Give the Gift of Time

“If there is no time for reflection, there is almost no chance for improvement.”-- Fred Harburg, senior VP of leadership and management development, Fidelity Investments Company

Dear Managers and Leaders!

I was talking to someone this morning about the necessity for a leader and his team to work on important things that are not necessarily urgent. The important but not urgent things are the ones that will bring a lot of return to you and your team, not necessarily today, but down the road. As a leader, the best and most important gift you can give your team and yourself is the gift of time, time to reflect and work on important but not urgent things that matter to your team.

What are those important things that you should be working on? Well, I cannot list everything here and some items would be very specific to your situation. But let me list a few generic things that, I hope, will get you thinking some more about what is the important elements that you should spend time on. If you feel like it, please add more elements in your comments. This will help everyone with this “important” topic!

• Improve processes used by your team
• Refine your team’s sense of purpose
• Refine your team’s and team members’ specific objectives
• Better planning for your projects that includes risk analysis and mitigation
• Ensure you develop a culture for your team
• Ensure that workload is well balanced within your team
• Social bonding within the team
• Learn new skills or perfect ones that you possess
• Listen more to your team members
• Think about the next few brick walls that your team will have to face in the near future and define strategies to work around them or to tear them down before your team gets to them (that means less fire fighting!)

Now let’s face it, most leaders already have their hands full just dealing with what is urgent. Extinguishing fires every day takes up a lot of time! How can they even think about working on things that are not urgent, just important? Well, the paradox lies in the fact that, without spending time working on what is not urgent, a leader will always be stuck in fire fighting mode.

So, how can you get out of the fire fighting spiral? The first advice that I can give you is to make a conscious decision to work on important things that are not urgent. This is the first event that must occur before anything else can happen. Then, you must reserve some time every week in your agenda to work on important aspects of your work that are not urgent. Label these reserved time slots “IMPORTANT MEETING” and write them down in your agenda. Make the commitment to never remove them. My advice here would be to start small. You will see improvement even if you have a single one-hour IMPORTANT MEETING with yourself every week. This would probably be a good place to start.

Once you have the IMPORTANT MEETINGs reserved, I’d say that the next step is to come up with a plan as to what to attack first. However, don’t be too structured during those sessions. Give yourself time to brainstorm and think without too much structure. Dreaming about the future is also an important aspect of leadership...

Note that I’m definitely not the first to discuss this topic. Stephen Covey is covering this in great details in "Habit 3" of his excellent book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”.

What about you dear leader, are you spending time working on important but not urgent elements of your work? Have you ever come to realize that this was an essential part of your work and changed your ways to “make it happen”? Please share your experience with us here so we can all learn how to best approach this problem!

Until next time,

Remi Cote

PS: If you find these postings interesting and would like to learn more about what I can do for you and your team, then please visit www.innovachron.com or contact me directly at remi@innovachron.com.

The Power of Teams!

Dear Managers and Leaders!

I wanted to share something I found last night. It is, in my opinion, one of the jewels you do not find often on YouTube. Of course, it struck me from a highly emotional perspective because it reminded me of things I did in the past and team experiences I had in the past.

When you will follow the link at the end of this post, you will see a video of a jazz choir that simply does amazing things together. They sing the song Africa from Toto, without a single instrument, and they use their hands and body to simulate a storm (close your eyes at the beginning for a stunning effect). Go watch it after you’ve read this post as I’m sure you will be impressed!

So what does it have to do with leadership, management, and the power of teams, you’ll ask? Well, a choir is a team, and a very good example of a team. It has a leader (the conductor); it has team members; and the group shares a clear common objective and challenge: to perform a music piece that will impress their public.

As I was watching the video, I felt that group was a very good example of a team. So please be attentive to the following details as you will watch the video:

First, look at the singers:

• It is clear that they like what they are doing
• They have fun
• They are highly focused
• They had a tough challenge and they did it - together!
• They are proud of what they have produced (look at their faces at the end!)

Then look at the conductor

• He does not sing, but he let his people do it
• He coordinates the various movements of his team – but he does not over do it
• At times he dances at the front, more like someone who wants to raise the emotion level in his people than someone who is worried of the result
• He shows he is confident in his people. He trusts they will succeed.

I firmly believe that teams can do great things, a lot more than what individuals can perform alone. I think this choir is a great example of a team doing great things together and I wanted to share that moment with you!

What about you dear leader, have you ever led one of these super teams, the ones that truly exceed expectations? Please share your experience with us here so we can all learn about what it takes to assemble such a team!

Here is the link. Enjoy, it is Summer after all :-)!

Africa By Perpetuum Jazzile

Until next time,

Remi Cote

PS: If you find these postings interesting and would like to learn more about what I can do for you and your team, then please visit www.innovachron.com or contact me directly at remi@innovachron.com.

Leadership Symptoms Analyzed (6)

Editor’s note:

This post is inspired by a discussion that happened on the Leader’s Cafe Foundation Forum in LinkedIn. The forum can be found here: Link To LinkedIn Forum. And the specific discussion can be found here: Specific Discussion.

Dear Managers and Leaders!

In my six previous posts, I first listed 6 symptoms that leaders should take really seriously and then analyzed the first five symptoms: "A team member does not produce what the leader was expecting", "Team members are not coming up with new ideas" and ""Team members are unwilling to push their boundaries", "Team is operating from fear", and "No one seems to know what is urgent, crucial, or at which point we are right now". Today, we come to a conclusion with our analysis and tackle the sixth and last symptom: Resistance to change.

“Change is constant, direct, and temporary, for once things change, you can bet they are going to change again. Learning to thrive on constant change is the next frontier.”

-- Michael Dell, Direct from Dell

When I started to reflect on leadership, it struck me how leaders must be initiators of change. They must constantly be on the look out to find ways to improve the performance of their team and then implement these changes to ensure their team is always running at its peak performance. Without this constant search for improvement, the team can have good performance, but will never strive and will eventually lose momentum. That means that on top of improving the product that the team produces, a good leader always works on his team, trying to perfect every aspect of it.

