Leading Through Uncertainty - Top 8 Tips for Leadership When the Future Is Hanging in the Balance

You cannot open a newspaper or listen to the radio or TV nowadays without hearing about some organisation that is downsizing, closing down or completely restructuring itself. Global companies are moving their operations to 'cheaper' locations, public service organisations are having their budgets slashed while many are just failing to keep their heads above water in the current economic crisis.

We only hear the news when the final decisions are made public. But for many of these organisations, they have already had to endure weeks and months of waiting and wondering where and when the axe was going to fall. Thousands of people are getting up every day and going to work worrying about if, and for how long more, they are going to have a job. Many leaders are lying awake at night struggling with how long more they can sustain looking their people in the eye and telling them that they still don't know what the future holds. The stresses all round are massive.

Business Success Is a Function of the Mindset - The Value of Change

Introduction

The death of Steve Jobs exposed us all to so much information about what drove his leadership style. From the general discussions that flowed after his death, one can discern that visionary leaders like have certain characteristics in common, irrespective of the diverse industries, personal background and business style.

In business schools, one learns about the significance of change as a catalyst for business growth and success. Therefore, it may not be too difficult to convince business owners and managers about the positive values of change; yet, experience tells us that the practical aspects of evidencing the adoption of change as a business philosophy can be difficult to demonstrate in most businesses. This is more so with small businesses where the owner/leader is actively involved in the production processes giving him/her little room to reflect purely on supposedly routine administrative functions.

Realising Benefits From Your Investment In Lean

Introduction

The only reason for an organisation to invest in Lean (or similar methodology) is to generate business benefits. The benefits expected are most commonly financial in nature but could also include for example improved customer service, increased productivity or safer processes. Lean is structured common sense and provides individuals and organisations with a clear methodology to help them transform culture and improve performance.

A Lean Organisation can be simply described as one that successfully generates significant benefits from their investment in Lean over an extended period. In addition, the Lean Organisation will have very specific behaviours that support the use of Lean and the adoption of new, more effective, processes, along with widespread staff engagement.

Change Readiness As Currency

There are many different kinds of currency, but they all do the same thing - they can be exchanged for something else. Money is the item we most commonly think of as currency, but there are others. Frequent flyer points or rewards programs are a kind of currency, allowing you to exchange points for travel or goods.

The education sector has its own kind of currency. In Australia, students in their final year of high school sit for exams and receive a ranking. The higher a student is ranked the more choices they have in university courses. Their ranking is a kind of currency they can use to 'buy' their way into particular courses.

The change process, too, has its own currency; and that currency is change readiness. People with readiness in abundance have the ability to take up all sorts of opportunities and adapt to circumstances in their environment much easier than those who really struggle with change. Their readiness is a kind of currency that allows them to capitalise on opportunities and to adapt and innovate.

3 Strategies to Work Positive in the Vertigo Economy

I recently returned from a week of speaking engagements to awaken the next morning to a case of vertigo. I woke up, rolled out of bed as usual, and the floor rose up to whack my head. It was kind of like being drunk on a rollercoaster ride.

Over the next several days, I was in bed or in my recliner, hanging on for dear life, wishing the room would stop spinning. As the rotation slowed, I moved around some.

That's when I thought, "This is like trying to do business today. Just when you think you have figured it out, everything moves and you're off balance again."

Here are 3 strategies that benefited me in the dizziness that will help you Work Positive in this Vertigo Economy.

Op-Ed: Born In the USA

In Born in the USA, Bruce Springsteen wrote that he was "Born down in a dead man town." Well, those towns may be coming to life again, as companies begin to consider reducing the manufacture of products offshore and begin to move to "insourcing," "onshoring" or "reshoring." While off in the distance, America's next big import from China may be jobs. As the cost of doing business rises in traditionally low-cost countries like China, companies are rethinking their offshoring plans. Other countries may currently offer rapidly developing domestic markets, artificially low currencies and significant government incentives to attract foreign investment; the U.S. is still the number one place to make sophisticated, high-cost goods.

A combination of economic forces is eroding China's cost advantage as an export platform for the North American market. With unemployment still at record levels for the foreseeable future, the U.S. offers a flexible workforce and a growing corporate sector. The USA is becoming more attractive as a place to manufacture many goods consumed on this continent.

If You Want to Change Your Business, Start With These 3 Steps

Much of the work that I do is focused on helping businesses go from where they are to where they want to be. I always work hard to make sure that the changes I help businesses make are sustainable, meaning that the leaders in the business are the ones to drive the change. Though every organization is different, most of the challenges that businesses and leaders face involve creating a fully engaged, capable team of people that can execute the mission of the business better than the competition while adapting to the changing market conditions. While that's a daunting task, I help these businesses make that change happen and often these are three of the critical steps.

Clarify Where "There" Is

Many of the leaders I work with recognize that they are not where they need to be, but they have not yet clarified what the new destination looks like. 

So, You Are Just Too Busy Huh?

