Author Archives: winterSmith

Social media: are businesses finally growing up, sort of?

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Ever since the Internet began gaining popular awareness in the mid-1990s, the topic of how businesses can productively use various new media technologies has been a subject of ongoing interest. Along the way we’ve had a series of innovations to consider: first it was the Net, and the current tool of the moment is Twitter. In between we had, in no particular order, Facebook (not that Facebook has gone away, of course), CRM, mobile (SMS, smart phones, apps), blogging, RSS and aggregation, Digg (and Reddit and StumbleUpon and Current and Yahoo! Buzz and Technorati and Del.icio.us and seemingly thousands more), targeted e-mail, YouTube, SEO, SEM, online PR and, well, you get the idea.

We certainly hear examples of businesses getting it right with new media, but in truth these cases represent a painfully small minority. Continue reading →

New Pew report suggests that older workers stay on the job for non-financial reasons; implications for macro-succession crisis?

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I’ve written several pieces on the “macro-succession” crisis I see facing American businesses. One challenge to my central thesis (which I’ve heard a few times, in fact) comes from people who think that the massive loss of institutional knowledge and expertise I predict as a result of Boomer retirements (which have already begun) won’t occur because many of these people are choosing to work past the age of 65 (and will continue to do so). The logic is economic – more and more people can’t afford to retire, goes the thinking.

My response has been that while I think this dynamic is a real one, I don’t believe it indicts my theory. Workers driven by economic factors are primarily line workers and lower-to-middle management. My concerns primarily address what’s happening at the senior management and executive levels, and these people don’t have significant money problems, by and large. Continue reading →

Organizational fear and the importance of leadership

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My wife, who’s working on her MBA, is currently wading through a class that focuses on leadership. Last night she observed that “there sure are a lot of people out there developing theories on leadership, aren’t there?”

Well, yes, and for good reason. Most of those people are working to provide hooks for consulting practices, which can be pretty marketable. Why? Every company needs strong leaders. In fact, it’s probably safe to say that very few companies, if any, have as much in the way of leadership skills as they would like. Even if they have strong leadership at the top, you need leadership at all levels of the organization in order to be truly effective, and every business I’ve ever encountered had at least a little room for improvement. (Lest I be accused of excusing myself here, I’m including my own previous businesses in this.) Since it’s hard to find great leaders, many organizations work to cultivate better leadership skills among their existing employee bases, and that’s where consultants with leadership theories come in. Continue reading →

Fear is the enemy of engagement

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Once upon a time the business world was dominated by hierarchical organizations that derived both their structures and mechanistic management philosophies from military thinking that traces its lineage through Frederic the Great all the way back, literally, to the Roman legions. And by “once upon a time,” of course, I mean “at this very minute.”

The truth is that way too many American companies today act as though their employees are some combination of robot and peasant foot soldier. (Hopefully we’re not talking about the company you work for, but I imagine we’ve all been there at some point – I know I have and so have most of the people I know.) For all the talk we’ve heard over the last generation about flattened org charts and mining employees for wisdom and cross-functional, empowered teams and cultivating learning organizations, many people still work in places where orders flow from top to bottom, where there’s precious little communication flow up the ladder, and where the value of an idea is judged by the title of the originator. Continue reading →

The right questions can be better than good answers

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You know the old proverb. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. I was reminded of this adage when I came across a recent Harvard Business Blog on “how to ask better questions.”

The author of that insightful post, Judith Ross, notes that when people (especially subordinates) come to us with questions, the natural instinct is to provide an answer. However, providing the answer may not be the best response.

Although providing employees with answers to their problems often may be the most efficient way to get things done, the short-term gain is overshadowed by long-term costs. By taking the expedient route, you impede direct reports’ development, cheat yourself of access to some potentially fresh and powerful ideas, and place an undue burden on your own shoulders. When faced with an employee’s problem, you can respond in a much more value-adding way: by asking the right questions, help her find the best solution herself. Continue reading →

Changing a culture: getting the monkeys off the bus and the right people on it

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Hopefully that title will make sense by the end of this article.

For the change management and organizational behavior fans in the audience (as well as those who simply need some insight into improving how their teams work), Peter Bregman has some thoughts over at HarvardBusiness.org on “A Good Way to Change a Corporate Culture.” He recalls a conversation with a prospective client who wanted to change the company culture, but the firm was up against some significant obstacles.

He paused and then continued, “I’m not proud of that story, but it’s how we’ve always operated the firm.” Then he looked at me, “So, Peter, how do you change the culture of a company?”

Such a simple question. I wanted to give him a simple answer.

But a culture is a complex system with a multitude of interrelated processes and mechanisms that keep it humming along.

There aren’t many more daunting tasks in the professional world than changing a culture, especially one that’s already badly dysfunctional. Continue reading →

Is your company trapped in “meeting hell”? Here are three things you should consider

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Hate meetings? Who doesn’t?

Not that it isn’t important to get the right people together in a room to talk about important issues, but let’s face it, in most organizations (and by “most” I mean “virtually all”) the average meeting probably lasts longer than it needs to. When it does drag on too long, productivity takes a hit and we all wind up spending more time to accomplish less.

So when I saw a link earlier today billing itself as The Key to Shorter, Better Meetings, I clicked. And I’m glad I did. In that piece, Tony Tjan boils meetings down quite nicely:

Outside of general relationship building, consider that there are only three functional purposes for having a business meeting:

1. To inform and bring people up to speed.
2. To seek input from people.
3. To ask for approval.

My cynical side argues that he left out an important one – 4. To listen to the sound of your own voice (because we’ve all been stuck in a room with that guy, I’m guessing). Continue reading →

Optimism on the rise: what does it mean?

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A new McKinsey survey of global executives suggests that businesses are growing more hopeful about the economy.

…the share of executives who say their countries’ current economic conditions are better than they were in September 2008 has more than doubled in the last two months, and the proportion who expect conditions to improve by the end of the year now stands at 39 percent.

Of course, these expectations have to be evaluated against some pretty low expectations. Continue reading →

Stew Friedman: become a more creative leader – think small

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Stew Friedman has compiled a pretty impressive résumé through the years: Practice Professor of Management at the Wharton School, founding director of Wharton’s Leadership Program and of its Work/Life Integration Project, former head of Ford Motor’s Leadership Development Center and author of the bestselling Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life. So when he says that the key to effective leadership in times of turmoil is to be adaptive, flexible, and innovative, it makes sense to pay attention.

It all boils down to “playful creativity”:

Now, more than ever in my experience, people are feeling a need for greater control. When you believe in your own power to generate new ways of getting things done — that is, when you have the confidence and competence to produce meaningful change — then you are less likely to succumb to the stomach-churning anxieties that come from not knowing how you’ll deal with whatever obstacle that’s next to be thrown in your path. Continue reading →

Brainstorming? Here’s the biggest collection of resources we’ve ever seen

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Most organizations brainstorm, and the savvy ones do so in ways that promote associative thinking and discourage challenges. There’s time for critique later – brainstorming is where you want to get every idea out, whether it’s viable or not.

There are plenty of rules and recommendations and guides and strategies for making brainstorming work, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so much of it all collected in one place: courtesy of the Forensic Scientist Blog, here are 100 Online Brainstorming Tools to Help You Think Outside the Box.

Never mind that they use the term “think outside the box” – this is a must-bookmark resource.