What that constant search for better performance means to the team is that it will often, if not always, be in a state of change. Improving team performance means changing something to make the team better. So change needs to become a second nature, a part of the team’s everyday life.

You can see how a leader’s success is closely tight to his ability to successfully implement change in his organization. Without this capacity, a leader cannot improve the team’s situation or performance and will slowly but surely lose his leadership. The team will not follow him for a long time if he constantly fails at implementing change. So, as we can see, change management is very crucial to leadership!

For a leader, if team members or the entire team resist change, it is a serious condition that must be dealt with promptly. When you feel the team is not engaged or energized by a proposed change, then you need to investigate and correct the situation rapidly.

Causes

So, what can cause people to resist change? Here is a list of potential causes of resistance to change.

• People disagree with the change – If people think that the change will not bring them to a better situation or that the improvement is not worth it, then they will not accept the pain of changing easily.

• Too many changes, too rapidly – As a leader, you must know your team enough to understand their acceptable “change pace”, the pace at which they can accept change. If you go beyond the change pace of a team, you risk losing people, driving people to burn out, or de-motivating your team members.

• Fear they are unable to adapt – Change actually means that something needs to ... change! People will have to adapt to a new situation. Resistance can be triggered if people are afraid that they will not be able to adapt to the change. For instance, if someone has never used a computer and the change requires her to use a computer, then the difficulty to adapt will be seen as really high and will trigger fear and resistance.

• Threat to their security – We have already talked about security being the second level of the Maslow pyramid. If people feel that the introduced change is a threat to their sense of security, they will definitely resist change. For instance, if the change consisted of using a computer to do a task that someone was actually doing manually in the past, that person might resist change because she feels it is a job security threat.

• Dear-to-heart changes – It is possible that you are trying to change something that is important for the team. Maybe the team is proud of what it accomplished in the past using their old way of doing things. Maybe they are not ready to change because the old way is their branding so to speak.

• Failure of past change initiatives – Maybe people resist the current change because of a bad history with change. Maybe the previous initiatives were failures or did not bring the promised improvements.

Solutions

To help limit the resistance to change in your team, I would offer the following strategies to guide you in your implementation of change initiatives.

• Listen – You first need to listen carefully to your team members and understand all their concerns, fears, and objections. Don’t see them as negative; see them as different points of view that will allow you to refine your ideas, to improve your plans.

• Communicate – You need to be totally transparent with your team members if you want your change initiatives to be successful. You need to explain to them why you think that this change is required and what improvement it will bring to the team. Always talk about the positive and negative impacts that a change will have on the team members themselves and link them to the importance the change has for the team and the rest of the organization. You need to calm people and make them feel secure. Ensure that you understand the possible threats that a change can represent and the fears that your team members could have facing the proposed change and address them right from the start.

• Validate – You should always validate your change initiative ideas with at least some people on your team to ensure you are going in the right direction. You do that before going public with your idea so you have time to refine the initiatives.

• Engage – The easiest way to ensure there will be no resistance to change is when the change initiative comes from your team members themselves. In that case, people will immediately feel compelled by the change, understand why it is required, and they will be willing and eager to implement it.

What about you dear leader, do you see a lot of resistance to change in your team? Also, if you see other causes or other solutions, please share them with this group by adding a comment below so that everyone can benefit from your experience!

Until next time,

Remi Cote

PS: InnovaChron offers a series of workshops and programs that help teams work together to create their vision, solve their problems, and improve their performance. To find out how to generate change initiatives from your team, please visit InnovaChron's web site or contact me directly at remi@innovachron.com.

PPS: If you find these postings interesting and would like to learn more about what I can do for you and your team, then please visit InnovaChron's web site or contact me directly at remi@innovachron.com.

Leadership Symptoms Analyzed (5)

Editor’s note:

This post is inspired by a discussion that happened on the Leader’s Cafe Foundation Forum in LinkedIn. The forum can be found here: Link To LinkedIn Forum. And the specific discussion can be found here: Specific Discussion.

Dear Managers and Leaders!

In my five previous posts, I first listed 6 symptoms that leaders should take really seriously and then analyzed the first four symptoms: "A team member does not produce what the leader was expecting", "Team members are not coming up with new ideas" and ""Team members are unwilling to push their boundaries", and "Team is operating from fear". Today, we will continue our analysis and tackle the fift symptom: No one seems to know what is urgent, crucial, or at which point we are right now.

As you lead your team, you really want to have all your team members on the same page. You want them to build the same ship, to march to the same drum beat; you want them all to be aligned with your vision. This is what you want. However, reality can be quite different from what you want! Leadership deals with human beings and human beings are diverse, understand different things even when listening to the same source, have their own agenda, and sometimes forget. To succeed in having everyone on your team focused on the same end goal requires your constant effort and attention.

That means that you must always be aware of where your people are really going, not where you think they are going. You must also constantly re-enforce communication of your vision, of where you want them to go.

Signals

So, what are the first few signals that should alert you about an alignment problem within your team? I would say the following should compel you to re-state your vision and priorities to your team:

• Bad priority call by one of your team members – If one of your team members makes a priority call that goes against what you would have made yourself, you should be alerted and try to understand why it happened and align the team member right away.

• Lack of focus, or the focus is not important to attain the vision – When you see people on your team going in all sorts of directions that are not important to the achievement of the vision, you should definitely have a talk with them and re-focus their efforts.

• Team’s ideas are going in wrong direction - In team discussions, ideas brought up by your team members are not going in the right direction. You can see that if you followed them, they would not lead the team in the direction set by the vision.

It is probably impossible to come up with an exhaustive list of signals, but you should understand the general pattern and apply it to your particular situation.

Causes

Causes of this lack of alignment in your group can be multiple. Here are a few possibilities to help you sort out what is happening in your team.

• Lack of vision from the leader – if the leader himself does not know where the team is going, then the team will have problems following the leader. As soon as the vision becomes blurry, you will see the team members actually creating their own vision, consciously or not, and follow this vision.

• Lack of communication of the leader’s vision – if the leader has a clear vision of where the team is going but if that vision is not communicated clearly to the team, then it is equivalent to not having a vision at all.

• Team does not share or embrace the leader’s vision – here we are in a situation where the leader has a good vision of where the team is going and he has communicated that vision clearly to the team. Now, if the team does not share that vision, if the team members never bought into the direction where the leader wants them to go, then the leader will always have to fight with the team to make them go where he wants.

• Vision is clear but the plan is ill-defined – everyone agrees here on a clear, well-communicated vision. However, that vision is far and away and the path to get to the vision has not been clearly established. That means that the goal is defined but has never been actualized. People see the goal but no one knows how to get there. In this case, you are not facing misalignment but rather confusion as to how to make the vision real.

• Leader did not set priorities clearly – if the team is not clear as to what the priorities are, or if everything has equal importance, then it is really difficult for the team members to make the right calls by themselves when faced with a difficult situation.

Solutions

As you can see above, your team will lose its sense of direction when a vision for the team is not clearly established and shared by your team. When team members do not know what the collective vision for the team is, they will define their own vision and act upon it. This might not be conscious, but this is what will happen because a certain vision needs to be created before action can take place. You cannot really hammer a nail if the shape of the house to build is not well defined in your mind. The problems come when people building the house together do not have the same vision of the shape of the house. The house will likely never be finished if everyone working on it had a different vision of the completed house.

Leading a team is like building a house. The team needs to share the same vision of their end product or destination otherwise nothing will be achieved despite all the effort put into it. The team needs to share a collective vision. As the leader of the team, you own that collective vision. You are responsible to make sure that the collective vision is created, shared, communicated, and acted upon.

Note that I’m not saying that you need to define that collective vision on your own. Please do not get me wrong here. It is OK, even preferable, for the leader not to create everything himself. Have your team help elaborate the vision! Have your team find solutions to their own problems as a team. This is actually extremely powerful! If you have your team participate in defining the collective vision of your team, you will see that people are suddenly engaged and the vision will be automatically shared by everyone on the team. On top of that, your team’s vision will then be anchored in reality because your team members are on the floor every day. They are connected with reality.

What about you dear leader, does your team have a clear collective vision? Do you have all your team members acting in concert and going in the same direction? Also, if you see other causes, other signals, or other solutions, please share them with this group so that everyone can benefit from your experience!

Until next time,

Remi Cote

PS: InnovaChron offers a series of workshops and programs that help teams work together to create their vision, solve their problems, or improve their performance. To find out more, please visit InnovaChron's web site or contact me directly at remi@innovachron.com.

PPS: If you find these postings interesting and would like to learn more about what I can do for you and your team, then please visit InnovaChron's web site or contact me directly at remi@innovachron.com.

Leadership Symptoms Analyzed (4)

Editor’s note:

This post is inspired by a discussion that happened on the Leader’s Cafe Foundation Forum in LinkedIn. The forum can be found here: Link To LinkedIn Forum. And the specific discussion can be found here: Specific Discussion.

Dear Managers and Leaders!

In my four previous posts, I listed 6 symptoms that leaders should take really seriously and analyzed the first three symptoms: "A team member does not produce what the leader was expecting", "Team members are not coming up with new ideas" and ""Team members are unwilling to push their boundaries". Today, we will continue our analysis and tackle the forth symptom: Team is operating from fear.

For your team to function at its full capacity, it needs to feel safe to take risks and work at its limits. It needs to operate through synergy and collaboration to go beyond what each individual can achieve. A team operating from fear will not have the right environment and confidence to push its limits, transcend its capacity, and deliver on their promises.

Detecting that a team is operating from fear is probably tougher than detecting the symptoms that we discussed in earlier posts because it involves feelings. We will try below to help you detect this situation with more accuracy and then we will discuss how to turn the situation around.

What type of fear?

I am not a psychologist so I cannot give you an authoritative list of fears that people can have in the workplace. However, here is a list of what I consider when I think about fear in the workplace:

• Fear of losing a job (the number one fear, especially in the current economic climate)
• Fear of losing a position
• Fear of being embarrassed in public
• Fear of being hurt emotionally
• Fear of impacting one’s family (if working too much or losing a salary for instance)

How to Detect Fear?

Here are a number of things to check when you are wondering whether your team is operating from fear.

• Lack of Sharing – When people on your team keep information to themselves or refuse to help each other, then there might be fear involved. It is possible that the people keeping information for themselves want to avoid being surpassed in skills by others which would mean a fear of losing one’s job, or at least losing the capacity to advance in one’s career. Information is power and sharing information could mean losing some power over the others in the minds of those protecting information.

• Yes Sir! mentality – When your team never questions your decisions, when you are alone at the top making all the calls and never encountering any criticisms, voiced opinions, or positive feedback, then it is possible that your people fear the consequences of speaking up.

• Finger pointing – When a problem occurs and people immediately try to find the culprit rather than focusing on solving the problems, then you most likely have a fear issue to deal with. It is necessary to find the root cause of a problem, but not in terms of finding the culprit. If your team is in that mode, then you should definitely look into this as a serious symptom that will generate more and more problems down the line.

• Protect-your-back mentality – This often goes hand-in-hand with the finger pointing. If your organization is caught up in a finger pointing match every time a problem occurs, obviously, people will do everything they can to protect their back so that fingers will point in other directions should problems occur. When team members have a protect-your-back mentality, they will not want to push their limits and operate at full capacity. They will also lose a lot of time just protecting their back instead of doing productive work!

• Risk avoidance – If people on your team avoid risks, it likely means that they do not feel safe in their environment as we already discussed in yesterday’s post.

• Mania to have everything in writing – When people ask that everything be captured in writing, it means that there is lack of trust and fear that things can turn bad. This is why people who do not know each other well will sign contracts to close their deals while family and friends might just talk about doing things together. The level of trust is higher. If people on your team constantly ask that things be written down, you should consider that a serious symptom that is likely related to fear or lack of trust.

What Should You Do?

So what should you do if you detect that your people are operating from fear? First, I’d say that you need to discover the root cause of their fear and eradicate it. If the fear is not grounded in reality, then you need to tell your team clearly that there are no reasons to be afraid. For instance, if people are afraid of losing their job because of the economic climate and you do not see any potential layoffs in the making, then you must reassure your team. On the other hand, if their fear is real, then you need to work differently and minimize the impact of their fear.

Second, as a general rule, you must create a safe working environment for your team. Your team needs to be a place where people don’t feel threatened to lose their job at the slightest mistake. It needs to be a place where people are not judged or found culprit but rather a place where they can learn and experience more and more things, where they can be recognized for the risks they are taking and praised for their ideas. Your team must be a cauldron where the magic potion of trust and coaching will drive your people to develop and produce more than the sum of what each team member would have done alone.

What about you dear leader, have you ever felt that your team was driven by fear? Have you ever found yourself protecting your back or finger pointing every time a problem occurs? Please help me complete the picture by adding your comments!

Until next time,

Remi Cote

PS: If you find these postings interesting and would like to learn more about what I can do for you and your team, then please visit www.innovachron.com or contact me directly at remi@innovachron.com.

Leadership Symptoms Analyzed (3)

Editor’s note:

This post is inspired by a discussion that happened on the Leader’s Cafe Foundation Forum in LinkedIn. The forum can be found here: Link To LinkedIn Forum. And the specific discussion can be found here: Specific Discussion.

Dear Managers and Leaders!

In my three previous posts, I listed 6 symptoms that leaders should take really seriously and analyzed the first two symptoms: "A team member does not produce what the leader was expecting" and "Team members are not coming up with new ideas". Today, we will continue our analysis and tackle the third symptom: Team members are unwilling to push their boundaries.

As a leader, it is really important to grow your team. If you don’t, then your team will become stale and you will not be able to grow your vision, aspire for better things for your team. A dynamic team, just like a dynamic individual, is a team that grows!

You can grow your team by bringing in more people. The new people will bring fresh ideas and energy on to the table and will help expand your team further. But bringing in new people is not always possible due to political or economical reasons.

Another way of growing your team is by growing your team members. As a leader, you need to ensure that the people on your team are challenged and involved in a constant learning process. You have to give stretch objectives to your people that will help them go beyond what they have accomplished up until now. This will keep them interested, focused, and challenged. Also, it will allow your team to tackle more and more difficult tasks and thus take more and more space in the larger organization.

But what do you do when someone on your team does not want to grow anymore? What if someone constantly refused your stretch assignments and only wanted to be confined in the same tasks over and over again? That person comes in, does his job, and leaves, without showing a desire to succeed and to go beyond what was accomplished yesterday.

As this person’s leader, you need to have a serious discussion with him to understand why he is not willing to go beyond his boundaries. It may very well be caused by personal reasons (divorce, illness, ...) and you may have to accept the current situation while the personal conditions persist. If personal reasons are not causing the situation, I would next explore these environmental conditions as potential factors.

• Compelling vision for the team - When the team spirit is really low and when people don’t feel they are part of a real team, when people do not share a common compelling vision, people will not feel like going the extra mile and pushing their limits. If you feel your team is not pushing hard, look at how people perceive their team and how motivated they are to make the team succeed. To accept to grow, people need to feel they are part of a bigger something that becomes more important than their own comfort.

• Accept mistakes - Pushing our own limit means taking risks. It means going beyond what we have accomplished so far, with no proof that we can actually do it right the first time. For people to accept to go beyond their boundaries, they need to feel they are in a safe environment where mistakes are allowed. Safety is at the second level of Maslow’s pyramid. Most people will not take risks if they do not feel it is safe. So, support people you have stretched by accepting their mistakes.

• Incentives and rewards - People need to have a reason to grow, to go out of their comfort zone. You must make sure people understand why you are asking them to achieve these stretch objectives. You need to explain why these goals are essential for them, for the team, for the larger organization. You can even explain the process of growing and why you are asking them to grow. Also, you need to celebrate growing successes more than any other accomplishments. Do not forget awards and public recognition of your people’s successes. This is very important.

• Realistic stretch - People will follow you and work on your stretch objectives as long as they believe they are attainable. If they feel they will fail even before they start, motivation will not be there, people will not feel safe, and they are then likely to give up before they start. Your first job as a leader is to carefully choose assignments so people will be able to achieve them. Your second job is to convince your people that they can and will achieve their stretch objectives.
  
  
• Coaching them to success - Once you give a stretch goal to someone on your team, you cannot leave him alone with it. You must feel responsible for his success. You need to follow what he is doing and help him along the way. Not that you should do the job for him, but you must support him and guide him towards success. If someone on your team fails a stretch objective, he will be less likely to tackle your next stretch assignment with enthusiasm and could soon become one who refuses to push his boundaries.

What about you dear leader, have you ever met people who did not want to go beyond their boundaries? Have you ever felt like not going beyond your boundaries? Please help me complete the picture by adding your comments!

Until next time,

Remi Cote

PS: If you find these postings interesting and would like to learn more about what I can do for you and your team, then please visit www.innovachron.com or contact me directly at remi@innovachron.com.

Six Symptoms Leaders Should Take Seriously

Editor’s note: This post is inspired by a discussion that happened on the Leader’s Cafe Foundation Forum in LinkedIn. The forum can be found here: LinkedIn Forum. And the specific discussion can be found here: LinkedIn Forum Specific Discussion. The author would like to thank everyone who participated in the lively discussion for their knowledge and generosity.

Dear Managers and Leaders!

Most people are aware that there are some health symptoms that should be taken very seriously. For instance, if you start sweating badly and if you feel intense pain in your left harm and having chest pain, then you will likely run to the hospital because you know those are symptoms of a heart attack. Similarly, if you eat nuts and you start to have problems breathing and feel pain in your throat, then you will also run to the hospital because you know that you are probably allergic to nuts!

Similarly, there are some symptoms that leaders should be aware of. I will list six of these symptoms here today and will elaborate on them in subsequent posts. I hope you will find them useful. This is not an exhaustive list and I invite you to add more items to this list by posting comments below. Leaders, like human beings, must be aware of a lot of these symptoms to keep their teams healthy! Sharing your ideas here will help everyone.

• A team member does not produce what the leader was expecting.
• Team members are not coming up with new ideas.
• Team members are unwilling to push their boundaries - Mediocrity is the norm, lack of motivation to move beyond their comfort zone.
• Team is operating from fear - Lack of transparency, sharing of knowledge, or voicing of opinions. People start saying "yes" instead of questioning your decisions.
• No one seems to know what’s urgent and what’s crucial, or at which point we are right now.
• Resistance to change.

What about you dear leader? Are you attentive to other symptoms? Do you have other events or feelings lighting up that light that tells you that something is not right and you need to do something about it? Please share your thoughts by posting a comment to this blog!

Until next time,

Remi Cote

PS: If you find these postings interesting and would like to learn more about what I can do for you and your team, then please visit www.innovachron.com or contact me directly at remi@innovachron.com.

People Development: Learning from a Good Professor

Dear Managers and Leaders!

I believe I already mentioned to you that my daughter plays the violin. Last weekend, she had her end-of-session concert. The concert was a real success with very young performers trying their best to play “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” to the older violinists playing the Brandenburg Concerto no 2.

Watching the concert, I started to think about the leadership required to be a violin professor. In particular, I started to look at my daughter’s violin professor’s ability to develop people. I felt like she could teach a lot about people development to the leaders of the world! Here are the lessons that came to my mind as I watched the show:

• Know the people on the team: where they are, where they can be, and what they can accomplish.
• Define attainable but stretched goals for everyone on the team.
• Define a framework for the development experience. The students know what is coming up for them, the next steps, and the longer term goals – in this context, the framework is defined by the Suzuki method of learning how to play the violin.
• Pushed the people hard all year so that they develop to their full actual capacity. Never accept to slow down the pace or lower the bar if you are convinced that the student is able to achieve what you ask.
• Pair experienced achievers with younger staff for optimal development. At the concert, younger people presented with really experienced ones. This gave them pride and pushed them further, faster in their development.
• Be engaged and committed. The success of your people is also your success.
• Love your people! Establish a close relationship with them and motivate them to attain new heights through the love you give them.
• Celebrate success! Applauds from the audience and your tender look and smile will do magic to motivate your people in the years to come!

To get optimal performance from his team, a leader must always do everything possible to develop his people. People development should be one of the most important activities of a leader. This is why I wanted to share these lessons with you!

What about you dear leader? Are you developing your people? Are you mentoring them, pushing them further by giving them stretched assignments? Are you pairing old timers and young performers to push them even further? Let me know about your experience!

Until next time,

Remi Cote

PS: If you find these postings interesting and would like to learn more about what I can do for you, then please visit www.innovachron.com or contact me directly at remi@innovachron.com.

The Power of the Team

Dear Managers and Leaders!

Have you ever felt totally energized and in perfect symbiosis when you were part of a team? Have you felt the power of the ideas suddenly flowing through your head just because you’re working with someone else? Have you ever felt that with your team you could accomplish anything, that nothing could prevent you from achieving your goals? We can often feel that in sport teams when a team is capable of winning just because they “play as a team”, even when they are weaker on paper than their opponents.

As a solopreneur myself (yes, an entrepreneur working by himself), I rarely experience this team power. I am usually alone in my office, sharing my space and time with my computer. I am the only one who can motivate myself, set goals for myself, celebrate successes, and assume my losses. It is great at times because I have the freedom to set my own agenda, but being a team player myself, I sometimes miss the energy and elation of being part of a team.

However, this morning, I had a long chat with someone I just started to partner with. I really felt this team energy and power while speaking to him. It felt really good to have someone to share my ideas with and get feedback in real time! There was also this feeling of growing an idea together: “we should do this” one says and the other to respond “yes, and we should add that as well to make it more complete” and so on and so forth. A great feeling indeed!

I have read in many places that leaders often feel alone at the top. I think it can be true because having a relationship with your followers is not the same. People will look at you for the final call. They will not tell you many things that you do not want to hear. Even if you have the most open organization, you will not feel the same freedom.

What I would suggest to those lonely leaders is to build relationships with peers. If you are not at the top of your company, then build strong relationships with your peers, people at the same level as you, likely the people reporting to the same boss. Your team of peers is really important. This is where you can feel team work and spirit for yourself. You can also, and this will also apply to those at the top of their company, build partnership with people who are in similar positions as you. You can do that through social networking on the Internet, you can take part in a professional association, or you can create partnerships with other companies! Once you do that, you will start to feel rejuvenated and energized by the simple fact that you feel you are part of a team or of a community. Doing something with someone else, or with other people will really boosts your motivation and focus.

What about you dear leader? Are you one of the lonely leaders I was referring to above? Are you feeling you are part of a team?

Until next time,

Remi Cote

PS: If you are interested by these postings and would like to learn more about what I can do for you, then please visit www.innovachron.com or contact me directly at remi@innovachron.com.

Two Leadership Lessons from Internet Marketing

Dear Managers and Leaders!

Nowadays, I’m studying the principles of Internet Marketing quite seriously so that I can start advertizing my management consulting business effectively on the Internet and reach more prospects. There are two main things that strike me every time I look into the world of Internet Marketing that relates to leadership.

The first one is the power of money and success as extremely strong forces to create a following. The world of Internet Marketing is a world of gurus. You see all these guys who have made millions on the Internet kindly telling you that they will tell you all their secrets so that you can replicate their success. I must admit that looking at these rich guys can become addictive. It is a bit like buying a lottery ticket. “Buy this package from this guru and you will become as rich as him in no time!” This is what most of these people are trying to make you believe:  Internet Marketing is the fast lane to easy money and these gurus are there to testify that it is possible.

