I worked in a company that chose not to update their product label for nearly ten years, when others in their market made subtle changes each year.  A new marketing department understood the importance of updating labeling and took action.   The new label created much confusion in the market. The employees in the manufacturing plant no longer recognized the label when setting up for production. The stores shelve stocking efficiency was lower because they did not recognize the product.  The customer had difficulty in selecting the brand. They were accustomed to selecting the jar with the brown label and red banner, now they have to pick the label with the green vegetables and lettuce leaves. It was a difficult six months for all parties.

Who would think that the market no longer read the details but chose the product on color recognition and location? Our company cultures are the same in many ways. Our organization becomes used to the values, rites and rituals of acceptable behavior, of how success is measured.  If a continuous improvement process drives revision, we should not experience the inefficiencies  that change creates if we embrace it as part of our everyday.

Everyone may have different reasons for pursuing green initiatives like energy efficiency, they may not all agree on the science behind the movement but there is lots of activity to be green.  One common platform, everyone seems to have after all the noise has been removed is does it make business sense to eliminate waste in your business process and will employees easily get behind it. The only competitive edge we have in this global market is how well we manage our resources.  So begin measuring what you treasure, raise awareness that it can be controlled, assign someone accountability that something can be done about it  and prepare for success.  Green will give you the competitive advantage you need to succeed in todays market.

This is a quick, easy read on how to “up your game” when presenting.  Here are a couple of his key points:

1) Arrive two hours in advance of your presentation: It drives me crazy when my team members show up just in time for a meeting. I make it a requirement that my team are in the clients lobby no less than 30 minutes before the appointment, just in case the executive wants to move the meeting up or things have changed that would make us scramble at the last minute. My golf buddy considers you late if you are not at the Pro Shop 40 minutes before your tee time. Timothy gives good examples where two hours was prudent to a successful meeting.

2) Practice:  A magician is always practicing a trick. An exceptional presenter is always practicing to make his message second nature.

3) Take time to understand your audience: Spend time meeting and greeting your audience as they arrive, take note of thier name and what they are looking from this meeting. An exceptional presenter will weave this information into her presentation and bond with the audience.

4) Be Passionate:  Show some excitement. Passion for your subject reinforces the fact that you are an expert.

5) Improve your body langauge: Your audience will hear 20% of what you say but will base their experieince on what they saw.  Be aware and keep a positive presence.

As I said, a good read with some things I have begun applying myself. Here is Timothy’s link to his website

http://www.theexceptionalpresenter.com/about-tim-koegel.cfm

Being the improvement guru that I am we had to get performance metrics developed quickly. So I chose to develop a method that would allow us to measure our engagement level in the process. We would be kidding ourselves if we believed that we could do a Total Money Makeover in just 13 weeks. No this is a journey and getting a handle on our level engagement is critical to supporting any change.

Here is a picture of the engagement performance chart we are using.

Sorry this picture came from my cell phone, but you should get the idea. I listed the players down the left column. Then listed the specific activities that were to be completed each week over the next thirteen weeks across the top, left to right. Red dots were put down in each category, since we had not completed anything to date. Then the next we each updated our chart based on our individual progress. A yellow dot if it is a “work in progress”, like setting aside a six month emergency fund. A green dot if we “got it done”. This will enable to group to easily see each week how “engaged” we are in the process as the green begins to overtake the chart.  I would expect some catagories to flip between the colors frequently, since this is all about behavior change, and change is not easy.

This is an example of an easy way to measure progress and success. It is self managed and it added much excitement to our meeting.  Picking an easy metric such as participant engagement is just the beginning. You probably overlooked the other metrics we have in place attendance, participation rate and % completion.

We measure what we treasure!

You may not have heard about Aubrey Daniels’, but this is a guy to get excited about. Here is the link to his website  http://www.aubreydaniels.com/home/default.asp. Aubrey Daniels is all about improving performance and all performance can be improved with measurement and choice. Here is the defintion of his Performance Management: “Performance Management (PM), now referred to as Precision Leadership, is a systematic, data-oriented approach to managing people by arranging conditions for positive reinforcement in individual and group performance. Grounded in the science of Applied Behavior Analysis, Precision Leadership employs pinpointing, measurement, feedback and positive consequences to promote the critical behaviors that will produce the desired results. Companies, managers, athletes, and families across America and around the world use this process to achieve optimal performance in all areas of human endeavor. Check his website and subscribe to his magazine, it is excellent.

So when you have a problem, dont loose sleep, find a way to measure success.

I am active in my church and I wonder what is the real opportunity with many of the projects or ministries, as they call them, being offered by the church. If you have been in the church business you know it is much like making sausage, if you knew how it was made, you may not order it for breakfast.

So consider this, churches are always facing many problems: a lack of leadership, only 25% of those attending participate and only 20% of those in the seats each Sunday made the commitment to be members and only 5% of those there tythe.  But it seems that they have the answer but do not see the opportunity.

So lets say they focused on leadership development.  What an excellent development opportunity!  Imagine a two year leadership developement program, picking the best practices available. Maybe this is the missing WIFM (whats in it for me) in the church?  But lets say a church was to focus on leadership development, maybe like the Boy Scouts do with adult leaders or companies do with United Way executive volunteers. I bet they would have a product that people would stand in line for.  They probably would be able to improve thier community and save souls but it is easier to make sausage and worry about leadership challenges with every change of wind direction.

