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The Advisor’s Corner – How do I deal with so much on my plate?

How do I deal with so much on my plate?Question:

There is SO much on my plate – how do I sort out priorities, recognize the blocks, and keep an open mind for possibilities?

StrategyDriven Response: (by Roxi Hewertson, StrategyDriven Principal Contributor)

You might find that you are so focused on the ‘tasks’ at hand that the most important work is getting the short end of the stick. Let’s identify some ‘buckets’ to help you navigate your way to success.

Perhaps you have just been given a challenge to solve by your leader. Your job is to identify the relevant factors, create priorities, and then execute on your own or with others on your team. My advice: start by identifying which items fall into each of four buckets: Fat Rabbits, Quick Wins, Rocks, and Who Cares.

You know what a Fat Rabbit looks like, and it probably makes you smile! These are those parts of the challenge that are foundational, have the highest/fattest impact, and must be in place to succeed at executing your assignment. These are the big fat chunks of your challenge that need to be addressed or nothing else will work matter.

Quick Wins are those parts of your challenge that require minimal effort with maximum payoff. They demonstrate tangible, visible progress. Getting them done and making them known to the appropriate stakeholders, significantly boosts momentum. Too many people think they have to get the Fat Rabbits well underway or completed before going for any Quick Wins. Ignoring Quick Wins often results in Slow Wins or No Wins.

Then there are the Rocks. These are tough blocks in the road to completion of a successful challenge. These Rocks need to be identified without denial or wishful thinking. Pretending they aren’t there won’t make them go away. Sometimes Rocks are pebble like, and sometimes they are more like Mt. Rushmore. Solutions may not be known immediately, and that’s ok. You won’t move forward without moving the Rocks out of the way one way or another, or finding a way around them. If the Rocks are too formidable, reconsider the challenge – is it the right challenge at the right time? Moving Rocks requires a lot of effort and energy, so you need it to pay off.

Finally, we have the Who Cares bucket. These might be interesting, but they are a distraction. Identify the Who Cares items so your valuable time and energy are not waste and that no one really cares about.

Let’s take one challenge, Succession Planning and dip into the four buckets for a look. This sample is by no means complete, but it will give you the idea to apply to your own work.

Fat Rabbits

  • Define the workforce realities with indisputable facts, and create the ‘burning platform’ of urgency
  • Identify current competencies and compare with necessary next generation competencies
  • Align all HR/OD functions: to meet forecasted job content and design

Quick Wins

  • Learn why people come to work at ABC Company, why they stay, and why they leave
  • Identify key positions and key people to target for succession planning
  • Analyze internal/external labor demographics/pipelines

Rocks

  • Decentralization reality vs. having one ABC Company strategy, are in conflict
  • IT Systems, as they are today, and aggregate data reporting are insufficient to collect enough accurate data

Who Cares

  • Offices need to be rennovated when people leave, thus impacting the budget (lots of things impact the budget – it’s off topic or very low priority)

When you focus on the things that really matter, you make progress. When you don’t, you don’t make progress. Make sure your Rocks are not show stoppers, then go for a few visible and happy Quick Wins as you work on your Fat Rabbits!


About the Author

Leadership authority Roxana (Roxi) Hewertson is a no-nonsense business veteran revered for her nuts-and-bolts, tell-it-like-it-is approach and practical, out-of-the-box insights that help both emerging and expert managers, executives and owners boost quantifiable job performance in various mission critical facets of business. Through AskRoxi.com, Roxi — “the Dear Abby of Leadership” — imparts invaluable free advice to managers and leaders at all levels, from the bullpen to the boardroom, to help them solve problems, become more effective and realize a higher measure of business and career success.


The StrategyDriven website was created to provide members of our community with insights to the actions that help create the shared vision, focus, and commitment needed to improve organizational alignment and accountability for the achievement of superior results. We look forward to answering your strategic planning and tactical business execution questions. Please email your questions to [email protected].

The Advisor’s Corner – How do I ask for a raise or promotion?

How do I ask for a raise or promotion?Question:

How do I ask for a raise or promotion?

StrategyDriven Response: (by Roxi Hewertson, StrategyDriven Principal Contributor)

Think about it this way – you lose nothing by advocating for the pay and position you deserve. If the answer you receive is ‘no,’ then you’ll be right where you are now except you will know a lot more about whether or not you should stay.

Reframe your thinking. While you certainly have everything to do with the way the job is being done, there is more. When you take the emotion out of it, you will be talking to your boss about the business value of the job you are doing. This can help the conversation to be data driven vs. personal.