Relating these successful gurus to leadership, it tells me that success is a really powerful force to create a following. These Internet gurus create trust by showing that they are highly successful making money on the Internet. No one would trust an Internet teacher that cannot show some previous success. Similarly, if you are a leader and you cannot show that you have been successful in the past, then you will have a hard time convincing people that they should follow you. This is what someone goes through when hired directly in a leadership position. He has to create trust before people start following him willingly. The early wins of Michael Watkins (in The First 90 Days) are exactly there to show your new followers that they can trust you. Once you built your portfolio of success stories, you can rest assured that people will follow you more easily.

The second thing that strikes me when I look at Internet Marketing is the fact that most people fail to succeed in starting an Internet business. They say that most people fail because they simply do nothing or too little. You then see all these gurus yelling at people that they must do something if they ever want to win. I believe most people hope that they will get easy money, but they are not ready to spend the time to actually get to a real return on investment and prosper. Another possible reason for their failure is that people are paralyzed by the amount of things they need to learn. They lack the vision of what needs to be done to really succeed. So they try for a while and then they give up before things start to work.

This relates quite well with the principles of leadership that I’ve been discussing in the “6 Steps to Leadership” mini-course (you can sign up at the right of this post if you are interested by the mini-course). To succeed in an enterprise, you need to create a vision of where you need to go, then you need to create a realistic plan to realize that vision, and then you need to implement the plan. If you do not have the vision in the first place, then it will be very difficult to create a plan and then implement it. I think the people on the internet have a vision of becoming rich, but they lack the vision of what the job of an Internet Marketer is. They want money, but they have no clue what it entails.

I think it also links to the first three habits of Steven Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People). These habits are: be proactive, begin with the end in mind, and put first things first. If these private victory habits were mastered by the Internet Marketing apprentices, they would have a better chance of succeeding.

What about you dear leader? Do you have a good portfolio of successes to easily create a following? Do you have a good vision of where you are going and a plan to achieve that vision?

Until next time,

Remi Cote

PS: If you are interested by these postings and would like to learn more about what I can do to help you or your team succeed, then please visit InnovaChron or contact me directly at
Remi Cote .

Reasonable Leadership: A Lesson from the Little Prince

Dear Managers and Leaders!

I am re-reading the Little Prince from Saint-Exupéry at the moment. I am reading an excerpt every night to my son at the moment. He likes it, but I love it. For some reasons, I find this book so simple and so rich at the same time. It is always a joy for me to read this book!

Last night, I was reading chapter 10 of the Little Prince. It is describing the Prince visiting the planet of a king. The king tells the Little Prince that he reigns over the entire universe. The Prince, missing his sunsets, asks the King to make one happen. Here is what happens...

"I should like to see a sunset... do me that kindness... Order the sun to set..."

 "If I ordered a general to fly from one flower to another like a butterfly, or to write a tragic drama, or to change himself into a sea bird, and if the general did not carry out the order that he had received, which one of us would be in the wrong?" the king demanded. "The general, or myself?"
 "You," said the little prince firmly.
 "Exactly. One must require from each one the duty which each one can perform," the king went on. "Accepted authority rests first of all on reason. If you ordered your people to go and throw themselves into the sea, they would rise up in revolution. I have the right to require obedience because my orders are reasonable."
 "Then my sunset?" the little prince reminded him: for he never forgot a question once he had asked it.
 "You shall have your sunset. I shall command it. But, according to my science of government, I shall wait until conditions are favorable."
 "When will that be?" inquired the little prince.
 "Hum! Hum!" replied the king; and before saying anything else he consulted a bulky almanac. "Hum! Hum! That will be about-- about-- that will be this evening about twenty minutes to eight. And you will see how well I am obeyed."

I thought this excerpt was a really good lesson of leadership. If you want people to follow, you have to ask them things they can accomplish. And, if they fail, you are responsible for their failure! 

And what about you, dear leader, are you always asking reasonable things to your followers?

Until next time,

Remi Cote

Pareto on Time Management

Dear Managers and Leaders!

In my previous post, I discussed the importance of focusing on what is really important for your business. I was saying that people are trying to do way too many things, often avoiding what is most important to them and their business. The essence is when you can eliminate everything that is not necessary from your agenda and focus only on what brings the most value to your life, business, team, or project. Doing things that do not bring value will simply waste your time and send you away further from success!

Of course, this is good in theory! What is a lot tougher is to decide what to remove from your agenda and what to keep! To help you do that, I’d like to explore a simple rule with you today that, I’m sure, you have heard about before. The rule is the Pareto’s rule, which is better known as the 80/20 rule. Vilfredo Pareto demonstrated in the 19^th century that 80% of the wealth and income is produced and possessed by 20% of the population. Pareto’s law becomes more shocking when you find out that it also applies outside of economics! Pareto himself found that 80% of his garden peas were produced by 20% of his peapods. So, more generally, this law is known as “80% of the outputs result from 20% of the inputs”.

So, how does this relate to the problem of removing un-necessary things from your agenda? Well, according to Pareto’s rule, you can say that 20% of the action items currently on your agenda will bring 80% of the results! So, start asking yourself the question: what are those actions? If you can identify those 20%, then you are golden! Here are some Pareto statements to help you thinking through your junk removal activity. Hopefully this will make you look at the world from a different perspective...

• 20% of your staff brings 80% of your results (please focus on them!)
• 20% of your customers will bring 80% of your revenue (please focus on them!)
• 20% of your actions will bring you 80% of your results
• 20% of the time spent working will get you 80% of your goals
• 80% of your crises are created by 20% of the people you interact with

I have not verified these statements scientifically but they feel right to me. Do you agree that they make sense?

