Category Archives: leadership

10 Reasons People Resist Change

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The Harvard Business Review gives us 10 reasons people resist change.  Are you guilty of these?

Leadership is about change, but what is a leader to do when faced with ubiquitous resistance? Resistance to change manifests itself in many ways, from foot-dragging and inertia to petty sabotage to outright rebellions. The best tool for leaders of change is to understand the predictable, universal sources of resistance in each situation and then strategize around them. Here are the ten I’ve found to be the most common.

Loss of control. Change interferes with autonomy and can make people feel that they’ve lost control over their territory. It’s not just political, as in who has the power. Our sense of self-determination is often the first things to go when faced with a potential change coming from someone else. Smart leaders leave room for those affected by change to make choices. They invite others into the planning, giving them ownership.

Excess uncertainty. If change feels like walking off a cliff blindfolded, then people will reject it. People will often prefer to remain mired in misery than to head toward an unknown. As the saying goes, “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.” To overcome inertia requires a sense of safety as well as an inspiring vision. Leaders should create certainty of process, with clear, simple steps and timetables.

Surprise, surprise! Decisions imposed on people suddenly, with no time to get used to the idea or prepare for the consequences, are generally resisted. It’s always easier to say No than to say Yes. Leaders should avoid the temptation to craft changes in secret and then announce them all at once. It’s better to plant seeds — that is, to sprinkle hints of what might be coming and seek input.

Everything seems different. Change is meant to bring something different, but how different? We are creatures of habit. Routines become automatic, but change jolts us into consciousness, sometimes in uncomfortable ways. Too many differences can be distracting or confusing. Leaders should try to minimize the number of unrelated differences introduced by a central change. Wherever possible keep things familiar. Remain focused on the important things; avoid change for the sake of change.

Loss of face. By definition, change is a departure from the past. Those people associated with the last version — the one that didn’t work, or the one that’s being superseded — are likely to be defensive about it. When change involves a big shift of strategic direction, the people responsible for the previous direction dread the perception that they must have been wrong. Leaders can help people maintain dignity by celebrating those elements of the past that are worth honoring, and making it clear that the world has changed. That makes it easier to let go and move on.

Concerns about competence. Can I do it? Change is resisted when it makes people feel stupid. They might express skepticism about whether the new software version will work or whether digital journalism is really an improvement, but down deep they are worried that their skills will be obsolete. Leaders should over-invest in structural reassurance, providing abundant information, education, training, mentors, and support systems. A period of overlap, running two systems simultaneously, helps ease transitions.

More work. Here is a universal challenge. Change is indeed more work. Those closest to the change in terms of designing and testing it are often overloaded, in part because of the inevitable unanticipated glitches in the middle of change, per “Kanter’s Law” that “everything can look like a failure in the middle.” Leaders should acknowledge the hard work of change by allowing some people to focus exclusively on it, or adding extra perqs for participants (meals? valet parking? massages?). They should reward and recognize participants — and their families, too, who often make unseen sacrifices.

Ripple effects. Like tossing a pebble into a pond, change creates ripples, reaching distant spots in ever-widening circles. The ripples disrupt other departments, important customers, people well outside the venture or neighborhood, and they start to push back, rebelling against changes they had nothing to do with that interfere with their own activities. Leaders should enlarge the circle of stakeholders. They must consider all affected parties, however distant, and work with them to minimize disruption.

Past resentments. The ghosts of the past are always lying in wait to haunt us. As long as everything is steady state, they remain out of sight. But the minute you need cooperation for something new or different, the ghosts spring into action. Old wounds reopen, historic resentments are remembered — sometimes going back many generations. Leaders should consider gestures to heal the past before sailing into the future.

Sometimes the threat is real. Now we get to true pain and politics. Change is resisted because it can hurt. When new technologies displace old ones, jobs can be lost; prices can be cut; investments can be wiped out. The best thing leaders can do when the changes they seek pose significant threat is to be honest, transparent, fast, and fair. For example, one big layoff with strong transition assistance is better than successive waves of cuts.

Although leaders can’t always make people feel comfortable with change, they can minimize discomfort. Diagnosing the sources of resistance is the first step toward good solutions. And feedback from resistors can even be helpful in improving the process of gaining acceptance for change.

