitting the information on time.

Currently, 60% of projects are supplying information on time; this is a standard expected of 100%.  There are four projects for which we lack information, some of which are significantly overdue.  Please help us to address these outstanding projects so we can help you effectively”.

By doing this it made everything visible and tangible. It identified trends and patterns in what people were doing, created peer pressure by highlighting those who were not conforming against a background of everyone conforming, and made it difficult for people to maintain non-conforming behavior.

Try this for yourself.  Use the five steps to create the process to help you achieve the desired outcomes and behaviors which will be encouraged by the resulting peer pressure.

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3 Requirements for High Employee Engagement

Andrew Cooke Employee Engagement, Employee Retention, Employees, Leadership, Management, Sustainability , ,

Sustainable Engagement

Are your people really engaged in their work or not?  What does current research tell us? What are the implications of the results?

Falling levels of engagement are leading indicators that your business is likely to experience a fall in productivity, a decline in customer service, and increasing rates of absenteeism and employee turnover.

Disengagement, in all its forms, is a real risk to the organization’s productivity and performance. This is especially important in increasing competitive and volatile times, especially as organizations downsize with reduced workforces having to do more with less.

The 3 Elements of Sustainable Engagement

Tower Watson describes sustainable engagement describes the intensity of employees’ connection to their organization, based on three core elements:

  • The extent of employees’ discretionary effort committed to achieving work goals (being engaged)
  • An environment that supports productivity in multiple ways (being enabled)
  • A work experience that promotes well-being (feeling energized)

Traditional engagement

  • Belief in company goals and objectives
  • Emotional connection (pride, would recommend employer)
  • Willingness to give extra effort to support success

Enablement

  • Freedom from obstacles to success at work
  • Availability of resources to perform well
  • Ability to meet work challenges effectively

Energy

  • Ability to maintain energy at work
  • Supportive social environment
  • Feelings of enthusiasm/accomplishment at work

How Engaged are You & Your Team?

A study by Towers Watson in 2012 shows that only one in three employees are highly engaged – the rest are unsupported, detached or disengaged.  These types of engagement and whether people in each category are engaged, enabled or energized is shown below.

Types of Engagement & Attributes Mix

Types of Engagement & Attributes Mix

Global Levels of Engagement (Tower Watson, 2012)

2012 Global Levels of Engagement On average, only one in three of your employees are engaged – the rest are not sustainably engaged.

About one in five is engaged but lack the necessary support to perform and/or a feeling of achievement and support at work.

Nearly one in five is detached – they have the support they need to perform, and the feeling of achievement and energy, but they are not aligned and engaged with their work.

One in four is disengaged – they are not engaged, energized or enabled in their work.  As such they are unhappy in their work, and use your business as the means by which to share their unhappiness to other employees, clients and others.

What Does This Mean for Organisations?

Organisations need to take the time and make the effort to understand their people and where the engagement gaps are that need to be addressed.  To help engage people, and to create performance and the realization of the right outcomes and productivity you need to ensure:

  1. You have the right people
  2. Who are using the right tools, who have
  3. Access to the development of the skills and behaviours they need

So what are you going to do, and where can you work first to have the greatest impact?  Your people are your biggest asset not on your balance sheet – so invest in them!

Click here to find out more about Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions.