The fourth quarter is the season for Strategy Planning. Actually, a few companies started their StratPlanning last October.

The most successful companies have an annual Strategy Planning session. They do not leave their success to chance. They will not leave their success to ad hoc decision making. Success is intentional and not circumstantial.

There are countless ways to run a strategic planning session. If not properly checked, the approach of a company takes, can get very complicated. The more complex the business model, the more complicated the strategy.

In my years as a former head of strategy for a large commercial Saudi Bank and currently a management consultant for medium and big companies, I have seen strategies that succeed and some that fail. This quarter alone, we facilitated the Strategy Planning Sessions of over four major companies and counting.

Let us share with you what sets the successful strategies planning apart from the rest.

1. Strategic Workshops must be simple and practical. The steps must be simple and clear. No complicated graphs that have no real meaning. No powerpoint slides that have paragraphs upon paragraphs on data. Simple simply works.

2. Strategic Workshops must paint a clear vision of what the company wants to achieve, when is the target and how will success be measured.

3. Strategic Workshops must transparently raise business issues and risks. If we cannot acknowledge our challenges then we are bound to be held back by them from succeeding. If we have challenges with Department heads working together for the good of the company then how can we expect success? If we have terrible customer service then how can we expect to succeed?

4. Strategic Workshops identifies business opportunities. We cannot grow our business if we simply do the same thing over and over again. We need to be innovative with our offerings in relation to the business opportunities out in the market.

5. Strategic Workshops are collaborative. Crafting the strategy must not be left to a few individuals. Successful strategies are a result of management team effort.

6. Strategic Workshops must come up with actions. Given that we understand where we want to be, we need to plan a path to achieving the company objectives. We need to assign accountabilities. Who will deliver what initiative? What is his/her target? It has to be a single person accountable and not a department. Holding a single accountable produces more chances of success.

The best laid strategy can fall short. Yes, it will be useless unless properly executed. We have seen solid strategies thrown out the window when the company went into ‘business as usual’ mode. Their strategic plans were reviewed years later.

We have a huge conglomerate client who’s group CEO was frustrated with their ability to execute. She said that important initiatives have a tendency to quiet down when she was not asking about them. The same initiatives would come back to life only after she inquires about their status. A case in point was an initiative that was taking 10 years of on and off progress. This important initiative was suppose to improve their collection process.

Executing Initiatives does not need to be complicated as well. It will boil down into a few basic things.

1. People assigned the responsibility of executing a project or initiative must be trained. Some managers we worked with had a tendency to assign important change initiatives to key personnel without providing them the proper training. These are subject matter experts in their own rights. However, successfully managing a project was new to them. They would accept the challenge and fail. Why? Because they did not know what to do. A successful high-end retail company in the Philippines asked us to train their CEO & Senior Executives on the art of execution. At the end of the workshop he realized that they were also falling in the same trap. They were assigning projects to their management team and not providing them the necessary skills. When the managers (project managers) fail, they get blamed. Due to this revelation, the French CEO tasked his HR Director to have all 240 managers trained in Effectively Executing their projects.

2. Successful execution will require time from the senior executives. This usually boils down to around one and a half hours a month. This is valuable time given to projects that need guidance and direction. When we asked the same Group CEO mentioned above if she could spend one hour every three weeks for a Steering Committee meeting, she made sure to free up her time for it. She sat in these project status reviews (Steercom) while the project managers provide their status report one by one. For the projects that were falling behind, they got the chance to explain the reason for being behind and request for direction or resource as needed. In the first two months there were 10 key projects being executed and reviewed. At the end of the second month, 2 projects were already completed.

Strategic Planning need not be rocket science. They are not complicated activities. However, they are valuable to the success of any company regardless of size.

Try the tips mentioned with your Stratplanning and execution sessions. They will work wonders for your company.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to us.

Salt and Light Ventures and I are working on an inexpensive public workshop that will help attendees make a difference in their life and the life of the people around them. It applies simplified best management practices into the way we live our day to day life.