By Rosabeth Moss Kanter.  Rosabeth Moss Kanter is a professor at Harvard Business School and the  author of Confidence and SuperCorp. Her 2011 HBR article, “How Great Companies Think Differently,” won a McKinsey Award for best article. Connect with her  on Facebook or at Twitter.com/RosabethKanter.

Working Remotely

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Guest post by Scott Edinger

Who is more engaged and more committed to their work and rates their leaders the highest?

A. People who work in the office
B. People who work remotely

If you picked A, you might be as surprised as the investment firm I worked with recently, which found in reviewing results of a 360-degree feedback process that the answer was, in fact, B.

The team members who were not in the same location with their leaders were more engaged and committed — and rated the same leader higher — than team members sitting right nearby. While the differences were not enormous (a couple of tenths of a point in both categories), they were enough to provoke some interesting speculations as to why this might be happening.

It made perfect sense to me, though. Here is why:

Proximity breeds complacency. I’ve worked with leaders who sit in the same office with those they manage but go for weeks without having any substantive face-time with them. In fact they may use e-mail as their primary source of communication when they sit less than 50 feet away. It’s even worse if they sit in different parts of a building — or all the way on another floor. This is not to say that these leaders are in any way lazy — just that because the possibility of communicating is so easy, it is so often taken for granted.

Absence makes people try harder to connect. When I managed a team of professionals in nine different locations, I made a point of deliberately reaching out to each of them by phone at least once a week, and frequently more often. I’m not an anomaly here. Most leaders I work with make an extra effort to stay connected to those they don’t ordinarily run into. They can see that taking even a few minutes to talk about what’s happening in their respective worlds before addressing the tasks at hand makes a difference in maintaining the connection with a colleague. What’s more, because they have to make an effort to make contact, these leaders can be much more concentrated in their attention to each person and tend to be more conscious of the way they express their authority.

Leaders of virtual teams make a better use of tools. Because leaders of far-flung teams have to use videoconferencing, instant messaging, e-mail, voicemail, and yes, the telephone, to make contact, they become proficient in multiple forms of communication, an advantage in leadership that their traditional counterparts could well develop but not so automatically.

Leaders of far-flung teams maximize the time their teams spend together. Having had to make such an effort to get the team together, these leaders naturally want to make the best use of their precious time. They take care to filter out as many distractions as possible so they can focus on the work to be done together. They also typically spend more than an ordinary work day together, socializing at planned luncheons, dinners, and activities. This level of focused attention is hard to replicate day to day. I’ve heard from some employees who work near their bosses on teams whose other members work elsewhere that the most time they spend with their leader is when the others come in for such meetings.

None of this is to say that working remotely is better than coming to the office. Or that virtual teams are better than traditional ones. On the contrary, I’m suggesting that they are exactly the same this regard: Someone working in the same office with their leader needs just as much effective communication as someone located in a different office. It’s just that, ironically, they’re less likely to get it.

Scott Edinger is the founder of Edinger Consulting Group. He is a coauthor of the October 2011 HBR article, “Making Yourself Indispensable.” Connect with Scott at Twitter.com/ScottKEdinger.

Lessons from Famous Leaders

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The gospel of Steve Jobs has spread far from Silicon Valley, inspiring people in every field of business.  To some, Jobs’ life has revealed the importance of sticking firmly to one’s vision and goals, no matter the psychic toll on employees or business associates. To others, Jobs serves as a cautionary tale, a man who changed the world but at the price of alienating almost everyone around him. For those who, like Jobs, have pledged to “put a dent in the universe,” his thorny life story has forced a reckoning. Is it really worth being like Steve?  Get the full story and decide for yourself.

Sally Ride, the United States’ first woman astronaut, rode into space on the shuttle Challenger in 1983. Ride was a woman and a person to be taken seriously. She was smart, determined and not one to allow biases to hold her back. In obvious and not so obvious ways, she was a pioneering role model of a leader. A close read of the Times’ obit on Ride yields a number of lessons for leaders from her life.  Read about three of her most admirable leadership qualities.

Another four years has passed, and a bunch of athletically gifted people running, jumping, biking, twisting, swimming, etc., are going to dominate your 52” plasma for the next two weeks. So what’s the big deal? For the casual observer, The Olympic games represent little more than a fresh source of entertainment and a chance to demonstrate a bit of national pride, but for the astute CEO, there is no better case study in how to pull off the seemingly impossible, while delivering the ultimate consumer experience with elegance.  Read the four leadership lessons From the Olympics.

As the chairman and chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), Vince McMahon, oversees a global professional wrestling empire with programming in 145 countries. After almost singlehandedly redefining both “wrestling” and “entertainment” in the 1980s, McMahon has successfully steered the company through scandals and even severe miscalculations. Around the ring, though, business continues to boom. In 2011, the company brought in $483.9 million in revenue. As WWE prepares to celebrate the 1,000th episode of its flagship program, Monday Night Raw, Bloomberg Businessweek asked McMahon for his managerial secrets to success.

Practices for Productive Leadership

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1.       Know what problem you are trying to solve. This sounds simple and it sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people can run around, working on something, but have actually lost sight of the problem they set out to solve.

If you keep the problem front and center, you exponentially increase your effectiveness. It helps you prioritize. It helps you focus. It helps you bring in the right help. It helps you ask the right questions.

If you lack clarity in the problem you are solving, then you are most likely wasting a lot of time and effort. It’s tough to hit a target when you don’t know what it is. On the flip side, you can save a lot of time and energy when you know exactly what the problem is that you are trying to solve.

2.       Get smart people on a cadence. It’s a lot easier to build your execution muscle if you decide on a simple cadence. For example, on my teams, I like to focus on shipping weekly.

I use a pattern I call, Monday Vision, Daily Outcomes, Friday Reflection. On Mondays, as a team, we identify three wins for the week. Each day, we identify three wins for the day.

On Fridays, we reflect on our results by asking, “What are three things going well?” and “What are three things to improve?” The goal is to take what we learn and carry the good forward. So every week we are getting better and better.

This very simple cadence creates an efficient and effective learning loop. As individuals, and as a team, we very quickly surface the bottlenecks and opportunities to improve our results.

3.       Set boundaries and buffers. The best solution for burnout is to avoid it in the first place. This is knowledge work, and as one of my mentors puts it, “Brains work best when they are rested and relaxed.” The way to set the boundary is to first decide the maximum number of hours you expect to work for the week.

For example, one of my best managers forced me to set a limit of forty hours. This meant I had to ruthlessly prioritize and focus throughout the week to flow the most value. I could no longer throw hours at the problem. Instead, I had to get clear on the priorities, choose the best things to work on, and spend my time more wisely.

At the same time, I had to make sure I was creating space and allowing for things to go wrong. I’ve never seen a project where everything goes exactly as planned, and nothing changes. With that in mind, it’s better to embrace the reality and design for it, and create space so you can deal with unexpected surprises.

4.       Lead with your why. The key to great results is passion plus purpose. Start asking yourself, “Why do you do what you do?” Find the meaning and make the connection between the work you choose to bite off, and how it lights up your life.

If you live for adventure, then make every project an epic adventure. If you love to learn, then by-golly make every expedition a chance to learn a new skill, conquer a new challenge, and add a new tool to your toolbox.

Share your “why” with others. It’s contagious. The most unproductive teams I know have no purpose. They have no juice. They have no joy. They do work, and every bit of work is a chore. Ironically, it’s not the nature of the work, but our mental models that make work meaningful.

5.       Give your best where you have your best to give. One question I get asked often is, what’s the biggest game changer I’ve ever seen when it comes to execution excellence. I have to say, it’s always the same thing. Have people on the team spend more time in their strengths.

That includes you. If you want more out of you, then do more of what you love. Do more of what you are great at. Do more of what you can uniquely do.

The most ineffective teams I ever see are when people are all “out of position.” People are constantly working on things they aren’t good at or things that they hate. It kills their energy. In knowledge work, this is the “kiss of death.”

6.       Focus on outcomes, not activities. I can’t stress this enough. When you focus on outcomes, you find the critical paths and the short-cuts. When you focus on activities, you throw time at things, but don’t necessarily achieve meaningful results.

As soon as you start asking yourself, “What’s the goal?” or “What’s the outcome?” you will quickly find yourself getting clarity on the problem. It will refocus your effort and energy in a more meaningful way. You can shave away needless activities once you identify what you want to accomplish.

