Economics Encourages Enlightenment

An ever-changing world benefits from individuals who can adapt and flex their thinking. Among the many fascinating concepts put forth in Thinking Like An Economist: A Guide to Rationale Decision Making by Randall Bartlett (Smith College), this one really caught my attention: "You don't have well-defined, memorized rules and answers to any question that arises. You have a framework to provide the questions necessary to think your way through, analyze, and reason your way to an important decision." Each component of those two sentences captures a critical concept seemingly contrary to the things valued in today's world and yet so incredibly important to our securing sustainable success. It isn't about the answers as much as it is about the value of a structured process through which you explore concepts, scenarios, and potential outcomes so that you can be more certain of having overturned necessary rocks and looked under otherwise insignificant stones. Economics offers valuable insights on the process of thinking and the practicality of exploring alternatives. May we remember to embrace that thinking and expand upon those ideas.

Effective Executives Focus Beyond the What

McKinsey Quarterly offers an excellent excerpt from Ed Catmull's book, Creativity, Inc., Overcoming the Unforeseen Forces that Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. It speaks to his experience in building purpose at Pixar, and the excerpt includes an awakening of how his effectiveness went well beyond the what Pixar wanted to accomplish to how it should accomplish it and more.

Executives who understand their purpose as helping others find purpose and meaning in the work they do not only puts the organization on the path toward greater success but also propels them into a reward cycle that goes well beyond immediate returns.

Build Better Boards to Elevate Nonprofit Effectiveness

Nonprofit organizations should be enhanced by, not hindered by, their Boards of Directors. Too often, however, Board members don’t understand their role or the parameters within which they must engage to advance the nonprofit’s mission, vision, and values.

In a recent Stanford Social Innovation Review article, “A Better Board Will Make You Better,” the authors asserted that “any board can improve its performance if its members are willing to confront the people, process, and behavior challenges that drag competent people into an abyss of ineffectiveness.”

Handling that confrontation constructively requires knowledge and tools. Individuals interested in enhancing the effectiveness of the organizations they serve are invited to learn more through the 2014 Building Better Boards Nonprofit Governance series being hosted by Timpano Consulting.

The face-to-face training focuses on a different aspect of Board development every third Friday of the month from 8:30AM-10:00AM. Topics include Board goal-setting, fundraising, performance reviews, strategy, and more.

Sessions are held in the Training Center at Wegner CPAs in Madison. Sessions are led by Melanie Schmidt, a nationally certified governance trainer who brings extensive experience in the nuances of nonprofits.

Learn more online at: http://bit.ly/1fFbtgU.

Building Better Boards Seminar Series Continues

Still time to become part of a movement to make nonprofit Boards better! The initiative involves face-to-face training in Madison, Wisconsin, on the third Friday of each month. Start your morning right by learning, sharing, and evolving! The sessions are inexpensive to keep barriers to entry low.

Learn more and register today!

Focus and Expand Your Experience

Reminders help. They trigger thought, which spark action -- or can, if we're paying attention. Alexandra Horowitz's On Looking was an excellent reminder about our opportunity to experience, explore and expand the world around us simply by paying attention.

The telling wasn't quite what I was expecting in that her walks were not around the same block, and her experts were less of guides than of portals. And, through her frame, Ms. Horowitz opened new worlds of information and knowledge far beyond what may have been experienced or expounded by those with whom she journeyed.

An excellent investment of time as it reminds us to take time and truly experience the things around us, daring us to enjoy it more if we see it from a different perspective.

Names Matter

Don't be fooled. What you call your business says a lot about a lot of things. So when you consider starting your own business, consider your intentions in  naming it.

• Do you want your name in the name? Do you not want your name in the name?
• Does the name need to be something that you can build with and into (i.e., will your business always be just do, do you see a small team, is a large employee population in your future). 
• What are some of those things in your life that will shape you approach your work? 
• Do you need it to be descriptive, reflective or evocative?
• What characteristics do you want to reflect with your name?