Here is a simple outline to give you an idea. We are still fine tuning this. We will blast this in the next few weeks.

Make a Difference

Program Overview
Most of us go through life just going with the flow. Events around us tend to irritate us. We talk to friends and relatives about the traffic situation, high cost of education, security, our boss, corruption, snail paced government agencies and so on.

What most of us forget to include in our conversations are possible solutions. Discussion on how we can make our world a better place. Ideas on how we can make our life a better life. We are so engrained in so much negative talk that we miss out on opportunities to make things better.

“Be the change you wan to see in the world” Mahatma Gandhi

In our workshop, we will show you how to improve the way we look at our lives and the world around us. Together, we will work on identifying what is really important for us. We will also discuss how we can achieve goals that are important for us.

You may be in for a surprise. A number of best management practices can be applied to our personal life.

See you there.

Jordan

Key Learning Objectives
– Turning your frown into a smile
– Learning how to identify clear and balanced goals
– Figuring out how to achieve your goals
– Understanding how to overcome obstacles
– Applying a simplified version of management best practices into day to day living

Who Should Attend
– Everyone who wish to make a difference in their life and the life of the people around them. That’s you.

Outline
The Difference
– What do you want? Visioning (Painting a clear picture of where you want you our life to be)
– Where are you now? SWOT Analysis (identifying your strengths that can lead to opportunities, weaknesses that can pose as a threat)
– What is stopping you? Risk Management (what can go wrong with your goals/plans and how to mitigate them)
– How do you get there? Planning (what actions to take and how to prioritize them)
– Forward one step at a time. Execution (reviewing progress and adjusting your plans)

Make a Difference
– Sharing your blessings. Reaping the benefits (big and small results needs to be shared with others)

Methodology
– Interactive workshop. As we go through the tools and tips, we will be applying them to each participant. We all have our own unique circumstances and goals.
– Coming out with a clear and simple plan to improve our lives and careers.
– In the end; you go home with a goal, a plan and a clear understanding on how to execute.

After waiting for a few years and a failed attempt, the wife of a good friend of mine finally got pregnant. However, the last weeks of the pregnancy proved to be challenging. Their baby was delivered five weeks ahead of schedule. This resulted in a more delicate care for the baby. Their baby needed to stay in the hospital for a few more weeks under watchful and dedicated care. We all know that staying for long periods of time in a hospital can be quite costly. My friend does not have full medical coverage with his church’s HMO. As a young pastor, or pastors in general do not really make a lot. Their lives are dedicated to their faith “Honoring God and Making Disciples.”

What makes this season of his life more challenging is that this is the third trial in the last few months. First it was his mom. Then his dad suffered a mild stroke.

I find it amazing that his faith and drive never wavered. My friend was being bombarded with a series of difficult events. Yet, he maintains a positive outlook. When he asks for prayers, it will always be in the context of positive news. He would post something positive and ask for prayers for an even more positive turnout of events.

People with the strongest faith face the heavier challenges. I would often revert to my logical nature and ask myself ‘why is this happening to him?’ I am not asking myself this question in defiance. I am asking out of curiosity.

When I asked our 9-year-old this question. He looked at me and said, ‘Do you remember papa when God was testing Job?’ I said ‘yes’. God was testing his faith. When Job proved himself in the end, God rewarded him. Job received much more than what he lost. Axel reminded me also that even Jesus himself was tested by the Devil. When the Devil asked Jesus to jump from the cliff, Jesus held steadfast.

Whoever said that our youth have no clue as to what is going around them in the world? They are clearly wrong. There is wisdom in our children.

Jordan

http://www.imutan.com http://www.jordansviews.ph http://www.axelgabe.com

Essam B. is one of the best Saudi nationals I have ever had the privilege to mentor. High Potential employees, like Essam, who actually put to action what they learn. Leaders, like Essam, who transfer their experience for the development of their employees.

