Ember Carriers Blog | From Possibility to Results

5 Truisms About Leadership and Corporate Culture Leaders Cannot Ignore

May 30th, 2011

Mary Hladio

Corporate culture has a significant impact on talent management and organizational success. For instance, a new CEO who does not fit with the company’s culture would affect other employees. Ultimately, the culture reflects the values of the people running an organization. This means that the CEO values input from all levels, which encourages those employees to work toward the success of the company.

I have spoken as executive search firms on the topic of search for a good fit and not just another job. And recently in a conversation with a dear friend and former colleague, she stated she left her recent acquired executive position because her values were in conflict with the company’s culture.

In his Harvard Business Review blog post, “A Good Way to Change a Corporate Culture,” Peter Bregman asserted that, “If you want to change the culture, you have to change the stories.” This involves facing the truth the stories and doing something about them. One example, is Bill Black, a CEO of Maritime Life. He invited all 1,000 of the company’s employees to take part in creating a values statement. He also instructed a team of employees to write a newspaper with stories about how these values were being brought to life in the company.

There are five truisms in regard to leadership and corporate culture:

The culture is a reflection of the values of those leading the organization
The culture is, ultimately, a reflection of the stories employees tell
Facing the truth about your stories, and doing something about them, can have a powerful impact on performance
How well a leader blends together the corporate cultures of different companies during a merger is critical to the success of the new company
With the advancement of women, minorities, a deeper variety of ethnic cultures and now five generations represented in the corporate workplace today, it is more important than ever for leaders to understand the impact of culture, and become adept at shaping it.

Company owners and business leaders will often discount the importance of company culture and its impact to success at their own peril. Are these the only truths? I am positive there are more truisms about leadership and corporate culture that resonate with you. Please share your thoughts and insights on leadership and company culture truisms by making a comment below.

But here’s a key question:

Corporate Culture: Whose Job Is It? (See previous March 21, 2001 blog post); What do you think are our obligations as leaders if we are to create or nurture a culture of success?

Would like to discuss ways of improving your company culture? Contact Mary Hladio for a 30-minute consultation about the Fuel™ Program.

Source: Harvard Business Review (06/25/09) Bregman, Peter

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Ron Ashkenas: Let’s Talk About Culture Change (huffingtonpost.com)
Angela Haines: Creating a Company Culture Takes More Than Free Lunches (huffingtonpost.com)
Look For Your Hidden Biases (bigthink.com)

Developing Millennials into Future Leadership

May 23rd, 2011

Mary Hladio

Next Generation of Leaders

Employees from Generation Y, often characterized by an enthusiasm for networking and collaboration, are often stereotyped as know-it-alls. However, recent articles indicate that 18-to-29-year-olds remain enthusiastic and optimistic, with a desire to develop in the workforce.

While many Gen X middle managers have been trained and experienced to be less assertive than the younger Gen Y staff, they must now manage a group with high communications skills and the confidence to speak up and interact with global partners. So-called “Millennials” lack experience, although they often want to take initiative and share ideas, and so require thorough learning and development.

Intuit offers a rotational development program in which new recruits participate in finance, marketing, and product development every six to 12 months, keeping young workers engaged while preparing them for future leadership positions.

Deloitte has designed a state-of-the-art leadership program called the future leaders apprentice program (FLAP), for which new recruits are immediately eligible. The company also has a coaching and mentoring program, an ideal development tool for Millennial workers.

Contact Mary Hladio, (513) 984-9333 for a 30-minute complimentary consultation to discuss developing new and existing leaders in your organization.

Chief Learning Officer (03/11) Nikravan, Ladan

Web: www.embercarriers.com|Twitter: www.twitter.com/embercarriers|LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/mhladio

Working With Five Generations In The Workplace (blogs.forbes.com)
What Employers Should Know About The Class Of 2011 (blogs.forbes.com)
72 percent of GenXers are seriously looking for another job (jenx67.com)

Great Companies Take Time to Develop Great Leaders

May 16th, 2011

Mary Hladio

Improving business results

New research from Hay Group provides empirical evidence that the best companies have the best leaders. In its sixth annual assessment of the impact of leadership recruitment, training and management style on corporate success, the U.S. global management company offers a top 20 list that features familiar names such as General Electric, Procter & Gamble, Microsoft, Pfizer, BASF and Siemens.

These companies outperformed the S&P 500 by nearly 40 percent in annual returns in 2010, and all of them said they were successful at leadership planning.

According to Rick Lash, a coauthor from the Toronto office, Hay decides who makes the list by rating responses to a questionnaire about:

Leadership development practices
Leadership development training programs
Culture of support
Peer organizations

The survey addresses a shift from hierarchical organization models to a flattened operational style. “Organizations have to have leaders who no longer lead by dint of their title, but are often leading teams less as a leader [than] as a facilitator, where they are not the smartest person in the room,” says Lash. “They’ve got a bunch of people who have all kinds of expertise that you need to bring together to solve these complex problems.” And successful employees must be able to continuously learn from others, he adds.

Contact Mary Hladio, (513) 984-9333 for a 30-minute complimentary consultation to discuss improving your leadership performance.