5 TIPS to Help You Self-advocate

1. Know yourself. Make sure you are 100% sure the job you are doing IS actually a great job. Ask for feedback about what you are doing well and what you can do better from your boss, peers, customers, and if you have them, direct reports. Write down what they say and keep a log. Another part of knowing yourself is knowing what you are and are not willing to do for that promotion. Are the hours longer, is there travel, do you have to manage others? All of these factors will impact your life. So consider what matters most to you.

2. Know your stuff. Make sure your work is truly adding value to your company/organization and be prepared to prove it. Speak to your results – behavioral and business. Your behaviors are critical to your success. Do you ‘play well with others?’ What about your business results? Answering the questions about your behavior and business results will help you think clearly about what data you need to collect.

3. Know your people. Make sure you know how your boss needs to hear and see things. Does he/she like just the facts, conceptual framework, objectivity, ideas? If you don’t know, you’re missing the train. HOW you ask is as important as WHAT you ask. This includes timing. Don’t have this conversation in the midst of a crisis, on Friday afternoon, or just before you or your boss go on vacation. Have it when you are prepared, he/she has a heads up (bosses don’t like surprises) that you’d like to discuss changes/new expectations/results in your role.

4. Know your system. Make sure you know how and when your organization allows for raises. Is there a new job description needed? Is there a pay scale system that can back you up? Are raises only given once a year or are there bonuses, etcetera? Talk to your HR people to learn what is possible in your system.

5. Know your options. Make sure you are aware of your and your job’s value in the market place. Search Salary.com, Glassdoor.com and job sites like Monster.com, Snagajob.com for a similar job to yours or the job you want to be doing. Identify the education/experience/competencies needed to be qualified, and then do some ‘mining’ of the data that’s out there on the internet. You now have even more objective data to include if it supports your request.

Finally, if you feeling undervalued, ask yourself why you feel this way. Is it your relationship with your boss or is it the job or is it the pay or some combination? Sometimes we confuse these. Getting objective will help. When you know the answers and have collected your data, you are ready to change what needs to change – your pay, your title, your boss, your job, your company, or… yourself.


About the Author

Leadership authority Roxana (Roxi) Hewertson is a no-nonsense business veteran revered for her nuts-and-bolts, tell-it-like-it-is approach and practical, out-of-the-box insights that help both emerging and expert managers, executives and owners boost quantifiable job performance in various mission critical facets of business. Through AskRoxi.com, Roxi — “the Dear Abby of Leadership” — imparts invaluable free advice to managers and leaders at all levels, from the bullpen to the boardroom, to help them solve problems, become more effective and realize a higher measure of business and career success.


The StrategyDriven website was created to provide members of our community with insights to the actions that help create the shared vision, focus, and commitment needed to improve organizational alignment and accountability for the achievement of superior results. We look forward to answering your strategic planning and tactical business execution questions. Please email your questions to [email protected].

The Advisor’s Corner – How Should I Address Sensitive Subjects With My Staff?

How Should I Address Sensitive Subjects With My Staff?Question:

How can I navigate ‘touchy’ subjects with my staff?

StrategyDriven Response: (by Roxi Hewertson, StrategyDriven Principal Contributor)

If you read no further, remember this – it is a fact that “the truth will set you free!” What is also a fact is, HOW you share your truth matters as much or more than WHAT you share. Some of the hardest things leaders have to do are deal with delicate employee relation’s issues and/or tough business realities that impact their people. Most leaders are ill equipped, and have had very little, if any, training or good experience in this area.

Workplace issues with employees show up because people are messy and groups are messy. Deep down, leaders know this is reality. It’s not as simple as, “Why can’t everyone just be happy, do their job, and get along?” Right? Life isn’t that simple for any of us. There are effective ways to navigate your people and organization to a better place in tough times.

The answer to preventing and/or resolving delicate employee or business issues begins with creating the culture you want within your business, hiring well in the first place, leading people effectively, and finally managing performance consistently.

The leader sets the expectations and tone, and must hold all staff accountable, including herself or himself. All leaders within the organization have a big impact on everything, everyday. This means no individual who holds a leadership role is off the hook.

Here are four guidelines for navigating sensitive issues with employees:

  1. Don’t assume anything or react immediately – check out all the facts, just like you would expect from a good audit or quality assurance assessment. Make sure you are confident in your conclusions.
  2. Utilize Constructive Feedback skills and methods. The kindest thing you can do for an employee is tell the TRUTH – RESPECTFULLY. Make sure your motivations are positive and convey your positive intent in helping them.
  3. Resolve conflicts as soon as possible. Don’t hope they will go away – they rarely do. A large percentage of conflicts arise from miscommunication, lack of clarity of expectations or both.
  4. Demonstrate empathy –try hard to walk a mile in his or her shoes before you say anything you might regret. This means LISTEN deeply.