7.       Ask better questions. I heard a colleague remark the other day that too many people still operate under an old leadership model. The leadership model of the 70s was command-and-control. That made sense for industrial type work or in the military. It doesn’t work well when it comes to knowledge work.

The people in the trenches are the closest to the problems and they are also closest to the solutions. In today’s world, the key to effective leaders is asking the right questions. Inquiry is your friend.

One of my mentors uses a small set of questions to guide investments:

  • o    Who’s the customer?
  • o    What’s the problem?
  • o    What’s the competition doing?
  • o    What does success look like?

It’s simple but highly effective. One of my favorite questions to ask is, “What are you optimizing for?”

Question: What leadership practices have you found that make you and your team more productive?

This is a guest post by J.D. Meier. He is the author of Getting Results the Agile Way and blogs on personal effectiveness and leadership at Sources of Insight.  Read more practices for productive leadership here.

How to Read a Resume

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The days of hanging a Help Wanted sign in the store window are disappearing. Job seekers and employers are turning to more modern methods, from LinkedIn to social networks, to find each other. But whatever your hiring scenario, you probably still request resumes from serious applicants. Once those resumes start flooding your in-box, how do you sift through the pile?

Although most small-business owners may know exactly what they’re looking for in a candidate, there’s a tried-and-true art to reading resumes that can’t be replaced by newer science, such as keyword screening, says Jennifer McClure, president of Unbridled Talent, a consulting firm that specializes in HR and recruiting.

So, what’s the best way to read a resume in 2012? The Intuit Small Business Blog asked McClure to provide a few pointers.

ISBB: How has the practice of reading a resume changed in recent years?

McClure: While the science of resume review has certainly evolved in recent years — electronic submission and review, keyword screening tools, resume parsers, etc. — in my opinion, the art has remained relatively unchanged. Recruiters who find the best talent are those who read between the lines to identify accomplishments and results as well as potential, versus inexperienced or poor recruiters who match keywords, random experience requirements, and unrelated competencies. Strong recruiters also realize that job seekers aren’t professional resume writers and can look past small imperfections that aren’t relevant to future success.

What’s the first thing a small-business owner should read when reviewing a resume? Second? Third?

When reviewing resumes, I’m always drawn to the objective statement or professional summary first. Ideally, applicants should make sure that the information at the top of their resume is targeted (who they are, what type of role they’re seeking, and why they’re a great fit for that role) and succinct, no more than one to three brief sentences. A well-written, targeted objective can start the resume review process off on a “this is a potential candidate” note. A generic or poorly written one, such as “team player looking for a company where I can apply my skills to help them grow,” opens the door to the No pile.

Second, I look at the most recent job title and employer to see if the person has held a similar role or is on track for the position I’m trying to fill. For example, if I’m looking for a CFO, I’m thinking “possibility” if I see titles like CFO, VP of Finance, or Director of Finance. But if I see Accounts Payable Clerk or Cost Accounting Manager first, then I would assume the person is not a fit — and even more so if the most recent position is not even in the fields of accounting or finance.

Third, my eye is drawn to numbers on a resume. I’m looking for accomplishments and how a person has created positive change or impacted results in their previous roles. Bullet points that include dollar signs, percentages, and the like are ideal. What doesn’t catch attention? Listing job duties and phrases such as “responsible for,” “participated in,” “managed,” and so on.

What are the biggest warning signs I should watch out for?

Resumes that include gaps in employment, especially long ones, are typically suspect. The mind starts to ask natural questions about what happened. Why did the person leave their last job? Why were they unsuccessful at obtaining another job prior to leaving that position or in a reasonable time frame thereafter? Life situations and depressed economic conditions may have resulted in some legitimate gaps in employment. However, it’s incumbent upon the applicant to answer the obvious questions up front and fill in the gaps on the resume.

How can employers who are short on time and staring at a giant stack of resumes get through the pile efficiently?