Source: Vancouver Sun (Canada) (02/17/11) Simpson, Scott

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People Are Different — but Shouldn’t Be

May 9th, 2011

Mary Hladio

Building Leadership

While most business leaders say people are their company’s most important asset, and most human resource departments keep data on things like:

Turnover
Performance Distributions
Employee Engagement

Few are applying the kind of metrics that finance executives use, says John Boudreau of the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. When a business wants to learn which consumer groups are most important, it might use customer segmentation or lifetime profitability models.

However, Boudreau says if they are asked what fuels employee motivation, “I get 15 answers in a room of 15 leaders.” And those answers are “D-minus” answers at best, he adds.

The approach to talent development should be similar to the approach a company takes to diversifying assets, Boudreau says. A company determining how to allocate talent in developing versus developed countries may decide there is a higher chance of fast growth in the developing country and choose to invest talent there, but this is tunnel vision that can lead to very costly mistakes.

A better approach is to build talent in both places with a ratio that optimizes risk and return—some resources may not get used, but it hedges risk. When managing turnover and optimizing talent, an approach similar to inventory management should be used—the top performers need not be in every job, and in some roles a “good enough” employee is better. An executive would never say the most sophisticated technology should be on every employee’s desk, and likewise in human resource management there should be attention paid to trade-offs and diminishing returns.

And in terms of employee benefits, a company should use an approach similar to consumer marketing—conjoint analysis that tells a company whether a customer would prefer some features over others. Customizing benefits offers to different employee groups can help a company achieve the most cost-effective combination of rewards to reach a certain retention level.

Contact Mary Hladio, (513) 984-9333 for a 30-minute complimentary consultation to discuss improving your organizational effectiveness.

Source: CFO (01/11) McCann, David

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Quantifying the Value of Effective Leadership

May 2nd, 2011

Mary Hladio

Value of Leadership

A recent research program at Kenexa looked at what causes employees to view their leaders as effective. The program enabled researchers to create the leadership effectiveness index, a new metric that measures the extent to which employees believe their leaders communicate their vision, handle challenges, value employees, are committed to improving quality, and inspire trust.

In Kenexa’s study of 143 multinationals, leadership effectiveness was found to account for 10 percent of an organization’s earnings per share.

The leadership effectiveness index was created by analyzing employee perceptions of several key items:

Senior managers’ ability to give employees a clear picture of the direction in which the operation is headed
Managers’ proficiency at dealing with the challenges placed in their way
Leadership’s success at convincing their staff they are important
Leadership’scommitment to providing high-quality products and services to members and customers.

Perhaps most telling, staffers who rate their leaders as “effective” were found to have employee engagement index scores that are more than five times higher than those who rate their leaders as “ineffective.”

Contact Mary Hladio, (513) 984-9333 for a 30-minute complimentary consultation to discuss improving your organizational effectiveness.

Source: HR Magazine (02/11) Wiley, Jack

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Organizational Effectiveness Advice for the Spring

April 21st, 2011

Mary Hladio

Time for a spring cleaning

Have you noticed the buds on the trees and the tulips blooming in the garden?…Yes, spring has sprung. This is the time of year many start thinking about opening windows to let in fresh air, getting out in the yard and doing a little spring cleaning. Take a cue from this annual ritual in your companies as well; here are a few pieces of advice to become more efficient and effective in the office:

Clean Your Screen – With the advent of large digital storage media we can now have 16 GB, literally at our finger tips. This ability has made us into digital hoarders. We keep pictures, documents, videos and emails even the ones we don’t want or need because we can for years. Time to sort, organize and standardize those digital files.
Work the middle – From time to time we should “walk” out the steps of our internal processes. Determine what happens from beginning, middle and end of the most critical processes. How many clicks does it take to complete a form? How many steps does it take to process a customer order? Time and again, once a process is mapped out or the steps of a procedure are documented, areas for improvement can be found.
Tame the BHAG’s – At the beginning of the year you probably created “Big Hairy Audacious Goals” for your company, the 1^st quarter is done and we are now in the 2^nd calendar quarter. You set the big goal(s) at the beginning of the year. So how’s it going? Are you measuring the progress? Do you have an action plan? Take your big goals and break them into smaller goals. Then define even smaller tasks that can become part of your weekly even daily routine.
Block & Tackle – Block out time each week to work on important and necessary activities. Eliminate any distractions; go on a meeting diet, shut down your e-mail and turn your phone to silent. Book a conference room and work a critical activity for 30-90 minutes. This time block becomes your time to tackle the important things and it has to be non-negotiable.
5. Pay your meeting taxes – Most meetings result in some type of follow-up action. Often we leave a meeting and go on to the next thing. At the end of the week we struggle to find time to follow-up to complete those pesky follow-up action items. For every meeting you have, tax yourself 15 – 20 minutes after each meeting to accomplish that action.

Does your organization need a little spring cleaning help for a more efficient and effective workplace? Contact Mary Hladio, (513) 984-9333 for a 30-minute complimentary consultation to discuss improving your organizational effectiveness.

Web: www.embercarriers.com|Twitter: www.twitter.com/embercarriers|LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/mhladio