I first met Essam years ago. He applied to have his OJT (On the Job training) with my department. He was a young, energetic and ambitious Saudi that was overflowing with questions and willingness to listen. Like most Departments in the Bank, we treat OJT’s as employees. We don’t give them trivial tasks like making coffee or running errands. Our OJTs get to learn our business. They get to contribute to our Departments vision.

After he graduated from KFUPM (the most progressive University in Saudi Arabia at the time) he applied for and got a job in our Bank. He reported directly to me. Years later, he got the opportunity to work for a start-up telecom. It was sad to see him resign from the bank but clearly it was for his career growth.

He started rising up in the companies he works for. He moved from one company to another. Essam is currently the Chief Operating Officer of the largest Mega Recruitment agency in Middle East. They hire more than 8,000 employees for various companies all over the Kingdom.

Despite his success, he still remembers his beginnings. He sent me text yesterday asking for a few minutes of my time. As soon as I agreed, I got an international call from him.

He was at odds with a management decision. He wanted to seek my advice. He had a highly technical employee promoted to management level sometime back. Remembering that subject matter experts do not automatically become great managers, he wanted to correct the situation.

However, his superior was not convinced. His boss did not want to lose the manager in the role because of this technical capabilities.

I asked Essam for his views. Essam said that he needed someone for the job who is 80% a great manager and 20% a technical person. The existing manger was the opposite, 90% technical and 10% manager. He wanted to move the existing manager to a more technical role and at the same time keep him as a technical adviser.

Essam will then appoint another manger to take care of the department and the people. He wanted to put someone with strong management skills.

Essam was on the right track. I told him this. He just needed another opinion from someone thousands of miles away.

This is a great example of a leaders humility. This shows a strong leader acknowledging that he still needs outside advise to validate his thoughts.

This is also just one example of the power of a strong mentoring culture. A mentoring culture that was planned and executed to develop high potential employees to take on management positions.

More power to you Essam. May you continue adding great leadership value to your company.

See you soon.

Jordan

http://www.imutan.com

http://www.axelgabe.com

We have several clients that requested assistance in reviewing their strategies. They built their strategies with the guidance of a local consultant. A few things emerge when we reviewed the work they have done. A few tips to other local organizations seeking to create or update their strategies.

1. Vital few – The resulting number of strategic plans was simply a lot. How can we execute strategies supported by too many projects? Focus on the vital few that jump starts the strategy on year one. The key words being ‘vital few’.

2. Separate the projects from day to day work – A project is an initiative that has a start, an end and an output. Day to day work (or business as usual – bau) is something you do on a regular or operational basis. Sometimes these two gets mixed up and confuses people. Don’t’ confuse your employees.

3. Provide the skills – Most of the time, companies assign important initiatives to employees and yet do not provide them the necessary project management skills. The employees are later blamed when they fail. Don’t assign projects to fail.

4. Understand the roles – A project has more than one person responsible for its success. The project manager is accountable for the overall success. However, there are other important players that need to be acknowledged. Understand that sponsors, accountable executives, subject matter experts, project teams, steering committees also have an important role to play. It takes a team to succeed.

5. Keep Project Management Simple – Project Management methodology and techniques can get complicated. This is fine with professional project managers. However, 95% of projects are assigned to normal employees. They have their paying day job to worry about. Give them a simple project management process to use. Keep things simple and template driven.

6. Review for success – Another common pitfall is the lack of a review process. Out of sight, out of mind. Projects that are not reviewed tend to fade away until an executive asks about it. The matriarch of a huge logistics conglomerate commented that certain projects in her company lasted 10 years and remained uncompleted. Once they put in place a governance process, they completed two projects in the first two months. Keep the project progress in sight.

7. Measure the benefits – Most initiatives are implemented to generate business benefits. Unless the project is mandated by a regulating body, a project is implemented to generate revenue increase or loss/cost reduction.

Companies that address the seven keys mentioned above have a higher chance of having successful initiatives. Successful initiatives result in a successful strategy.