Even answering these straight-forward questions can generate the insight needed to spark your company name. Then, as you consider your ideas, filter them by the story you'd share when people ask why you chose that as your business name.

When You Say: "Yes, I'll Say A Few Words"

There are certain obligations that go along with your agreement to say a few words at an event.

First and foremost, no matter how you feel about the microphone, you must use it. Don’t get cute about it or play like you are shy. Remember, if you’ve been asked to say a few words, someone thinks you have something important to say and the people to whom you are speaking need to hear it. Be bold. Ask the event coordinator how to use the microphone. Does it need to stay clipped in to a podium (and, if so, how close do you need to be when speaking into it?)? If you can hold it, in what position should you hold it? Should you speak into it or over it?

It also is helpful to know how many words are ‘a few.’ Typically short and sweet works better for those in the crowd. Particularly, if they are standing. Particularly if they are standing in the sun (or the rain). And, if it is an outdoor event, remember that you may end up competing with traffic noise, planes flying over head, a gaggle of birds that decide to serve as back-up for your speech. So, speak loudly, clearly and distinctly.

Thank you for your consideration on behalf of future audiences everywhere.

Take Time

A reminder from a friend that I share with you: 

“Every person needs to take one day away. A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future. Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence. Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for. Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.”
 
― Maya Angelou, Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now

Understand Your People to Sustain Success

An approach focused on human capital management speaks volumes for soulful sustainability. Organizations reflect their leadership who influence the employees who inform stakeholders. A lack of understanding about how human competencies are fed and nourished damages those connections and cracks the chains that bind them.

Improving Performance Improvement Plans

Performance improvement plans (PIPs) should be explicit and clear in scope, intent and language. A PIP that is not understood is worthless (to the employee and to the company). It should reflect data and facts, rather than subjective thoughts. A plan that suggests one thing and means another can demoralize others in the organization who see what is happening and interpret it as disingenuous.

PIPs also need to be timely. Putting someone on a PIP without a triggering event when the person is following what has become a persistent pattern over years may be of benefit, but imagine what could have developed had that PIP been a kernel in the popper after the initial incident or early signs of the behavior pattern.

PIPs should connect the dots between where things stand today and where things need to be sustained in the future. They need to include the problem, desired behavior modification, strategies to achieve the desired state, goals, time lines and check-in dates. They should Point Out Potential -- in  other words, PIPs should POP.

Build on Strengths to Manage Performance

Opportunities abound to incorporate an asset-based approach to managing performance and developing teams – once you’re inclined to that frame of reference. Look back to the organization’s strategic direction (and ideology) to identify clues for expectations, needs and guiding principles. Leverage that information to link people’s strengths with the cultural expectations. Help people find their way to them. Awareness goes a long way, too. Give people tools to explore their strengths. Create a common language through which to discover the strengths of colleagues. Incorporate it into team-based activities and highlight divergent strengths-based contributions in project reviews or milestone celebrations. Make it part of your own management creed and reflect upon your adherence to it. Understand it, believe it, and live it -- such that you can be strong, have hope and seize the day: Perfer, spem habe, et carpe diem.

5 Questions to Clarify a Project

Here are five questions to set the wheels of your next discovery project in forward motion:

1.    What’s the issue?
2.    Why does it matter now?
3.    To whom?
4.    Toward what end?
5.    By when do you need the information?

Never underestimate the impact of knowing which direction you’re heading, why it matters and whom you need to bring along. Don’t assume you know what’s going on in the mind of the person who asked you to dive in, and don’t sit back when the answers to these questions reveal what might be an alternate or preferred path to move things along in the best interest of your organization.

People are the Powerful Core of Organizations

It's hard for many people to think about what's possible and approach life building upon strengths, rather than obsessing on weaknesses. Yet, it can be so much more energizing and rewarding to focus on potential rather than power.