I’d never recommend speed-screening resumes. Hiring decisions are too important and potentially long-term. It just doesn’t make sense to cut corners during this process. That being said, to use time more efficiently during the resume screening process, I recommend reviewing all of the resumes submitted in one sitting, if possible, and, based upon initial impressions, tagging them or placing them in three categories: Interview, Possible, and No. This can be a quick way to identify the resumes that warrant a more in-depth review, although you may miss an undiscovered gem or two by cutting corners.

Leadership That Gets Results

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“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” – Peter Drucker, writer and consultant 

My favorite study on the subject of kinetic leadership is Daniel Goleman’s Leadership That Gets Results, a landmark 2000 Harvard Business Review study. Goleman and his team completed a three-year study with over 3,000 middle-level managers. Their goal was to uncover specific leadership behaviors and determine their effect on the corporate climate and each leadership style’s effect on bottom-line profitability.

The research discovered that a manager’s leadership style was responsible for 30% of the company’s bottom-line profitability! That’s far too much to ignore. Imagine how much money and effort a company spends on new processes, efficiencies, and cost-cutting methods in an effort to add even one percent to bottom-line profitability, and compare that to simply inspiring managers to be more kinetic with their leadership styles. It’s a no-brainer.

Here are the six leadership styles Goleman uncovered among the managers he studied, as well as a brief analysis of the effects of each style on the corporate climate:

  1. The pacesetting leader expects and models excellence and self-direction. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be “Do as I do, now.” The pacesetting style works best when the team is already motivated and skilled, and the leader needs quick results. Used extensively, however, this style can overwhelm team members and squelch innovation.
  2. The authoritative leader mobilizes the team toward a common vision and focuses on end goals, leaving the means up to each individual. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be “Come with me.” The authoritative style works best when the team needs a new vision because circumstances have changed, or when explicit guidance is not required. Authoritative leaders inspire an entrepreneurial spirit and vibrant enthusiasm for the mission. It is not the best fit when the leader is working with a team of experts who know more than him or her.
  3. The affiliative leader works to create emotional bonds that bring a feeling of bonding and belonging to the organization. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be “People come first.” The affiliative style works best in times of stress, when teammates need to heal from a trauma, or when the team needs to rebuild trust. This style should not be used exclusively, because a sole reliance on praise and nurturing can foster mediocre performance and a lack of direction.
  4. The coaching leader develops people for the future. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be “Try this.” The coaching style works best when the leader wants to help teammates build lasting personal strengths that make them more successful overall. It is least effective when teammates are defiant and unwilling to change or learn, or if the leader lacks proficiency.
  5. The coercive leader demands immediate compliance. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be “Do what I tell you.” The coercive style is most effective in times of crisis, such as in a company turnaround or a takeover attempt, or during an actual emergency like a tornado or a fire. This style can also help control a problem teammate when everything else has failed. However, it should be avoided in almost every other case because it can alienate people and stifle flexibility and inventiveness.
  6. The democratic leader builds consensus through participation. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be “What do you think?” The democratic style is most effective when the leader needs the team to buy into or have ownership of a decision, plan, or goal, or if he or she is uncertain and needs fresh ideas from qualified teammates. It is not the best choice in an emergency situation, when time is of the essence for another reason or when teammates are not informed enough to offer sufficient guidance to the leader.

Bottom line? If you take two cups of authoritative leadership, one cup of democratic, coaching, and affiliative leadership, and a dash of pacesetting and coercive leadership “to taste,” and you lead based on need in a way that elevates and inspires your team, you’ve got an excellent recipe for long-term leadership success with every team in your life.

Robyn Benincasa is a two-time Adventure Racing World Champion, two-time Guinness World Record distance kayaker, a full-time firefighter, and author of the new book, HOW WINNING WORKS: 8 Essential Leadership Lessons from the Toughest Teams on Earth, from which this blog entry is excerpted

Financial Incentives Encourage Healthy Employee Behavior

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While a growing number of community association managers remain committed to offering health and productivity programs, they often are frustrated by the inability of many workers to change their health habits. To encourage healthy behaviors, many employers are tightening their requirements for workers to receive financial incentives, according to a survey released on  by Towers Watson and the National Business Group on Health, a nonprofit association of large U.S. employers.

