Archive for April, 2009
Communication During Times of Crisis
I have recently aided several clients with policies for their organizations. This work underscored that no matter what the situation, when there is a major crisis, leadership and communications are vital. This article is about communications before, during and after a crisis situation.
Oh, My Gosh! No Phones!
You probably have a list of emergency phone numbers and contacts in your contingency plans. But what if both land lines and cell phones don’t work? Do you have a method in your contingency plan that tells people where to get information when it is impossible to reach them? For example, is there a centralized community bulletin board or community emergency disaster center in your area? Or consider establishing an emergency internet site which even in time of non-emergency tells people what to do in case something occurs.
Remote Contacts and Storage Locations
That emergency contact list you have for all employees, does it list people who live with them or contacts in another area? Consider asking for a contact that doesn’t live in the area in case the entire area is affected by a disaster.
Double check to ensure all your information is stored in a safe place. It is likely that if you have an emergency contact list off site – possibly at your home or at your HR manager’s home. Sounds safe, but in the case of Katrina all the homes were destroyed also. Think about storing a copy in a remote location or use a commercial vendor to store confidential data of site as a back-up. A friend of mine is an HR VP for a company that was in the World Trade Center. Fortunately, she had a copy of all their employee contacts in another state so she could readily get access to vital information.
Top of Mind Questions
The most important questions after finding out if family members are safe are all about leadership. Things like…
Do I still have a job? Will my benefits continue? Where will I find temporary housing and what about school and day care? How will I get paid if I am not in the immediate area? How will my insurance claims be handled if I have to use out-of-network providers? Can the Employee Assistance Program help me and how can I reach them? And on and on.
How Can I Help?
Also anticipate the communication needs of employees who are not affected. They want to help, but need to know how to do so and what help is needed. Again the community disaster bulletin board or an emergency internet site can be very helpful.
Of course, my hope is that no one ever has to deal with these concerns, but as the leaders of our organizations we have the obligation to be prepared.
Breaking out of the Box!
Do you find yourself stuck in the proverbial box? Can’t figure out how to get out of it? Wish you were more creative, innovative, original?
I’ve often wished I were more intuitive and creative. I admire people who have intuition and creative ability. I marvel at their sense of originality. My sister is a very talented fine artist and compared to her I have always felt I had very little creativity. Oddly enough, she thinks I am very creative, but in a totally different sense. She in fine arts, I in finding solutions to business problems.
I don’t have any empirical research to back up my hunch, but I’d bet that one of the reasons we often have difficulty getting ‘out of our box’ is that we simply don’t slow down long enough to listen to the intuition we do possess. I know it is very easy for me to get caught up in the activity trap and not spend enough time in simple reflection.
Look what happens when we take the time to intentionally ‘get out of our box’. Here are three examples of how I’ve been able to tap into my creative side and take a non-traditional approach to an age-old dilemma. The age-old dilemma is how to get the business of a potential client or even get in the door. My ‘out of the box’ approach follows….and by the way, I got the business.
* I wanted to meet an influential person who was on a Board of Directors so I offered to design and facilitate the Board of Directors retreat on a pro bono basis.
Out of the Box Thinking – Find a creative way to meet those who make the decisions!
* I wanted to be the provider of choice for selected topics for programs offered through a community college so I made it a point to meet each of the members of the College Board of Directors.
Out of the Box Thinking – Figure out who has the power to influence the decisions!
* By inquiring about the typical work pattern at a potential client site, I figured out when the key Director I wanted to meet would most likely to be in the office. By dropping in at this opportune time, I was able to get an impromptu meeting with the Director I needed to see.
Out of the Box Thinking – Find out when the person you need to meet is most probably available.
I know if I stop and listen to my intuition, if I intentionally get out of my ‘activity-trap box’, I am just as creative as my fine-arts sister, but in a very different way. While she can take ordinary things and make them beautiful, I can take ordinary situations and turn them into business solutions. Try it, I’ll bet you can too! Let me know if these TIPS help you get out of your box.
Surviving the Brain Drain of Retirees
A very wise Japanese proverb says that ‘Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.” A current twist on this proverb could be “Averting a disaster without a plan is a daydream. Disaster without a plan is a nightmare”. Recently, we’ve seen how true this is in a number of natural, world-wide disasters.
So what would your organization be like if a disaster struck? Just picture the confusion, mess, and frustration, not to mention the loss of productivity and business. We know we have the equivalent of weak levees, old worn out rusted pipes waiting to break, and economic tidal waves occurring, but what are we doing about it? We all get caught thinking ‘that was someplace else…it will never happen here’. But are you aware of and are you planning for any type of major impact on your business that is coming more subtly, but no less disastrously.