If the tough situation is something like layoffs or cost cutting, and you aren’t even sure about the end game, the people who work for you still deserve to know as much as you are able to share.

Transparency – transparency – transparency! In a small or even mid-sized office, everyone can smell trouble. There is no hiding it. Most people fill in the blank spaces with bad news, not good news. Rumors start, and those are often worse than reality. This is toxic for any group and will hurt your customers as well.

Since you can’t hide it, tell the truth. Rather than losing sleep over how people will respond, tell them what you know and tell them what you don’t know and tell them what you can’t tell them and why. Then manage the emotions by allowing their voice to be heard and engage in solutions as much as they can.

As you consider how to help your people work things out or when you must share tough news, consider these 2 RULES:

  1. The Golden Rule is about fairness – how YOU would like to be treated.
  2. The Platinum Rule is about empathy – how HE/SHE wants to be treated, considering what they need, not just what do you need.

By keeping these two rules smack in the front of your mind as you embark on tough conversations of any kind will help you navigate them, and help you sleep at night.


About the Author

Leadership authority Roxana (Roxi) Hewertson is a no-nonsense business veteran revered for her nuts-and-bolts, tell-it-like-it-is approach and practical, out-of-the-box insights that help both emerging and expert managers, executives and owners boost quantifiable job performance in various mission critical facets of business. Through AskRoxi.com, Roxi — “the Dear Abby of Leadership” — imparts invaluable free advice to managers and leaders at all levels, from the bullpen to the boardroom, to help them solve problems, become more effective and realize a higher measure of business and career success.


The StrategyDriven website was created to provide members of our community with insights to the actions that help create the shared vision, focus, and commitment needed to improve organizational alignment and accountability for the achievement of superior results. We look forward to answering your strategic planning and tactical business execution questions. Please email your questions to [email protected].

The Advisor’s Corner – How Should I, as a Leader, Communicate?

How Should I, as a Leader, Communicate?Question:

Everyone talks about communication being a problem in our company. As a leader, what am I supposed to do about it?

StrategyDriven Response: (by Roxi Hewertson, StrategyDriven Principal Contributor)

A recent Development Dimensions International study, Driving Workplace Performance through High-Quality Conversations: What leaders must do every day to be effective, reminds us in no uncertain terms, that leaders, peers and direct reports need to hold more effective conversations at work to receive more effective business performance.

Technology gets a lot of the blame for the continued degradation of communication skills among leaders over the past two decades. But technology, like any tool, can be used in positive or negative ways. What really matters is how we choose to communicate and how we choose to use our tools. Technology works well for:

  • Sharing information,
  • Setting up meetings,
  • Keeping records

But it does not work well when:

  • We need to have a dialogue and a conversation,
  • We copy the world to cover our bases or boost our egos,
  • There is emotion involved

Since communication norms are deeply woven into the fabric of every organization’s culture, this challenge starts with the CEO and involves all his or her leaders. The DDI study validates how important emotional intelligence competencies, particularly self-awareness and social skills are in human interactions.

Everything we do happens through our relationships – at work and outside of work. When communication is poor or stops, the relationship is poor or stops. In the DDI study, the authors point out that senior leaders have not mastered these communication skills any better than less senior leaders, even though they have been at it longer. To me this strongly indicates we think we are communicating well when we simply… are not.

Take a few moments over the next several days to see if you notice any of these poor interaction habits in yourself and/or leaders you know:

  • Jumping to task before understanding the full picture.
    One solution: Take the time to gather information and listen carefully.
  • Unskilled at, or choosing not to have, effective conversations.
    One solution: Learn this skill or get out of leadership.
  • Failing to engage others in decisions that impact them.
    One solution: Ask yourself, “Who is impacted by this decisions?” Then, engage those people in the process.
  • Failing to demonstrate authentic empathy.
    One solution: Slow down and truly put yourself in another person’s shoes. What might it be like to be him or her right now? Don’t know? Ask.
  • Ego and personal agenda driven.
    One solution: Ask yourself, “Do I really need to be or prove I am right? Or do I want my team to succeed no matter whose idea it is?”
  • Unable to facilitate a productive meeting or discussion.
    One solution: Learn these skills and/or engage skilled facilitators to help you.

The systemic, long-term solution to improving interaction and communication skills in your organization is to make it MATTER. It’s quite simple to do…

What you reward is what you will get. What you don’t reward, you will get much less often.

