StrategyDriven The Advisors Corner Article

The Advisor’s Corner – Can Ethics Be Learned?

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Can Ethics Be Learned?Question:

Can you teach ethics, or are we ‘hard wired’ and born with or without ethics?

StrategyDriven Response: (by Roxi Hewertson, StrategyDriven Principal Contributor)

YES you can teach the principles and importance of ethics. YES, you can model the ethics you expect within your culture. And… NO, you cannot be sure someone will behave and act in ethical ways just because you’ve taught or modeled ethics for them.

NO, we are not born with a particular set of ethics of what is right and what is wrong in every context.

And here’s why…

Whatever society you live within, its culture, your family, your peers, and the reward and punishment experiences you receive from all of them, shape your ethics. For example, consider China’s one baby ‘recommendation’ versus the Catholic Church’s no birth control edict. Each entity, made up of people, operating within their own culture, thinks they are doing the ‘right’ thing for the ‘right’ reasons. Therefore, what’s ethical in China is not ethical in Rome and vice versa.

We are so quick to pass judgment on other cultures’ ethics and ways of living and being that we might even convince ourselves that ‘those people’ whomever they are, are dead wrong, period. The reality is, their ethics are wrong based on your ethics. It’s just not as simple as we’d prefer it to be. This makes judgment about what is right and wrong a very personal issue and that means we aren’t born with ethics; we learn ethics.

Our personal values are formed in early family life and evolve as we get older. We might challenge our parents’ or cultural values or keep them. We may have an experience that shapes us and alters what matters most. Different stages of life may affect what we will ‘fall on our swords’ for.

And those values, whatever they are, drive our behaviors, even unconsciously at times.

For example: if integrity is high on my values list, I will pay far more attention to ethics than if my highest value is wealth. It’s that simple. And… If integrity and wealth are both on my top 5, then I will behave very differently in my business dealings than if they are not together in the top 5.

One more example:

Think about the ‘mafia.’ There are entirely different sets of ethical standards and ‘rules’ driven by different values and relationships. For ‘family’ life is precious. For strangers, life is indifferent. For enemies, life is worthless.

I believe we all know right from wrong within our own system and culture unless we have a very real mental health disorder that distorts reality. It is also clear that what is right for one culture, family, or society can be totally wrong for another. So if we are going to talk about ‘ethics’ we need to consider ethics within a cultural context and determine how much flexibility the culture we live within is going to permit before we deem something unethical.

In our workplaces, what is not acceptable behavior needs to be very explicit to everyone for all of the reasons we’ve just considered. If you want a workplace where your values and principles are honored and matter, then you must be crystal clear about what that means in decision-making, communications, and for managing relationships with people both inside and outside the organization.

About the Author

Roxi HewertsonLeadership authority Roxana (Roxi) Hewertson is a no-nonsense business veteran revered for her nuts-and-bolts, tell-it-like-it-is approach and practical, out-of-the-box insights that help both emerging and expert managers, executives and owners boost quantifiable job performance in various mission critical facets of business. Through AskRoxi.com, Roxi — “the Dear Abby of Leadership” — imparts invaluable free advice to managers and leaders at all levels, from the bullpen to the boardroom, to help them solve problems, become more effective and realize a higher measure of business and career success.

The StrategyDriven website was created to provide members of our community with insights to the actions that help create the shared vision, focus, and commitment needed to improve organizational alignment and accountability for the achievement of superior results. We look forward to answering your strategic planning and tactical business execution questions. Please email your questions to TheAdvisorsCorner@StrategyDriven.com.

Managing a Remote Team: 12 Best Practices for Better Productivity

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The remote and mobile workforce population is steadily rising. Even IBM adjusted its HR policies to accommodate remote workers. Today, it is one of the top companies that make use of a remote workforce, offering flexible work options, alongside Apple, Dell and Xerox.

To ascertain staff productivity in teams that are scattered across various locations, below are twelve best practices to effectively manage a mobile/remote workforce:

1. Embrace flexibility

Managing a remote workforce will require application of a diverse set of techniques and mediums to get a task accomplished. Individuals are, well, individuals and are, therefore, unique, and so are their ways to accomplishing things. While maintaining protocols is important to achieve business goals, allowing remote workers to utilize methods and tools they have already proven to work is good practice. Investing in communications software that can be used around the clock could be a good idea, so team members can easily let others know when they are and aren’t available.