Currently, 53 percent of large employers offer financial incentives to workers who enroll in health engagement activities, such as weight management or smoking cessation programs. However, for many employers, participation alone is no longer enough to earn an incentive. Now, 37 percent reward only those workers who meet the company’s requirements for completion of a health engagement activity, and 29 percent only reward members who participate in multiple activities. Still, 93 percent have no plans to eliminate their health promotion programs, and 83 percent have no plans to cancel or delay adding new ones.

The 15th annual survey on purchasing power in health care also found that employers demonstrate dramatic differences in their ability to keep health care cost increases in check. The survey identified a group of “consistent performing” companies that have held cost increases below the median trend for the last four years. These consistent performers experienced a median cost increase of 2.1 percent over the last four years, compared with 6.8 percent for all companies.

The companies separate themselves from poorer performing companies in five areas: appropriate financial incentives, effective information delivery, metrics and evidence, quality care, and health and productivity. Consistent performers spent $6,536 per employee on health care benefits in 2009 — nearly $1,200 less per employee than for all survey respondents.

Other findings include:

  •  In 2010, 38 percent of companies will offer a health savings
    account, with an additional 7 percent expected to do so in 2011.
  •  In 2010, 46 percent of employers will provide coverage for use of
    retail clinics, up from 36 percent in 2009.
  • In 2010, 57 percent of employers will encourage plans and
    providers to provide workers with access to online medical records, up
    from 54 percent in 2009.

Becoming a Community CEO

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By Jim Stilwell, CMCA, PCAM
Leadership has been sometimes defined as bringing people together and causing them to achieve a common goal. It can be as simple as being a good listener and facilitator, or it can be as complex as leading men and women into harm’s way. People follow good leaders because they want to. Causing them to “want to” is both the art and science of leadership.

In 2003, I had the privilege of hearing Ambassador Karen Hughes speak at the Bakersfield Business Conference. One of the highlights of her speech was a description of what she called the “CEO” leadership model.  A light went off in my head and I said to myself: “Wow! This is me. This is what I’ve been trying to describe but couldn’t get it together.” 

I have tweaked her model into what I call the Community CEO, which incorporates the following leadership skill set:
 
C stands for clarity of mission. People being led must know where they are going. Whether it is the employee team that you lead directly, the board that relies on your guidance or the community’s residents, you as an effective leader must clearly define the goal at hand and use every opportunity to evaluate progress towards that goal. Clarity requires unequivocal purpose and progress to the goal.  

E refers to leading by example and with enthusiasm. Good leaders must walk the walk as they talk the talk. Those being led must see their leader out front and showing the way to the goal at hand. It does no good to preach performance against budget if the leader is out spending like a drunken sailor. If the goal is a clean community, goods leader will not step over trash on the sidewalk; they stoop to pick it up.

O means showing optimism and seizing opportunity. The best leaders exhibit outward optimism to those being led. Achieving the mission is not only possible, but highly probable. They know that optimism is contagious and will permeate throughout the team. Even a marginal player will become a star when infused with enthusiasm from a good leader. When potholes appear in the road to the goal, the good leader sees those potholes as opportunities. Good community leaders recognize that one of the best ways to minimize the potholes in life is to do those things which are already done well, better.

Lead with clarity of mission, by example and with enthusiasm, and show optimism.  Seize opportunities when presented. Be the CEO of your community.

Jim Stilwell is General Manager of Warner Springs Ranch, a historic, 2,500-acre resort, in Back-Country, San Diego County,Calif. He has 17 years experience as General Manager of communities in both the public and private sectors, following a distinguished career in the Merchant Marine, where he commanded some of the largest and most technically advanced vessels under the U.S. Flag  He also provides consulting services through his own company – YOUR Community Management, LLC.

The 6 Habits of True Strategic Thinkers

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Being strategic is a tough job, make no mistake. “We need strategic leaders!” is a pretty constant refrain at every company, large and small. One reason the job is so tough: no one really understands what it entails. It’s hard to be a strategic leader if you don’t know what strategic leaders are supposed to do.