Leaders generally know what a good conversation looks like. Knowing is the easy part. Doing is the hard part. The leader’s number ONE responsibility is to create and nurture a culture that will bring out the best in their people. Those choices and priorities will roll downhill. This is particularly true for the behaviors we model for our direct reports – all the way from the C-Suite to the front line.

At the end of the day, when we are not truly listening, we are not leading. Period.


About the Author

Leadership authority Roxana (Roxi) Hewertson is a no-nonsense business veteran revered for her nuts-and-bolts, tell-it-like-it-is approach and practical, out-of-the-box insights that help both emerging and expert managers, executives and owners boost quantifiable job performance in various mission critical facets of business. Through AskRoxi.com, Roxi — “the Dear Abby of Leadership” — imparts invaluable free advice to managers and leaders at all levels, from the bullpen to the boardroom, to help them solve problems, become more effective and realize a higher measure of business and career success.


The StrategyDriven website was created to provide members of our community with insights to the actions that help create the shared vision, focus, and commitment needed to improve organizational alignment and accountability for the achievement of superior results. We look forward to answering your strategic planning and tactical business execution questions. Please email your questions to [email protected].

The Advisor’s Corner – How Do I Lead Those Older Than Me?

How Do I Lead Those Older Than Me?Question:

How do I lead direct reports who are quite a bit older than me?

StrategyDriven Response: (by Roxi Hewertson, StrategyDriven Principal Contributor)

Indeed, the chances of leading people senior in age and experience to you are quite high given the delayed retirements and demographics we see today. This is not a bad thing; in fact, if you are good leader, you will welcome the diversity in perspective, experience, and wisdom you can utilize from within your team. In my career I rarely held a leadership role without managing people older than me, until I became the older one! There are a few key things to keep in mind to get the best from your more senior staff.

Everything we do happens through our relationships, and how we behave impacts each of those relationships. When you create a trusting, respectful relationship with your staff, you will reap the rewards over and over again. It’s also about the conversation.

You already have the ‘authority’ if you’re the boss, and frankly, if you pull the “I’m the boss” card out more than 10% of the time, and even then, only when there is no other way to get something essential to happen, you are blowing it. Just like anyone else, you have to earn respect and trust… it doesn’t come with your title. If you are feeling insecure, uncertain, and less than adequate as you carry out your role, do whatever you need to do to learn enough to feel confident. Take classes, read… and oh, by the way, your greatest teachers might just be on your staff. Welcome their wisdom and make sure they know how much you appreciate it and them.

Here are 5 things you can do that will signal you are listening and respecting – and they apply to ANY of your staff:

  1. Be EXPLICIT about your expectations, how you will measure success, and then acknowledge their performance – whether good or not so good.
  2. ASK far more than you tell. LISTEN to your people, ask them what they know, want, feel, and need.
  3. Remove the word “but” from most of your conversations – say “and” instead or end the first sentence with a period and start a new one. When people hear “but” they don’t believe anything you said before it.
  4. Say “We” 10 times more often than “I”, including in your emails.
  5. Do not say “No” first. At least listen and say what more you need or agree that you’ll at least think about it.

The fundamentals of building a highly effective team come into play here, no matter the demographics or personalities. When you know how to create safety, trust, and group synergy, you will engage everyone on your team and get the most of their talent. So ask yourself – do you know where you want to take your team? Have you made time to get to know each of your people, what motivates them, and what they love or don’t love about their jobs? Have you asked for their wisdom, letting them know the team can only succeed with everyone contributing? Have you honored their contributions?

Bottom line – every individual has a story, a whole life, and is motivated by different things. When you build a trusting relationship and establish you truly care about that person, their wisdom, and their contributions, you will get a boatload of help, respect, and you may just learn a thing or two along the way!


About the Author

Leadership authority Roxana (Roxi) Hewertson is a no-nonsense business veteran revered for her nuts-and-bolts, tell-it-like-it-is approach and practical, out-of-the-box insights that help both emerging and expert managers, executives and owners boost quantifiable job performance in various mission critical facets of business. Through AskRoxi.com, Roxi — “the Dear Abby of Leadership” — imparts invaluable free advice to managers and leaders at all levels, from the bullpen to the boardroom, to help them solve problems, become more effective and realize a higher measure of business and career success.


The StrategyDriven website was created to provide members of our community with insights to the actions that help create the shared vision, focus, and commitment needed to improve organizational alignment and accountability for the achievement of superior results. We look forward to answering your strategic planning and tactical business execution questions. Please email your questions to [email protected].