Posts

The Advisor’s Corner – How Do I Establish a Decision-Making Protocol?

/in , /by

How Do I Establish a Decision-Making Protocol?Question:

What can we do to clean up decision-making habits in my workplace? No one seems to know who is making which decisions and it’s driving us all crazy!

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

Leaders get into trouble far too often simply because they don’t have good decision-making protocols in place on their team or in their business. If a decision matters to you, then make your decision matter!

Here are several all too common scenarios:

  • People keep wondering, “Who is making the decision about…?” and feel they are powerless to do anything in the meantime.
  • Someone comes up to you and says, “Why didn’t anyone tell me about that decision; it impacts my work?”
  • Another person says, “Well, if she’d already made the decision, why did she ask me my opinion?”
  • You hear, “When will he decide – he’s holding up everything at my end!”

There is such a simple way to prevent these and many other ‘dropped balls’ from happening in your workplace. Once you get in the habit of asking these 5 questions of yourself and/or your team, each and every time, you’ll find it could take as few as 60 seconds to get to the answers. Even better, it will save you and others frustration, confusion, hard feelings, lost time and lost profits. Best yet, you’ll gain more respect from those you lead because they can trust you to make decisions well.

5 Key Decision Making Questions

1. WHAT IS THE DECISION that needs to be made? BE EXPLICIT including who and what will be impacted. You need to know exactly what is to be decided. There are often layers of related decisions that need to be made – that’s why you need to start here. When you can clearly articulate the decision, you know what it is – and when you can’t, you don’t. So begin with a lot of clarity.

2. WHOSE DECISION IS IT? Again, you must BE EXPLICIT. This is essential to know and communicate upfront to the people who are impacted. Are you the decision maker? Is it a group? Do you want input or do you want others to make the decision? I’ve often observed that more anxiety is created by not knowing who is making a decision than even the decision itself. And, people lose trust if you pretend their input matters when you’ve already made the decision.

3. WHAT METHOD will you use to decide? Will this be a consensus decision everyone must be able to live with and support? Is it a majority, a plurality, or 2/3 vote, a unanimous agreement, or something else?

4. WHEN WILL THE DECISION BE MADE? The timeline is important for you and other people who are impacted. With a timeline, the decision can be managed well and people can get on with their work. Taking too long or not long enough can be frustrating and create unintended and even dysfunctional outcomes.

5. HOW AND TO WHOM WILL THE DECISION BE COMMUNICATED? This is often overlooked, and yet the success of a decision depends so much on how well it’s communicated. Consider who needs to know, who’s the messenger, how it will be shared, and through what means – in person, by email, over a loud speaker…Often the choice of messenger sends a message all it’s own – is it you, a team, your boss, someone else? The message will be perceived differently depending on the messenger.

It takes a lot of time and energy and sometimes money, to clean up the messes that happen when your decision-making is reactive or ad hoc. I really hope you will make it a point to be proactive in your decision-making because it’s a lot more fun when you are running your life and work instead of letting life and work run you.

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].

Take a Stand: 6 Benefits of Standing Up at Work

/in /by

By now you’ve heard the news: sitting will kill you. They say it’s as threatening to the body as smoking, and even if you belong to the small group of us who work out every day, you aren’t redeemed. One study done in 2012 by Shelly K. McCrady and James A. Levine revealed sitting was more common during the workday than during leisurely time so for those of us who work 40 hours a week, it’s time to stand up.

While not every day is a Saturday and you might need to forego a leisurely walk in the park on your Tuesday, the simple act of standing more throughout your day will impact your life for years to come. And here are 6 reasons why.

Hi there! This article is available for free. Login or register as a StrategyDriven Personal Business Advisor Self-Guided Client by:

Subscribing to the Self Guided Program - It's Free!


 

About the Author

Dan LeeDan Lee is CEO and Co-Founder on NextDesk. NextDesk was founded in January 2012 to help prevent the assorted ailments such as back, neck and shoulder pain, and carpal tunnel syndrome — not to mention more serious health issues — associated with desk-job workers remaining stationary for long periods of time.

Human Performance Management Best Practice 12 – Conservative Decision-Making

/in , , /by

StrategyDriven Human Performance Management Best Practice ArticleNot all decisions are made in the boardroom. Employees make decisions that affect the organization, its reputation, and financial well-being every day. It is important that these decisions be well aligned with the organization’s values and mission goals. Thus, employees should embody a conservative decision-making approach; being adverse to incurring risks that would make their actions unaligned with the organization’s direction.

Hi there! Gain access to this article with a StrategyDriven Insights Library – Total Access subscription or buy access to the article itself.