So, I suggest that you go through your agenda, that you observe yourself and ask what can be these 20% of anything you do that brings most of your results and successes. Once you identify those items, it will become much easier to toss the rest aside or put less emphasis on it. What do you think, dear manager and leader?

Until next time,

Remi Cote

Perfection in Simplicity

"Perfection is not when there is no more to add but no more to take away" - Saint-Exupéry

Dear Managers and Leaders!

I would like to take a few moments to reflect on these words from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. I think it is quite profound and is counter-intuitive to the way we live our lives nowadays. Most people these days want to do as many things as possible in the shortest time possible. They really push their limits and the limits of those surrounding them to succeed in their quest for numbers, their desire to destroy competition in the saga of achievements.

We often see this in the workplace. Tim Ferriss mentions with humour in his “4-Hour Work Week” that a good way to get promoted in corporate America is to walk around the office, constantly speaking to your cell phone and carrying documents. Of course, this is exaggerated, but it points to the problem of the importance people give to being busy even if what they do is irrelevant, or does not bring them closer to success.

Saint-Exupéry has a clear way of pointing you in the right direction of success. He tells you that doing more and more will never get you to success. What you have to do is rather to remove everything you can on your agenda or to-do list to be left with what is really important to you at the moment, what is essential, and then give these items all your focus! The tough thing, of course, is to define what is most important to you at the moment. I will discuss that topic some more in my next post.

Until next time,

Remi Cote

Leader or Manager?

Rick: “What is your job?”

Frank: “I manage a team of software developers.”

Rick: “So you are a manager?”

Frank: “Yes.”

Rick: “So, what is your work exactly?”

Frank: “Well, I define the projects we tackle and then I lead the team to make sure we are successful.”

Rick: “So you are a leader!”

Frank: “Yes.”

Rick: “I thought you said you were a manager. How come you now say you are a leader? I am lost!

Frank: “Well, as they say, good managers lead and good leaders manage!”

 

Dear managers and leaders!

As you can see, sometimes it can be confusing to distinguish between managers and leaders. The theory says that managing is applying techniques to conduct or supervise something (as a business) while leading is defined as being at the front, showing the way. Those are quite different, but as you probably understand, they are inter-related.

Take a leader for instance. The leader is at the forefront, showing the way to people following him or her. How can he makes sure that the people following him are going in the right direction and doing the right thing if he does not know and apply the right set of techniques to manage his followers. A leader who does not manage is just a poor visionary without much chance to succeed in his enterprises.

Now take a manager. A good manager will know the art and science of ensuring that everyone on a team goes in the same direction. He will know how to ensure that the right work is done, that the business is running smoothly. However, if he does not know where to go, if he cannot be at the forefront and define success for his team, then his team will lack purpose, focus, and will never attain a goal that is significant.

As you can see, managing without leading, or leading without managing, are both driving a team to failure. If you are managing a team, you must be able to define strategic goals for the team and communicate them to the team. Also, if you are leading a team, you must be able to put in place the right mechanisms to supervise your team, ensuring that it performs to its maximum capacity and is really following your lead!

What about you, dear leaders and managers? Are you leading without managing? Are you managing without leading?

Until next time,

Remi Cote

Leadership: The Need to Succeed!

"It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary." (Winston Churchill)

Dear Managers and Leaders!

I like this saying of Winston Churchill so much! I see two important elements in it. First, how should one react in front of a failure situation? Should someone ask for forgiveness by trying to prove that s/he is doing his/her best? Does that make it a lesser failure? Maybe it makes you feel better to think that you did your best, but it remains failure anyways. As a leader, I think it is better to recognize that things are not going in the right direction and then correct the path.

What I discovered in my few years as a manager and project manager is that it is OK to go through tough times during a project. No one expects that your project will go entirely smoothly, that there will be no hick-ups, no painful moments, or no issues encountered. People will not measure your success by how much or how little pain was felt during a project. You should not use that measure either! People will measure success by looking at the results, your results in what is necessary!

And this brings me to the second point Winston Churchill brings in the quote above. “You have to succeed in what is necessary”. In fact, defining what is necessary is exactly what is so tough! Finding the quintessential elements of an enterprise is not easy. This is why we see so many projects wandering from left to right with a real lack of focus. Focus is really important for success, and it needs to be applied on the right things!

As leaders, we must absolutely have a clear vision of what is essential in the projects or enterprises we are leading. This actually defines success for the enterprise. It is a very powerful leadership practice to define the minimal success criteria at the start of a project. It will then guide the entire project in the right direction and ensure effort and resources are spent at the right place.

And please communicate the minimal success criteria to your team at the beginning of the project. Make it visible! Create a banner with the essential points written on it and post it in a central place in the office. Add it to your email signature!

Make it clear to your team that failure is not an option for the essential elements of a project and that you will always be there to help if a problem occurs in those areas. It will greatly improve commitment of the team and increase focus where it counts.

And what about you? Are you defining a project’s success criteria at the beginning of every project you lead? Do you have stories of un-focused projects that you would like to share? How do you feel about success and failure as a leader?

Until next time,
Remi

Meeting or Not Meeting... That is the Question!

Dear Managers and Leaders!

Meetings... If there is one element in the work life of a manager or leader that can really take a lot of time without producing real results, it must be those long hours spent sitting in meeting rooms with your colleagues. I remember one meeting I was in a long time ago. Back then, I was a software developer. I was asked to present an idea that I had about improving some processes to a number of senior executives. With a lot of luck, I was asked to present late on a Friday afternoon. Well, while I was presenting, I noticed that three out of four people in the room had their eyes closed, sleeping. One of them even snored at some point. I was furious! Maybe I was not a great presenter, but nonetheless I felt that these executives should have told me “no” up-front instead of wasting my time like they did. Needless to say, my idea was never approved.

Anyways, there are some ground rules that should be followed to ensure that you have meetings only when necessary and to guarantee their success or at least their productivity.

(1) Have clear objectives for each and every meeting you hold. If you cannot state clearly what the objectives of the meeting are, then cancel the meeting. It will be a waste of time.