[wcm_restrict]2. Use cloud-based tools

Cloud-based tools provide convenience of access, regardless of location and device used. In fact, they are one of the key reasons virtual collaboration is even possible. One cloud-based tool that is especially useful for project planning and execution is Comindware Project. For open-source developers, there’s GitHub, where they can collaborate on, review and manage code. And for designers, there’s Mural.Ly to help them visually organize their thoughts.

3. Choose security

To maximize your cloud investment, choose a system with a group of technical specialists available 24/7. This allows you to save on time and training costs. If you need to tighten your security even further, companies such as Conde Nast Publications, The Bank of New York and SC Johnson use Symantec’s cloud-based security solution, Symantec.cloud, to protect their business communications and other infrastructure.

4. Instill accountability

Have a section in your cloud-based tool where members can easily view a team tree charting who’s reporting to whom, who’s leading whom, who’s working on what, and when they’re expected to deliver. This makes everyone accountable for their actions. Everyone’s time is accounted for, and the tendency of remote workers to be idle is minimized. A viewable signoff section where people can closely examine who authorized what or whose authorization is needed for what is also a wise addition.

5. Value software ease of use

Amazon reached a wider base of users when its app became accessible via various mediums. The Kindle Reader (mobile app or native hardware) made their online bookstore portable, allowing them to increase user reach. It’s not hard to imagine reaching the same level of continued engagement when applying the same practices to a software that employees can easily use and consistently access.

6. Schedule effectively

With different schedules, even different time zones, it’s easy to miss deadlines when you’re managing a remote and/or geographically dispersed team. Creating a task timeframe that everyone must adhere to is a must. Tools with built-in scheduling charts, such as Gantt charts, help estimate the amount of time needed per task, send out automated reminders, whether as calendar or email reminders on desktops or smart devices, as well as automatically adjust the timeline to account for early completions or delays.

7. Be transparent

Humans are inherently curious, which is why transparency is a big boost to team morale and productivity. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is known to endorse openness between leaders and employees by adopting an open-office floor plan to enhance collaboration. In this same sense, crucial information must be shared with the team at all times. This helps foster better decision-making and a greater degree of participation from members.

8. Enforce policies

To keep remote teams in check, everyone must be aware of a certain set of rules to follow, as well as sanctions to heed, if any. Policies regarding communication availability, required amount of hours per day, consequences for late submissions, among others, should help eliminate ambiguity and slacking.

9. Release guidelines

A formal guideline must be in place to streamline the workflow. For example, when a member signs in, he/she is required to send a check-in message to a team lead, provide a status report before working on a task and another one before signing off for the day. Damage control guidelines should also be released to account for late submissions, sick members, and the like.

10. Measure productivity

Have a set required amount of tasks per day so workers have something to work towards. The same way that sales professionals have a sales quota per day or fishing companies have a production quota per fishing season, having a reasonable but concrete target will reduce wasted time and encourage productivity.

11. Be reachable

As the manager, you are the one most accountable for everything. Hence, keep your communication lines open at all times. In rare occasions you cannot be reached, designate deputies or other points of contact for important decision-making functions.

12. Schedule regular meetings

Meetings, albeit virtual, should be a regular part of your team’s routine. Meetings don’t always have to about work, though. Teamwork is founded on relationships, and relationships start with communication. If you want your remote workers to be at ease with one another, encourage sharing of ideas, culture, beliefs and ideologies.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]

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About the Author

Maricel Rivera manages content for Comindware, a global leader in adaptive BPM and project management solutions. You may connect with her on Twitter.

StrategyDriven Tactical Execution Best Practice Article

Tactical Execution Best Practice 7 – Clearly Defined Organizational Roles and Responsibilities

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StrategyDriven Tactical Execution Best Practice ArticleAll too often, duplicate effort is unknowingly expended by an organization’s various workgroups. Lack of organizational defined positional roles and responsibilities and/or work handoffs commonly result in employees unnecessarily performing highly similar if not the exact same activities. In some cases, workgroups may generate differing and conflicting outputs; in others, they may inappropriately change underlying application data such that hinders overall progress and propagates errors. Organizations clearly defining positional roles and responsibilities in standalone responsibilities matrices are better able to avoid these conflicts; releasing precious resources for the performance of value adding work and eliminating redundancy based errors.[wcm_restrict plans=”41034, 25542, 25653″]

Most organizations rely on a collection of integrated procedures to govern their activities. These procedures individually define the specific roles and responsibilities of those performing the work as well as identifying these individuals by organizational position. If these individual roles and responsibilities lists are not consolidated into one integrated matrix, redundant work assignments may exist because of conflicting roles definitions between multiple independent procedures. And these roles redundancies and conflicts may be further reinforced within and by an organization’s enterprise applications.