Subscribe to the StrategyDriven Insights Library

Sign-up now for your StrategyDriven Insights Library – Total Access subscription for as low as $15 / month (paid annually).

Subscribe Now!

Not sure? Click here to learn more.

 Buy the Article

Don’t need a subscription? Buy access to Human Performance Management Best Practice 12 – Conservative Decision-Making for just $2!

Access the Article Now!

Return to the Human Performance Management Forum

About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

Writing my own legacy. One word at a time. Yours?

/in /by

What do you do when you get up every day? Anything to do with your legacy? I doubt it.

Here’s a short version of your morning: Shower. Coffee. TV. Get dressed. Check your calendar. Check your email. Check your social media. Maybe even make a follow-up call (or two) or read a few pages. No legacy there. More like ‘routine.’

Me? I write something. And while I confess I do not do it every day, over the past 22 years I have written more than 1,100 columns, 12 books, 10 e-books, 4,000 tweets, and recorded more that 300 videos on my YouTube Channel.

Numbers? With more that 3.4 million views and more than 19,000 subscribers on my YouTube Channel, my weekly email magazine goes out to more than 350,000 people a week, my twitter followers number more than 70,000, and I have more than 18,000 LinkedIn connections – all from writing.

Yes, I have enjoyed ‘reader acceptance’ and ‘reader response’ – and that combination has more than helped my legacy grow. But…

REALITY: I didn’t start out with 12 books. It started with consistency, and 20 years later, BOOM! I started with ONE idea, one column, one tweet, and went from there.

It’s not a book, it’s a writing project. It’s not my column, it’s a captured idea and my weekly self-discipline. It’s not my tweet, it’s my documented, posted thought that hopefully will get a positive measurement by being re-tweeted more than 50 times.

Over the past eight years, I have grown my social network to a substantial presence. One follower, one reader, one subscriber, one re-tweeter at a time. And I basically did it while you were watching TV. And for the record here – that’s not a brag of mine – it’s a wake-up call of yours.

What will your legacy be? Watching news? Watching reruns? Getting drunk on the weekends? Going to parties? Watching SportsCenter?

INSIGHT: Legacy is something you have to be socially aware of and intellectually on top of. It requires both self-discipline and self-sacrifice – without regret. If you wanna be remembered for it, you gotta love it and give it everything you’ve got. And you have to become known for it. And in my case – you gotta write about it.

In today’s world, writing and being published is no longer a mystery. Blog something, tweet something, post on your LinkedIn page, Facebook something, post a video on YouTube, create your own email magazine, post a quote on Instagram, and BOOM, you are published. Create followers, and BOOM, you have acceptance and a reputation. Do that for 20 years, and BOOM, you have a legacy.

No longer do you have to ‘submit’ your writing and wait for acceptance to be published. You can do it yourself. And in fact, if you do it yourself AND submit, the discerning editor will Google you and find everything. Cool, eh?

START HERE: Ask yourself these legacy-based questions:

  • What do you love to do?
  • What are you passionate about?
  • Where do you excel?
  • Do you have a philosophy about how you live your life?
  • What do you want to be remembered for?
  • What do you want said at your eulogy?
  • What do you want written on your tombstone?

The answers to these questions will uncover legacy potential and create a starting point. Keep in mind, this may be the first time you have ever contemplated your legacy – explore a little.

Here are a few things you can do to get started:

  • Decide ‘what’ you want to be remembered for.
  • Write to clarify your thoughts and affirm your intentions.
  • Dedicate 15 minutes a day – an apple a day.
  • Include some kind of journal or scrapbook to document your progress.
  • Talk about your intentions with those closest to you.
  • Begin writing and posting.
  • Ask people on your list to follow you and contribute their ideas.
  • Start now!

AFFIRM IT: I am a writer and a speaker. I am a dad, granddad, and friend. I love what I do, and I love life.

REALITY: Legacy takes years to create, but achieving it is not a matter of patience. It’s a matter of self-discipline and dedication to your passion, and building your expertise to legacy level. Legacy is not created in a day – it’s created day-by-day.

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].

How to Listen to Hear What’s Intended

/in , /by

StrategyDriven Practices for Professional ArticleLike most of us, I assume I understand what my communication partner is saying and respond appropriately. I don’t think about it; I just do it. I don’t realize anything is wrong until it’s too late. But why do I make that assumption? I was never taught how to hear what others meant to convey.