(2) Send a meeting agenda ahead of time to the invitees to make sure that everyone will be ready for the meeting.

(3) Ask that people provide you with all the data they need to bring into the meeting prior to the meeting. At the beginning of the meeting, take a very brief amount of time to summarize what people sent you. You do not want the meeting to turn into a round table where everyone falls asleep.

(4) Meetings are usually about one of the three following things (see Seth Godin’s recent blog at http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/03/three-kinds-of-meetings.html):

a. Provide information to the people present. This is a one-way meeting and even though questions are allowed, the decisions have been made prior to the meeting
b. Discuss something. This is an open forum where the leader wants feedback from the invitees.
c. Get permission. Here the leader needs approval to do something. The audience is expected to say yes, but can still say no.

Don’t confuse these three types of meetings. It should be clear from the agenda what type of meeting it will be.

(5) Always define the end time of the meeting. Most meetings should last 30 minutes or less. In Agile methods, they even mandate that the daily “scrum” meeting be held with people standing up to make sure the meeting will remain short!

(6) During the meeting, leave no space to chit-chats or discussions going off a tangent. People who want to socialize can do so after the meeting.

(7) If a point requires more discussion between a subset of the attendees, make someone responsible for that topic and postpone the discussion to a later time.

What about you, dear reader. Do you often find yourself wasting your precious time in un-productive meetings? Are there any other meeting ground rules that you use to ensure productivity? Please share your thoughts with this group!

Until next time,
Remi Cote

Time management for leaders: The Outlook game!

Dear Managers and Leaders!

Have you ever experienced the panic of having a line-up at your office’s door? Have you ever forgotten to act on an action item that your boss gave to you? Have you ever forgotten about that “important” task that you delegated to someone on your team (ouch!)?

You know, as you grow higher in an organization, when you start to take on more leadership roles, more responsibilities, you also start to be connected with more people and to be involved in more activities. You almost invariably end up with a busier schedule! This can be tough to manage when you are not used to it.

There is also a weird shift that is happening when you get to a leadership position. Before, when you were an individual contributor, you almost had complete control over your schedule. Maybe your manager had a weekly meeting with you but, aside from that, you were the master of your calendar! Once you are in a leadership position, the situation often changes dramatically. People around you start to take control over your calendar. People schedule meetings with you, you have to participate in all sorts of activities, you have to represent your team to upper management, etc. All sorts of things to reduce the time you have to focus on what you have to do!

On top of all those activities, you have to monitor what your team is doing. You have to interact with your team several times a week, if not several times a day to make sure that your team members are staying on course. If they are blocked on something, you need to help them find solutions. If people complain about your team, you have to calm them down and make sure that your team delivers. All this is tough to manage, no?

As you can see, it is tough for a leader to find time to perform his work! There is always something else to do, and there will always be more people asking for your attention! However, there is work that a leader needs to do on his own. A leader must find time to think about solutions to issues, he must close action items, and he must find time to delegate tasks properly. This is essential to the success of the leader and to the success of his team.

The secret is to make room in your agenda. You must reserve space in your agenda that no one will ever be able to steal. When you plan for your week, you first have to estimate the amount of time that will be required to complete all the things that you need to complete by yourself during that week. Then, you have to block enough space in your agenda to do all the activities that you have planned for the week. That way, people will see that you are busy during those hours and no one will be able to steal that precious time from you. This will allow you to perform your work and succeed! I call this secret "Playing the Outlook Game"!

As you plan for your week, please be realistic! If you pile up so much work for yourself that you no longer have time to spend with your team, then this will not be good at all! You have to consider the entire picture and balance the time you spend alone in your office working on your personal activities and the time you spend with your team and other people in your surroundings. Also, it is always possible to realize at the beginning of the week that you have too much to do. This is when you start asking yourself what can be delegated to your team members! Isn’t it good to have people on your team?

And you, dear leader, what are your tricks to reserve time in your agenda? Is there anything special that you would like to share with this group?

Starting Something New: An Act of Pure Leadership!

Dear managers and leaders!

Isn't it funny how starting something new is always extremely exciting but difficult at the same time! Starting something is usually the realization of a dream so it is really exciting to get to that point. You have been preparing for this moment for so long! Gathering ideas or things, making plans, making sure that everything will be ready for this intense moment when you finally reach this point of no return! You will finally make your dream come true! How exhilarating!

However, starting something also means that change is coming to your life. You are going from one state to a different state. The initial state can be tough or far away from what you truly want to live, but it is still a known state. Going from a known state to an unknown state can feel like jumping off a cliff without knowing if you’ll finally be able to fly or if there will be a safety net to catch you if you actually fall!

Starting something also means that you need to finally expose to the world what you have had in mind for the last while. It is always scary to show people what you have been hiding for so long, to show who you truly are! Will people accept you with this new thing you’re starting? Will it work? Will this dream still be what you want once it becomes reality? What if it fails miserably? All those questions can make you shiver and paralyze yourself, sometimes enough to stop all activities! They are also really good reasons to procrastinate! Aren’t they?

Writing this first post on the Manager's Corner's blog leaves me with exactly these feelings! I’m excited and frightened at the same time! I've been dreaming of starting this blog for such a long time. Looking at other blogs to find the right style, gathering data and ideas to share with the management and leadership community I want to create. So I'm so excited about finally sharing all my ideas and theories on management and leadership with the entire Internet world! At the same time, I’m scared to death to expose myself to the world! Will people like what I’ll do? Will they actually benefit from what I have to say? So, starting this blog also has its fare share of fright and excitement!

You know, thinking about it some more now, isn’t starting something what leaders do every day? Leaders look at the current state of affairs, create a vision of the future for the new state they want to attain, and then build and execute a plan to go from the initial state to this new state. I tell you, leaders are professional at starting new things and they know a good deal about the fear and excitement associated with it! Yes, starting this blog is an act of pure leadership!

What about you? As leaders who are starting new things, do you also experience the mixed feelings of fear and excitement?