Org-Fitness Today!

Must Read Post: Continuing the Discussion, Abusive Communication in Heathcare

Yesterday I posted about the verbally abusive physician and some "how to's" from Crucial Conversations.

Bob Sutton, author, consultant, and Stanford professor, has written about this on his site, Bob Sutton: Work Matters.

Bob has authored a new book, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't. He doesn't pull any punches and in a new post on his blog, he describes his own experiences from consulting in health care and shares a letter from a physician that is very revealing.

I don't want it to seem like this is a "pick on a physician" site. As Bob would say, there are assholes in all lines of work. Health care just offers a unique and different setting with the hierarchal nature usually putting physicians at the top.

What the people at Crucial Conversations discovered was that the reason a lot of health care incidents take place is because people don't speak up. Why don't people speak up? Because of fear. Why are people afraid? Because they don't like being humiliated or yelled at, etc. You can read more about that here in an executive summary of the report, Silence Kills. Let me know if you would like to read the full report.

Bob's post is very good. Check it out here. Let me know your thoughts in the Comments below.

Does Your IT Department Know Change Management?

During my Pepperdine MSOD program (1995-1997), one of the professors wanted to institute a group project that involved students to collaborate on-line. Now by today's standards, that would be expected and no big deal. However, back then, this was a big deal. There was a lot of resistance and push back by many of the students. It became a really good example of how not to implement new technology.

In a column from CIO, Change Management: A Better Starting Point for ITIL by Brian Johnson, the author argues for the inclusion of change management practices while implementing IT changes. He goes on to state that change is often the reason IT initiatives take place in the first place.

In your organization, do the IT people use change management technology? Are they versed on the soft side iof IT implementation? Do you have someone with an organization development background working in partnership on major IT implementation? It always better to think through these things from the beginning versus trying to go back in to repair the damage after the fact. Your thoughts??

What is it I do?

Recently someone called me and was asking what I did for work. They knew I had the MSOD degree from Pepperdine University however they wanted to know more specifically.

Some of my friends think I do fitness related work within organizations. That would be nice, however it's not the case. Certainly fitness is a serious interest of mine, however that's not what I do everyday as a vocation.

So as I talked on the phone with this person, I described what I do:

"I am an organizational consultant who uses his training in OD consulting to provide management and leadership development training to organizations. I often times bring to my clients expertise and experience in team building, communication and dealing with strategic change. Additionally I provide executive coaching using assessments to provide a developmental framework for my clients."

After I finished the call and it went on for a while as we discussed this and some of the challenges this person was facing in their work environment, I realized this was a pretty good summary of what I do. For this reason, I wanted to capture it. We all have our niches and areas of expertise, this is mine.

Leadership Development: How's yours?

How's the leadership development in your organization? Do you have a full bench of capable leaders ready to step up to the next level?

If you were able to answer both these questions positively, you are in the minority. Many organizations and entire industries are facing almost crisis-level shortages of leaders ready to step up to the next level. Unfortunately, it might get worse.

Demographics and the aging Baby Boomer generation are partially to blame. The following numbers are just an example of what we are facing: There are about 76 million baby boomers and only 46 million in the next generation, Generation X. Of those baby boomers, up to 50 percent of the management workforce will be eligible to retire over the next five years. So, what's a leader do today that can help make a difference?

The Hay Group offered up their ideas in the July 2006, Insight Connections. The seven steps are outlined below.

1. Encouraging leaders at all levels to create work climates that motivate everyone to perform at his or her best.
2. Making leadership development a priority for everyone involved.
3. Helping leadership teams work more effectively together in addition to helping individual leaders improve.
4. Providing job shadowing opportunities for mid-career managers.
5. Ensuring that high-potential employees receive 360-degree feedback for leadership development—early on.
6. Ensuring that mid-level managers have the time to participate in leadership development early in their careers.
7. Providing external coaches for senior managers.

These are all great ideas for building leadership capability and bench strength in your organization. If you would like to talk more about these ideas, feel free to contact me or click on Comments below. Click here to read the full Hay Group, Insight Connections.

Organizational Assessment Tool: Infotool

The best tool I know to find out what is going on in your organization is Infotool. Infotool is a web based organizational diagnostic tool. It is very easy to use, can be customized, and provides results back almost immediately. Here are some of the features:

An advanced, on-line organizational development diagnostic tool:

• Design and build a unique survey for your needs -easily customizable
• Instantly sort and analyze millions of critical data bits
• In-house analysis in minutes-not days
• Immediately isolate, with targeted precision, barriers to workforce productivity by each demographic

Instantly measure how effectively employees are engaged, managerial effectiveness and where there are opportunities for improvement.

Infotool is a diagnostic tool which precisely identifies critical pathways for changing a corporate culture from one of mistrust to trust, narrowness to openness, staleness to innovation, silos to collaboration and dilemmas to solutions.

Click here to see a partial list of Infotool clients.