I’m speaking of the impact on your business of the retirement of the baby boom generation. The US has a co-dependent relationship on this generation – we’re all banking on our 401K’s and other government and IRS-sanctioned retirement programs while the economy is banking on our continued spending. Even though those that are still in the work force won’t aren’t as likely to leave as soon as they had hoped and some may come back for part-time positions, now is still the time to prepare for the eventual impact of large numbers of retirements from your organization. Consider this series of questions and just imagine the preparation you need to be doing NOW.
- How many of your senior leaders will be retiring in the next 5 years?
- How many individual contributors in critical roles will be leaving?
- Are the sales people who really make your sales numbers in this generation?
- Do you have a leadership development plan which identifies and grooms the next generation of leaders?
- Are the skills you need to develop in your next generation of emerging leaders quick and easy or do you need to plan for a long development period or on making strategic hires?
- If you need to make strategic hires, where is this talent? Do you know where to find these individuals and what it will take to hire the skill sets and talent you will have to replace? Are you sure these talented replacements are even available?
- Do you have a robust, complete, up-to-date set of policies, procedures, and practices in place so that new leaders coming in know ‘how things get done here’ and so continuity of service won’t be lost in the process?
- To what degree will your product and service development suffer as this generation of expertise leaves your organization?
- Have you planned ahead for the impact on your financial position to provide the retiree benefits your organization offers? Due to your current financial situation and the cost of supporting larger numbers of retirees, do you need to rethink your retiree benefit package?
- And the big one, what if the person who will be retiring is the owner, President, GM, CEO or YOU. Do you have a succession plan and, if so, are you using the plan you have to replace the top person.
Hopefully, you have a solid answer for every one of these questions. Well run organizations do. My point is not to scare you, but to prompt action if you aren’t already well prepared. Just like when Katrina hit New Orleans, the Army Core of Engineers knew the levees were weak, the City of New Orleans knew it didn’t have an adequate disaster plan, considerable investigation had been done following 9/11 about disaster preparedness, but plans and the ability to execute them were not in place. Don’t let your organization get caught in the ‘disaster without a plan nightmare’ situation.
Love the Life you Live and Live the Life You Love
The older I get the more powerful this saying is yet living this philosophy is challenging. If you saw the movie or play, Chicago, you may recall Renee Zellweger singing this line to Richard Gere in a jail scene from inside her cell. I certainly hope none of you ever face that set of circumstances, yet even in these circumstances she recognized she loved the life she lived despite the consequences of her choices. Can we each say the same about our lives?
One of my clients is a realtor to high-end clientele. I recently asked her if she was envious of the vast wealth many of her clients have. “No,” she said. “My goal is to be happy in my life with balance in all aspects of it. I want to live with purpose and within my means.” I had a great respect for her already, but my opinion was reinforced significantly by this statement. For her the grass isn’t greener on the other side of the fence or security wall. She finds a way to see the green grass right where she is.
I have a few personal beliefs that help me stay centered and content.
* Know your personal mission – I know the purpose of my life and the value I am providing.
* Short-term goals with a future focus – If you have longer-term goals then near-term goals help you stay focused on that objective while achieving results and accomplishments now. When I focus on my own plan and objectives I tend not to get caught up in unrealistic wishes or the lives of others.
* Be a realistic dreamer – Dreams are important. They cause us to stretch beyond where we are while living in the reality of today.
* Know yourself well – Be self-aware, reflect and self-examine. This helps me stay focused on all the reasons to be content where I am rather than being envious of others.
* Surround yourself with positive people – We get what we focus on and those around us shape our world-view so choose to make it a positive picture. Doing so helps make our self-fulfilling prophecy positive and filled with possibilities.
Using Mental Models as Decision Making Tools
Thinking in pictures, seeing circumstances as a series of cause and effects, and using theoretical models or mental models as guides for making decisions comes natural to about 50% of the population. To 50% of the population seeing things in this perspective is a bit more of a challenge. It isn’t a matter of intelligence or education. It is a matter of natural preference for how we see the world. However, for all of us learning to see and use mental models as decision-making aids can be very beneficial.
Simple 2 X 2 matrices are easy to remember, can represent a wide variety of situations in a simple format, and can help you sort out complex situations and reduce them to a manageable few set of circumstances upon which to base your decision. The model below is a great tool for sorting out the impact any employee has on the performance and culture of an organization. However, it is particularly useful in sorting out the importance of a manager’s or supervisor’s performance versus their impact on the culture of the organization. If you believe as I do that the more a manager or leader understands the importance and visibility their role plays in shaping both the organizational culture and the results they are able to achieve, the more valuable this model becomes as a tool for decision making. Here is the model…
Culture
So how do you read the matrix and how do you use it to make effective decisions?