No matter how great your strategies are, if they are complicated or unimplemented then it is useless. It is not worth the paper it is printed on. The best companies have simple strategies that are implemented very well.

How does your strategy look like?

If you are interested in finding out more about having a simple approach to an effective strategy execution, drop us an email. Let us come over and present the concept to your team for free. All it takes is 90 minutes or less.

Have a great day!

Jordan

http://www.imutan.com

http://www.axelgabe.com

Companies fail to choose the candidate with the right talent for the job 82% of the time, Gallup finds

Management talent exists in every company. It’s often hiding in plain sight.

Gallup has found that one of the most important decisions companies make is simply whom they name manager. Yet our analytics suggest they usually get it wrong. In fact, Gallup finds that companies fail to choose the candidate with the right talent for the job 82% of the time.

Bad managers cost businesses billions of dollars each year, and having too many of them can bring down a company. The only defense against this problem is a good offense, because when companies get these decisions wrong, nothing fixes it. Businesses that get it right, however, and hire managers based on talent will thrive and gain a significant competitive advantage.

Managers account for at least 70% of variance in employee engagement scores across business units, Gallup estimates. This variation is in turn responsible for severely low worldwide employee engagement. Gallup reported in two large-scale studies in 2012 that only 30% of U.S. employees are engaged at work, and a staggeringly low 13% worldwide are engaged. Worse, over the past 12 years, these low numbers have barely budged, meaning that the vast majority of employees worldwide are failing to develop and contribute at work.

Gallup has studied performance at hundreds of organizations and measured the engagement of 27 million employees and more than 2.5 million work units over the past two decades. No matter the industry, size, or location, we find executives struggling to unlock the mystery of why performance varies from one workgroup to the next. Performance metrics fluctuate widely and unnecessarily in most companies, in no small part from the lack of consistency in how people are managed. This “noise” frustrates leaders because unpredictability causes great inefficiencies in execution.

Executives can cut through this noise by measuring what matters most. Gallup has discovered links between employee engagement at the business unit level and vital performance indicators, including customer metrics; higher profitability, productivity, and quality (fewer defects); lower turnover; less absenteeism and shrinkage (i.e., theft); and fewer safety incidents. When a company raises employee engagement levels consistently across every business unit, everything gets better.

To make this happen, companies should systematically demand that every team in their workforce have a great manager. After all, the root of performance variability lies within human nature itself. Teams are composed of individuals with diverging needs related to morale, motivation, and clarity — all of which lead to varying degrees of performance. Nothing less than great managers can maximize them.

But first, companies have to find those great managers.

Few managers have the talent to achieve excellence

If great managers seem scarce, it’s because the talent required to be one is rare. Gallup’s research reveals that about one in 10 people possess the talent to manage. Though many people are endowed with some of the necessary traits, few have the unique combination of talent needed to help a team achieve excellence in a way that significantly improves a company’s performance. These 10%, when put in manager roles, naturally engage team members and customers, retain top performers, and sustain a culture of high productivity.

It’s important to note that another two in 10 people exhibit some characteristics of basic managerial talent and can function at a high level if their company invests in coaching and developmental plans for them. In studying managerial talent in supervisory roles compared with the general population, we find that organizations have learned how to slightly improve the odds of finding talented managers. Nearly one in five (18%) of those currently in management roles demonstrate a high level of talent for managing others, while another two in 10 show a basic talent for it. Combined, they contribute about 48% higher profit to their companies than average managers do.

Still, companies miss the mark on high managerial talent in 82% of their hiring decisions, which is an alarming problem for employee engagement and the development of high-performing cultures in the U.S. and worldwide. Sure, every manager can learn to engage a team somewhat. But without the raw natural talent to individualize, focus on each person’s needs and strengths, boldly review his or her team members, rally people around a cause, and execute efficient processes, the day-to-day experience will burn out both the manager and his or her team. As noted earlier, this basic inefficiency in identifying talent costs companies billions of dollars annually.