So why not consider core issues like this as your new product that sets you apart for the competition?  You can be sure others will not be able to commit to your high level of performance.  Am I on to something?

Fifteen years later we found ourselves in the picture we created. I found that I had the job in the picture and the family was pretty close to what we had imagined.  Then we went through a period of fear and anxiety and realized that we had not spent much of our time recently re-inventing the vision as we grew. Before I knew it we were beyond our vision and fear and confusion set in.   We scrambled to cast a vision as empty-nesters and that took some time.  It seemed so easy to have clarity years ago and now it was a challenge.  We discovered that getting a vision requires time and constant attention.

Our businesses and careers are like this also. We need a vision, a process of re-inventing our vision and continual attention beyond the horizon. Yesturday I heard an organization speak about thier vision but it was not very clear and, frankly, it just did not work. I think it was because there was no process in place to get others involved in developing and building on the leader’s vision.  Getting others to build on your ideas is very important, otherwise how do you get the passion needed to carry it forward.  Lets take some time to dream, some time to dream with our teams to imagine the stuff beyond the horizon and before you realize it, it will be real.  Be you vision!  What do you think?

Nine chances out of ten there will be NO EVIDENCE of an improvement process in place six months from now. Executive commitment needs to extend beyond the proclamation. Here are some simple solutions to this very common problem.

1. Assess your organization. Look at your organization from the basic essentials. Can they keep the factory or organization operate in an orderly fashion? �??So many companies have launched 5S as a program and then moved on to other tools, only to watch as they stall or fail, and to blame everything but their lack of diligence in sorting and straightening�?? By Jon Miller - September 9, 2008 at http://www.gembapantarei.com/ Work on you organizations culture and leadership before you jump to the cool improvement tools we all read about.
2. Strategic leaders need to develop a long term (3 year) improvement strategy. The first step may be as simple as clean and an orderly workplace (5S).
3. dentify the best site or department to run a pilot program.
4. Choose an Implementation Champion. Being available is not a skill for this project.
5. Identify resources you will assign. Talent, material, money and outside expertise.
6. Determine what success will look like in six, twelve and 36 months.
7. Determine how success will be measured. Develop the scorecard which you will receive on a regular basis from your champion.
8. Determine how �??evidence of change�?? will be acknowledged and promoted.
9. Develop a communication plan. Send an executive message on a regular basis.
10. Capture the costs on the sites manufacturing statements. Add to your scorecard.
11. Evaluate program after six months
12. Revise and adjust.

Pretty easy to give your idea sustainable implementation! Bring your team together, dish out the assignments and keep it on your radar screen to promote and ask why.

I was in British Columbia facilitating an energy awareness seminar and was surprised when I spoke with one middle level manager about how they judged success. “Success is determined by two activities 1) the level of customer service we present and 2) the number of people we are allowed to hire”. I had to repeat my question to make sure I heard him correctly. And I had.

In a job interview I was asked how I handle Hr problems. I responded: “I would fire HR”. Needless to say the interviewer, who happened to be an HR manager, was taken back and needed an explanation. I would not have provided that as an answer if I had not experienced it myself. Many times leaders have delegated their core responsibilities to a staff person so they can avoid the unpleasantness of their job. In this particular case, every day there was a long line of folks who had an issue and were directed to HR since “this was an HR problem”. The plant manager finally had an epiphany and eliminated the HR position and let the responsibilities rest where they started- with the first line supervisor. In the end, the supervisors did a great job and found a way to eliminate all those problems that were in the hallway.

Leadership is not about a specific, limited activity. Leadership has to be comprehensive strategic and tactical action. If you are a leader, there is no reason at all for you not making informed decisions considering production, quality, safety, HR, cost, environmental etc. Let’s not compartmentalize our opportunity to be a leader, take leadership to a higher level! If we are true leaders we should redeploy these staff resources to grow and develop our business not stand by to resolve a problem that could have been addressed at our doorstep.

Everyone treats data differently.  Some will beat it to death and others see no need and run off their intuitive feelings.   On this trip we had both spectrums.  On our first two visits, client data was available but little time spent reviewing the trend.  Time was spent explaining a data point at its time in history, but not the journey in which it played a critical role. The plant had made improvements, but overtime the benefits were not evident on the trended data.  Everyone was somewhat surprised that energy productivity had stayed flat and had not been as good as “they felt”.  Our next client was just the opposite.  He explained his whole operation through measurements and trended graphs.  Every question asked was supported with a review of trended data.  It was exciting to let him tell his operations story.  You walked away with a sense of control and predictability and few unanswered questions.  He knew what happened when and the impact.   As I left, I thought of another saying an executive had told me early in my career,  “numbers don’t lie, but liars are always figuring”.  I really do not believe that any of those I visited were liars, they just did not have time look at trended data to see the journey they were on.  So here are some important facts about performance measurements:

• We measure what we treasure.
• What gets measured gets improved.
• You may not be able to be precise, but it is important to be consistent in your measurement process.
• You do not need an expensive software package to better manage performance data, excel will do.
• Your measurement tells a story, tell the story as often as possible.
• Some measurements are critical and need to be taken often.  Some measurements audit sustainability and need to be taken periodically, and some measurements are to resolve problems and are a one-time event just to know and record.
• If you are taking a measurement often, what corrective action do you expect to be taken and do they know they are to take it?
• A number is just that, we need to have a true explanation for the change in direction and get it back on course.