Has selling really changed in the past several years? Are people just too busy today to have a conversation with someone who can help them increase their business? You would be amazed how many times I hear on the phone from prospects, "I'm just too busy to discuss this." So I follow up with, "Are you too busy to discuss how I can bring you more customers?" or "Are you too busy if I can show you how you can solve a major business challenge today?" Whatever - the point is - are people really to busy or stressed to consider options that will benefit them or are they just turned off by anyone, no everyone, trying to sell them something?

I have heard from hundreds of clients over the years things like, "Thank you for sticking with it." "Thanks for all your effort to sell us." Etc. But I have often asked, "What if I hadn't stuck with it, you would have never known the benefits you have enjoyed." They all agree. 

Why the Turnaround Failed: Former Hostess Brands Executive

We're witnessing the last rasping breaths of Hostess Brands, the national baking company in which I briefly held a senior position. For years, the company has been one of the living dead, just like the hordes in Zombieland, a movie that celebrated Twinkies' iconic status. Now the end is certain, and it's sad because it didn't have to happen. You see, long ago Hostess lost touch with its greatest asset, its people.

In 2010 I joined the Hostess turnaround team as SVP and General Manager of the Atlantic Business Unit. My mission was to start delivering bottom-line profit through a route delivery organization nearly one thousand strong, from central Virginia to Florida. As I had done many times as a soft drink bottler, I launched the sales transformation by getting close to customers through our employees. I conducted countless depot meetings and ride-alongs.

Here's an epiphany conversation with one of our route salesmen; I'll call him John. John was in his fifties. Like many of our employees, he had been with Hostess a long time. 

How Can the Role of Leadership Be Best Understood in Organizational Change?

Leadership as the Head

The Head offerr a prescriptive long-range strategic framing of the role of leadership in organisational change, common in bureaucratic approaches to organisational theory. The Head may take a normative re-educative approach influencing bodily reactions to stimuli; asserting power with mind over matter to affect change in a power-coercive approach; or making decisions to improve the wellbeing of the body to perform better by employing an empirical-rational leadership approach.

In this context the role of leadership relies heavily on the bureaucratic position, political power, authority and an implicit assumption that all change is a result of a planned change strategy, whether continuous or episodic. It also assumes that it is driven from the top in a linear way influencing how the Body responds. 

Efficiency and Effectiveness in Higher Education

1. Introduction

Higher education has seen increasing pressure on funding since the Gershon Report in 2004. This has been accelerated by the new, more market-focused environment created by the current government. Responding to the new funding environment has become a key priority for all higher education establishments, something highlighted in the recommendations of the 2011 Diamond Report. These recommendations state that the way forward is through the adoption of LEAN, increasing and improving collaborative arrangements and putting the effective flow of information at the heart of transitional arrangements. This paper provides an overview of the key concepts that underpin the recommendations within the Diamond Report.

2. Integrated Improvement & LEAN

LEAN is a concept with a long-pedigree. Many people associate it with the transformation of the automotive manufacturer Toyota over the last 50 years but its history extends much further back in time. 

Have Trainers Really Grasped the Importance of Training Transfer?

Introduction

Trainers face pressure to demonstrate that training delivers the desired skills, knowledge and behaviours required to enable the organisation to improve its performance. Transfer demonstrates the effectiveness of a training programme and is important because, it is believed that there is a relationship between improving employee capability and achieving competitive advantage.

Training spend in the UK is approximately £23.5bn per year. Stakeholders want a return on investment (ROI) from the training delivered. However, the 2011 CIPD Survey found only 28% of organisations measure ROI and conduct a cost/benefit analysis.

Definitions and Meanings

A review of research offered a number of definitions regarding transfer:

Living Life on Your Own Terms

It's just not a good use of your life to hang on. Think big, act big. Release what is not yours to carry. Don't be afraid to move on.

Give yourself permission to do this. Give yourself permission to "lighten up."

Because it is only when you lighten up that you will fly.

This something I have spoken about before and a good time to talk about it again. Because so many people on graduating high school and going on to college, or graduating college and planning for their future careers.

As a young children we depend on our parents to make the right decisions for us. As teenagers we rebel because we are beginning to want to take control of our lives and the responsibility of making the decisions for ourselves. 

Career Coaching for Success in a Changing World

Change brings stress and its human nature to find comfort in patterns of consistency. The crutch of predictive repetitiveness is that it is unsustainable. We need to change or adapt in order to survive. The world is changing with more frequency as we enter the knowledge economy fueled by digital communications and technological advances. These changes create uncertainty and reinventing our knowledge, skills, and abilities on a weekly basis is more than challenging. Globalization has contributed to the mass confusion of where we fit into the picture and how we could do something substantial with our lives. There is more competition for resources than ever before in our human history.

With all this change and complication has come increased knowledge and understanding. We have acquired more worldly views and gained a new appreciation for learning as a society. Doors have opened where there were none before. New industries have evolved and newer platforms will emerge in the future.