Time Bombs – you all know who these employees are. They are the ones infecting everyone else with negative attitudes, rumor and innuendo, etc. They may be good performers despite their negative attitude, but you can’t afford to have them infect others and undermine the performance-based culture you are trying to foster. They are carriers of infectious diseases. Get your documentation in order and terminate them before they infect other good performers.
Losers - This group of employees don’t ‘get it’. They don’t understand the culture you are trying to create nor are they performing. They are the one’s you’ve tried to train, you have tried to motivate and they just don’t respond. The difference between the Losers and the Time Bombs is the Losers aren’t infecting others so they are less dangerous. Identify them, try to rehabilitate them, and if unsuccessful, terminate them.
Positive Potentials – This group is probably the majority of your employees. They are solid contributors and they behave according to the organizational values. Nothing really wrong only you know they have more potential and could become real Superstars. Corrective action and coaching can get them to step up to the challenge and become real leaders.
Superstars – Their name describes their behavior and value. They understand what is expected and why it is important, they are leaders, they are high producers, and they positively influence the behavior of others. These are the real keepers. They are early adopters and the leaders who help move your organization forward toward your goals.
Very frequently I run into situations where managers know an employee is in the Time Bomb or Loser category, but they haven’t 1) documented the employee’s performance or 2) talked with the employee. When I ask them why, they often say, because it is so hard to hire employees that I can’t afford to lose them. My position is that it is better to have fewer employees who are either Positive Potentials or Superstars than to deal with the ‘carrying costs’ of managing the poor performers. You all know how much time you spend trying to manage the behavior and performance of these few when your effort would be so much more enjoyable, rewarding and productive if it were spent helping and developing the majority who really produce and help you achieve your goals. It’s the 80/20 rule, but we get caught up in spending 80% of our time on the wrong group of employees.
Optimizing Your IT Budget – Got Transparency?
What is wrong with your IT budget? Is it too high? Too low? Or worse yet, maybe you don’t know. Now more than ever it is important to analyze the spending activities that comprise your IT budget. As an IT leader and business consultant, I can confidently state that assessing a blanket xx% cut across the board is not an effective method to optimize an IT budget and leaves too much to chance. While it may be effective at getting the necessary haircut, it does not rank the importance of IT activities and puts critical revenue generating functions at risk. Additionally, it strains the relationship between business and IT leaders. The business side claims that IT is too expensive and the technology side claims that the business side does not sufficiently understand what it takes to keep the systems maintained and available.
Business and technical leaders both have a responsibility when it comes to the IT budget and therefore both sides must come together to agree on how to optimize the IT budget. First and foremost is gaining transparency and understanding of the activities in the IT budgets. This is critical to minimizing wasteful spending and to optimize the IT activities which support revenue generation. Business leaders need transparency and understanding of the technology that supports their areas. IT leaders can help by categorizing their activities.
- 1. Keep the Lights On. These are the activities that are necessary and required in order for the system (I will use the term ’system’ to broadly describe applications, databases, networks, etc. whether hardware or software) to run and be available in accordance with the users’ expectations (24/7, 8 to 5 Monday through Friday, etc.). It is important that this does not include activities (described below) that enhance or change the system in anyway. This does not include organic growth or other capacity planning. It only keeps the system running in an “as is” state.
- 2. Regulatory and Compliance. Whether required for compliance by your internal compliance team or by an outside regulatory agency, these are the activities that are necessary to update or change the system to comply with these requirements. These changes usually have a deadline associated with them. You can further break this category into group A (external agency) and B (internal agency) if you need to more closely understand the nature of these activities.
- 3. Upgrades and Updates. These changes are strongly recommended by hardware and software vendors for proper maintenance. These are updates to the system that might be necessary because of a product version change or other end of life event that forces the current version to become obsolete or go “out of support”. It does not mean that the system comes to screeching halt, rather it means that without it, the system becomes outdated and either performance is compromised or repairs become more difficult.
- 4. Growth. This category describes the activities needed to keep pace with the organization’s growth.
- 5. System Enhancement. Technology groups tend to enjoy this category the most because of their passion to see and work with the latest and greatest. As a business leader, be careful not to discount the value associated with enhancements as many times there is a valid business case that is simply not articulated in business or revenue generating terms.
- 6. Projects. Project activities could result from business needs or from IT needs, however, they both are grouped in the same category and both need to evaluated against the discretionary budget and the value they bring to the organization.
With a common way to parse and describe the often indescribable IT budget, business and technical leaders can effectively optimize the IT budget, improve their working relationships, and foster greater understanding of each other’s worlds.