After two decades of advising organizations large and small, Paul J. H. Schoemaker, Founder and Chairman of Decision Strategies Intl, formed a clear idea of what’s required of you in this role. Adaptive strategic leaders — the kind who thrive in today’s uncertain environment – do six things well:

Anticipate — Most of the focus at most companies is on what’s directly ahead. The leaders lack “peripheral vision.” This can leave your company vulnerable to rivals who detect and act on ambiguous signals. To anticipate well, you must:

  • Look for game-changing information at the periphery of your industry
  • Search beyond the current boundaries of your business
  • Build wide external networks to help you scan the horizon better

Think Critically– “Conventional wisdom” opens you to fewer raised eyebrows and second guessing. But if you swallow every management fad, herdlike belief, and safe opinion at face value, your company loses all competitive advantage. Critical thinkers question everything. To master this skill you must force yourself to:

  • Reframe problems to get to the bottom of things, in terms of root causes
  • Challenge current beliefs and mindsets, including their own
  • Uncover hypocrisy, manipulation, and bias in organizational decisions

Interpret — Ambiguity is unsettling. Faced with it, the temptation is to reach for a fast (and potentially wrongheaded) solution. A good strategic leader holds steady, synthesizing information from many sources before developing a viewpoint. To get good at this, you have to:

  • Seek patterns in multiple sources of data
  • Encourage others to do the same
  • Question prevailing assumptions and test multiple hypotheses simultaneously

Decide– Many leaders fall pretty to “analysis paralysis.” You have to develop processes and enforce them, so that you arrive at a “good enough” position. To do that well, you have to:

  • Carefully frame the decision to get to the crux of the matter
  • Balance speed, rigor, quality and agility. Leave perfection to higher powers
  • Take a stand even with incomplete information and amid diverse views

Align– Total consensus is rare. A strategic leader must foster open dialogue, build trust and engage key stakeholders, especially when views diverge. To pull that off, you need to:

  • Understand what drives other people’s agendas, including what remains hidden
  • Bring tough issues to the surface, even when it’s uncomfortable
  • Assess risk tolerance and follow through to build the necessary support

Learn– As your company grows, honest feedback is harder and harder to come by. You have to do what you can to keep it coming. This is crucial because success and failure–especially failure–are valuable sources of organizational learning. Here’s what you need to do:

  • Encourage and exemplify honest, rigorous debriefs to extract lessons
  • Shift course quickly if you realize you’re off track
  • Celebrate both success and (well-intentioned) failures that provide insight

Do you have what it takes? Obviously, this is a daunting list of tasks, and frankly, no one is born a black belt in all these different skills. But they can be taught and whatever gaps exist in your skill set can be filled in. Learn more here, and in the comments below, let us know how your strategy has developed throughout your career.

 

Great Board Members Share 8 Important Traits

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Board members can make or break your homeowners association. You’ve run enough meetings to see great members share a number of characteristics. Recognize these?

  1. They want to help the community.They don’t get on the board to work out a vendetta or serve themselves. Instead, they have the best interest of their community at heart.
  2. They’re fair and can see both sides.They can’t be a “do as I say, not as my friends and I do” kind of person. They have to apply the rules fairly to everyone, including themselves. They can also mediate disputes by seeing both sides of an issue.
  3. They can run a meeting.Not every HOA decision is a life-or-death matter, but in order to carry on, decisions must be made. Great board members can set forward an agenda, give things necessary time for discussion and help reach decisions, one by one.
  4. They listen.  Perhaps the most important thing for board member to do is listen to the community. “If community members have taken the time to come to a meeting, chances are they have something to say,” said Kelly Moran, Vice President with Rampart Properties of Tampa, Fla.  “The quickest way for a board to be overturned is to not listen to homeowners.”
  5. They’re honest.That means being willing to admit not knowing the solution to a problem. It also means being law-abiding, and giving honestly and freely of one’s time.
  6. They have foresight.“A board member can’t get caught up in the here and now,” Moran said.  “They need to have foresight as to where the association is going and move the association forward. That’s what makes great communities.”
  7. They can do nothing.Not every argument or issue needs to be reacted to, especially if it takes the board’s focus away from bigger, or more uplifting, issues.  “The two hardest things for a volunteer board of directors to do, is ‘do nothing,’ and ‘say nothing,’” said Bart Park, CEO of Capital Community Management Corporation, Cave Creek, Ariz.
  8. They have fun. Board members who can laugh when things are good—or bad—are well on the way to being a great board member.

Your turn: What makes a great HOA board member? What makes a bad one? Respond in the comment section.