Marcus Buckingham’s comment that “the experience of the team trumps the experience of the company” reinforces the incredible power of people as the core of organizational performance. Imagine the possibilities for growth when managers engage them, support them, recognize them and frame things in a way that is meaningful to them. Such exciting potential for those of us devising means through which to do just that in helping managers make it happen (i.e., first us with them, then, they with their staffs).

Yet, it cannot be forced. It's been said that people don't resist change, they resist coercion. Offer it. Model it. Shape it within the construct of things that are meaningful to those you are seeking to persuade. Help them find the relevance and demonstrate some rigor in why it matters. You just might be amazed at what happens.

The Ties That Bind

An approach focused on human capital management speaks volumes for soulful sustainability. Organizations reflect their leadership who influence the employees who inform stakeholders. A lack of understanding about how human competencies are fed and nourished damages those connections and cracks the chains that bind them.

Culture Reflects Intentions, Actions & Impressions

While I think this article about corporate culture starts from an incorrect premise as it confuses the role of taglines in the world of corporate advancement, it does get a lot right about the origins and challenges of understanding, adapting and advancing corporate culture. It shares an excellent quote from William Rothwell, professor of Workforce Education & Development in Penn State's College of Education: "I sometimes hear managers say that they want to 'change the corporate culture.' But they often forget that the culture is the result of a group or organization's experience. To change corporate culture, then, requires giving an organization a new experience. Organizational leaders shape the culture based on the role models they set, the actions they choose to take, and how the people of the organization perceive those actions."

The article also affirms the valuable shift that is occurring among the expectations of top executives. The authoritarian approach is being morphed into a facilitative one ... something about which we must be cautious because we can't replace one for the other, rather we need to fuse them together. A leader must be ready to set a direction and provide decisions, some which are not going to be favored or evolved through the ranks of the organization. Exercise good judgment and caution -- and you can proceed toward an evolved and enlightened executive position.

Culture Change Demands Commitment

A new IBM research study points to changing attitudes among CEOs in their efforts to create workplaces that foster greater collaboration, transparency and openness. More executive leaders are identifying value in having employees who speak up, take initiative and work well amid changing team structures. A critical aspect to delivering on that value is ensuring shared values among the people in the workplace. Establishing a clear ideology and communicating it both clearly and consistently in ways that connect with employees brings people together around a common purpose and toward a shared aim. This common ground and common bond fuel collaboration in an appropriate and forward-focused way. Plus, they can work through changing conditions together in the better interest of the organization and its stakeholders.

New Ways Take Time, Patience & Focus

In my opinion, it is foolish to believe that an organization that experiences a new way of thinking can automatically replicate it. It takes, they say, seven times before people recall messages, why do we think that people can effectively implement new approaches after one exposure? See the light, create a path and stay focused on moving forward. There will be bumps along the way, but the forward focus makes progress possible.

Connected

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
-- John Donne

Management Matters

When did it become passé to be good at being a manager and to hire people who were expected to be good managers? People want their managers to work with them, to guide them, to support them and hold them to established expectations. So, why am I continuing to see people who are, in fact, good at management the ones not advanced into management positions in favor of those with stronger technical skills or like-minded thinking with existing managers. ‘Tis true what they say, the Peter Principle lives.

Annual Appraisals Are the End, Not the Beginning

Performance appraisals are a necessary and wonderful thing, but too many people approach them with dread -- if they acknowledge them at all.

If you supervise people and dread the annual appraisal, reframe it. The annual appraisal is not a once-a-year review, it should the culmination of conversations that have taken place over the course of the year.

Take on a “bit by bit” mindset and remove the dread of performance discussions for the supervisor and for the employee. Remember that when you avoid something, you often end up making it a much bigger deal that it need be.

Think about how your weekly staff meetings become the foundation for tracking progress and adjusting expectations. Then, remember that weekly check-ins feed into monthly milestones, quarterly reviews and annual appraisals.