Let me know if you would like to learn more about this great tool.

Facilitating Strategic Planning

For the past year I have been involved with several different clients helping them with their strategic planning. In some cases this has been for the whole organization and with other clients it has been with just a department or unit of the organization.

I try to use a similar process regardless as it provides a consistent framework to work with. Obviously each client is different and the results vary with what we are trying to achieve. The great thing about this framework I use is that it is scalable. In other words, it can be used for a large organization, a small department, or even an individual participating in executive coaching. The number one question we continually ask clients is to think about what is important. What's important? This question leads to the who, what, when, where, and how we will know. My colleague, Mike Jay says it this way; "How will Who lead Whom to do What, When, Why, and Where?"

The framework typically starts with a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) and surfacing assumptions. From this we get a good sense of where we are (present state)and then we start looking at where we want to go (future state). The future state is the vision for the organization. The vision is a descriptive picture of where the organization is headed.

The time frame for a vision, as with strategic planning, is shorter these days. With change happening so rapidly these days, it makes little sense to do planning beyond 18 months to two years. This is true for visioning as well. This also relates to my belief in the perspective of strategic planning being a dynamic versus a static process. In the planning process, I recommend that plans be revisited quarterly or semi-annually at the very least.

The next couple of steps help the organization understand its decision making process and how it will operate or behave. We take a look at organizational values and the other ways with which the organization makes decisions. Sometimes these are called unwritten rules or guiding principles.

Once we have identified all of these things about the organization, we can focus on what's important--the strategic objectives and plan the specific steps for achieving them. Organizations may go about this part of the process differently. Essentially this is where the rubber meets the road or where the real work takes place. It's important to focus on strategic objectives that really matter and to establish effective measures for each objective. The final step in this phase is to make sure adequate monitoring and follow-up is built into the system or plan.

The final phase in this process has clients look at a creating a purpose or mission statement that encompasses all we have learned and are implementing. Ideally, this statement includes the key values and overall objectives of the organization into 25 words or less. It is a powerful statement for all stakeholders to understand what this organization is all about.

If you would like to hear more about this process or have questions, please feel free to contact me.

Assessment Tool: InsightMirror360

There are lots of assessment tools on the market these days. Being in this field for almost 20 years I have certainly seen my share of assessments. The InsightMirror360 is one we have been aware of and recommending for about a year now.

360-degree feedback tools get bantered about all the time. Used properly, they can be a good tool for individuals and organizations. In my mind, these tools are great for providing developmental feedback to leaders and managers.

What I like about the Insight tool is it's ease of use--everything can be done on-line and the fact that it includes a well thought out Action Guide. I've linked a brief fact sheet (click here) on the InsightMirror360.

Click here for a review of this action guide in Government Training News.

Click here for some client testimonials. 

Please contact me if you would like more info on this assessment.

Web 2.0, OD, and the Shrinking World We Live In

Earlier today I came across one blog post that lead to another blog post. The subject: Organizational Development 2.0 Style on the blog, Successful Blogs by ME “Liz” Strauss. Liz is commenting on an analysis that Gautam Ghosh makes on his blog, Gautam Ghosh on Management in a post entitled, The promise of web 2.0 - True Organizational Development?

Essentially what they are talking about is how the use of Web 2.0 technology can perhaps lead to or help in the implementation of organizational development (OD) practices into the workplace. Or in other words, technology such as blogs, wiki's, and other 2.0 tools can help to connect people, improve communication, create more open and innovative work cultures, etc. We'll see...

I'm not sure a lot of U.S. companies are all that up on Web 2.0 technologies and their potential use. However one thing is for sure, the use of these tools sure make the world a smaller place. I probably would have never heard of Gautam Ghosh (though he does state he is an aspiring guru on his blog) were it not for Web 2.0 technology since he is from India. Cool tools and great to connect in today's world with similar thinkers!

Organizational Change: No One Said it Would Be Easy or Fast!

Organizational change remains one of the top items discussed and debated related to creating successful companies. We all know change is constant and in many cases, moving at a pace that many of us find difficult to keep up with.

In a recent article in Red Herring, a study conducted by IBM found that 80 percent of CEO's were dissatisfied with their organizations ability to manage change. The article goes on to talk about how very few CEO's actually take responsibility for championing innovation.

Effective Managerial Leadership: Part 5

In this final post around Dr. Charles Kerns work with managerial leaders, we will look at the role of The Managerial Leader as Linker.

Practices useful in executing this role are:

• Modeling Desired Performance
• Strategic Touching
• Managing Teamwork
• Managing Key Stakeholders
• Allocating Resources Competently
• Managing Technology
• Reinforcing Alignment

In this role, the effective managerial leader will link people and resources so that they are best utilized. People want to add value to the organization and feel best about themselves when they sense this is so.

Again for further information and to read this book, go to www.hrdpress.com for information on Value-Centered Ethics: A Proactive System to Shape Ethical Behavior by Dr. Charles Kerns.