From kindergarten through university, there are no programs taught on how to accurately hear what others intend to convey or how to make adjustments if there is a breakdown. Current Active Listening models don’t go far enough into the problems of misinterpretation: how, exactly, do our brains make it so difficult for us to avoid biasing what it hears? And what’s the cost to us in terms of relationships, creativity, and corporate success?

What is Listening?

Our listening skills seem to be largely intuitive: we instinctively know how to listen to music and to listen carefully when getting directions to a wedding. But sometimes we mishear or misinterpret what someone said. Or interpret something incorrectly and adamantly believe we are correct. Or lose a client or friend because we’ve not really heard their underlying message. Sometimes we listen for the wrong thing, or listen only to a part of the message.

Do we even know what listening is? We all recognize it as a core communication skill – core to our lives, our relationships, our ability to earn a living and share ideas and feelings. But how do we do it? And how do we do it right – and know when we are doing it wrong? Who’s to blame when we get it wrong? Are there skills that would enable effective listening in every conversation?

My broad interests and unique professional life have brought me in contact with an extensive range of people and situations. Along the way I’ve had thousands of successful conversations with people from many walks of life and in 63 countries. The conversations I found frustrating were my communication partner’s fault. Or so I’d like to think.

My lifelong curiosity with listening was piqued to the point of finally writing this book when reflecting on a seemingly simple conversation I heard at the tail end of a meditation retreat:

Transportation Guy: “You can either leave your luggage near the back of the go-cart and we’ll take it down the hill for you, or you can bring it down yourself.”

Woman: “Where should I leave it if I do it myself?”

Transportation Guy: “Just put it in your car.”

Woman: “No… Just tell me where I can leave it off. I want to walk it down myself when I go to the dining room.”

Transportation Guy: “Just put it in your car. I don’t know why you’re not understanding me. Just. Walk. It. Down. And. Put. It. In. Your. Car.”

A simple exchange. Simple words, spoken clearly. Words with universally recognized definitions. Yet those two folks managed to confound and confuse each other, and instead of asking for clarity they assumed the other was being obtuse.

Indeed, it sounded like they were having two different conversations, each with unique assumptions: the man assumed everyone had a car; the woman assumed there was a specific space set aside for suitcases.

The missing piece, of course, was that the woman was being picked up by a friend and didn’t have a car. The transportation guy didn’t ask for the missing piece and the woman didn’t offer it. When they didn’t get the responses they sought, they each got exasperated by the other’s intractability and, most interesting to me, were unable to get curious when confused. Two sets of assumptions, reference points, and world views using the same language. And when the communication broke down both thought they were right.

Why We Misunderstand

Because we filter out or fabricate so much of what is being said, we merely hear what our brains want us to hear and ignore, misunderstand, or forget the rest. And then we formulate our responses as if our assumptions were true. Our communications are designed merely to convey our internal assumptions, and how people hear us are based on their internal assumptions.

So it merely seems like we are having conversations. We are not; we are just assuming what we hear means something, leaping to false conclusions based on what our brains choose, and blaming the other person when the communication falters. Surprising we don’t have more misunderstandings than we do.

How humbling to realize that we limit our entire lives – our spouse, friends, work, neighborhood, hobbies – by what our brains are comfortable hearing. We are even held back or elevated in our jobs depending on our ability to communicate across contexts. Our listening skills actually determine our life path. And we never realize how limited our choices are.

Would it be best for us to communicate only with those we already know? Seems the odds of us truly hearing and being heard are slim otherwise: unless the speaker’s intent, shared data, history and beliefs are so similar to ours as to share commonality, the odds of understanding another’s intent – and hence what they are really trying to tell us – are small.

But make no mistake: the way we listen works well-enough. We’ve constructed worlds in which we rarely run into situations that might confound us, and when we do we have an easy out: blame the other person.

What if it’s possible to have choice? In Did You Really Say What I Think I Heard, I break down filters, biases, assumptions and communication patterns to enable every reader to truly hear what their Communication Partner intends them to hear, diminish misinterpretation, and expand creativity, leadership, and management.

This article is an excerpt from Sharon Drew Morgen’s new book Did You Really Say What I Think I Heard? coming out in late 2014 with AMACOM. Look for it in bookstores.

About the Author

Sharon Drew Morgen is founder of Morgen Facilitations, Inc. (www.newsalesparadigm.com). She is the visionary behind Buying Facilitation®, the decision facilitation model that enables people to change with integrity. A pioneer who has spoken about, written about, and taught the skills to help buyers buy, she is the author of the acclaimed New York Times Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: Why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.

Want to enhance your or your team’s listening skills? Contact Sharon Drew at [email protected]. Learn about her training programs and speaking topics at www.buyingfacilitation.com.