Conventional selection processes are a big contributor to inefficiency in management practices; they apply little science or research to find the right person for the managerial role. When Gallup asked U.S. managers why they believed they were hired for their current role, they commonly cited their success in a previous non-managerial role or their tenure in their company or field.

These reasons don’t take into account whether the candidate has the right talent to thrive in the role. Being a successful programmer, salesperson, or engineer, for example, is no guarantee that someone will be adept at managing others.

Most companies promote workers into managerial positions because they seemingly deserve it, rather than have the talent for it. This practice doesn’t work. Experience and skills are important, but people’s talents — the naturally recurring patterns in the ways they think, feel, and behave — predict where they’ll perform at their best. Talents are innate and are the building blocks of great performance. Knowledge, experience, and skills develop our talents, but unless we possess the right innate talents for our job, no amount of training or experience will matter.

Gallup finds that great managers have the following talents:

• They motivate every single employee to take action and engage employees with a compelling mission and vision.

• They have the assertiveness to drive outcomes and the ability to overcome adversity and resistance.

• They create a culture of clear accountability.

• They build relationships that create trust, open dialogue, and full transparency.

• They make decisions based on productivity, not politics.

Very few people can pull off all five of these requirements of good management. Most managers end up with team members who, at best, are indifferent toward their work — or, at worst, are hell-bent on spreading their negativity to colleagues and customers. However, when companies can increase their number of talented managers and double the rate of engaged employees, they achieve, on average, 147% higher earnings per share than their competition.

Management talent could be hiding in plain sight

It’s important to note — especially in the current economic climate — that finding great managers doesn’t depend on market conditions or the current labor force. Large companies have approximately one manager for every 10 employees, and Gallup finds that one in 10 people possess the inherent talent to manage. When you do the math, it’s likely that someone on each team has the talent to lead — but chances are, it’s not the manager. More than likely, it’s an employee with high managerial potential waiting to be discovered.

The good news is that sufficient management talent exists in every company. It’s often hiding in plain sight. Leaders should maximize this potential by choosing the right person for the next management role using predictive analytics to guide their identification of talent.

For too long, companies have wasted time, energy, and resources hiring the wrong managers and then attempting to train them to be who they’re not. Nothing fixes the wrong pick.

A version of this article originally appeared on the HBR Blog Network.

Methodology

Gallup has a five-decade-long history of studying individuals’ talents across a broad spectrum of jobs, including numerous studies of managerial talents across a wide range of managerial positions. Talent-based assessments, consisting primarily of in-depth structured interviews and Web-based assessments, have been designed to predict performance, and large-scale meta-analyses have been conducted examining the predictive validity of the instruments. Thresholds in instrument scores are set in an effort to optimize the probability of selecting high performers. Such thresholds, examined across 341,186 applicants and 70 applicant samples from organizations using managerial assessments, were used to inform the percentage of individuals with high and basic managerial talent. These findings were then cross-validated in a random sample of Gallup panelists (n=5,157).

In estimating the percentage of variance in employee engagement that managers account for, multiple regression analysis was conducted across 11,781 work teams examining the relationship between various manager-related independent variables (team members’ perceptions of their manager, the managers’ engagement, and manager talent) and the team’s overall engagement as defined by Gallup’s Q12 instrument.

The financial value of manager talent was estimated using standard utility analysis methods that include the relationship between manager talent and financial performance, variability in financial performance across business units Gallup has studied, and the increase in manager talent from the average when an organization selects the top 10% of managers on a Gallup manager talent assessment.

Randall Beck is a former Managing Partner at Gallup.
Jim Harter, Ph.D., is Chief Scientist, Workplace Management and Wellbeing for Gallup’s workplace management practice. He is coauthor of the New York Times bestsellers 12: The Elements of Great Managing and Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements. His research is featured in First, Break All the Rules, and he contributed the foreword to Gallup’s new edition of this groundbreaking bestseller.

March 25, 2014
Gallup http://www.gallup.com/businessjournal/167975/why-great-managers-rare.aspx
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