Benefits of an Organizational RACI Matrix

An organizationally based roles and responsibilities matrix helps to prevent these redundancies and conflicts. Such RACI matrices identify who, by position, is responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed during the performance of each major organizational function. Translating these roles and responsibilities into the organization’s procedures and supporting applications thereby:

  • Reducing redundantly performed actives; freeing up organizational resources for other purposes
  • Identifying misaligned processes; enabling the alignment of hand-offs to facilitate smoother processing of products and information, eliminate bottlenecks, and reduce unnecessary effort expenditure
  • Contributing to job description development; facilitating better identification of the knowledge skills and experiences needed to fulfill specific organizational roles or positions

Key Characteristics of an Organizational RACI Matrix

An effective RACI matrix communicates to all executives, managers, and employees the expected contribution of each organizational position to the performance of the business’s work. Key characteristics and fields commonly contained within a roles and responsibilities matrix include:

Characteristics

  • The matrix is most often created in a tabular form
  • Each function/activity is assigned one individual who is primarily responsible for ensuring the function/work is completed in a timely and quality fashion
  • Each function/activity is assigned one or more individuals who serve in a back-up role to the individual primarily responsible
  • Color coding is often used to distinguish between individuals primarily responsible for an item and those in a back-up role
  • Color coding is often used to visually highlight different processes (collections of functions/activities) and their interfaces (a single function/activity, one contained within each interfacing process)
  • A legend and term definitions are provided, as appropriate
  • The roles and responsibilities matrix is printed in a large font so it is easily read and prominently displayed in a conspicuous team area

Fields

  • Organizational positions (usually listed in a logical order down the left-most column)
  • Process function/activity list (usually listed from the left in a logical order across the top row)

The roles and responsibilities matrix should be periodically reviewed by organization leaders to ensure it is up-to-date and that employees are adequately performing their assigned tasks. This review is often conducted on an annual basis or prior to and shortly following an organizational realignment. At the same time, managers should periodically review and reinforce applicable positional roles and responsibilities with their direct reports to ensure these individuals are aware of their work functions, interfacing relationships, decision authorities.

Creating an Organizational RACI Matrix

Organizational RACI matrices are most commonly developed using the organization chart (for organizational positions logically ordered down the left-most column) and process documents (for the functions/activities listed from the left in a logical order across the top row). In the absence of these documents, a RACI matrix can be developed using the following substitutes:

Organization Chart Substitutions

  • Positional titles
  • Short job description
  • Categorization of positions based on direct work observations

Process Functions/Activities Substitutions

  • Procedures
  • Process maps
  • Process mapping based on direct work observations
  • Positional job descriptions

Assignment of which positions are responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed is often based on information contained within procedures and/or detailed job descriptions. In the absence of this information, a cross-functional group of managers should collaborate to decide and assign these roles and responsibilities. Executive leadership, typically the CEO, should approve of the final RACI matrix to convey approval and commitment to these expectations. (See Organizational Performance Measures Best Practice, System Approval by the CEO.)[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember plans=”41034, 25542, 25653″]

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About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

Managing Talent in a Passion Driven Job Market

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I have not sought out nor come across any empirical data set that proves this, nor do I plan to. However, I have spent a lot of time hearing the same story over and over again. Many people are not excited about the work they are doing everyday. The last Forbes survey stated that four out of five people were not happy with their jobs. Four out of Five – that is 80%, which puts the 20/80 rule (that 20% of your efforts get 80% of the work done) into an entirely different perspective. Just think about that when you’re heading out the door and on the crowded bumper-to-bumper highway on the way to work. As you sit there, looking at your phone (when you shouldn’t be), look at the cars sitting there around you and realize, for every five cars, four of those drivers are not happy about going to work.

[wcm_restrict]The question then becomes, as a business owner, leader or HR manager, what should you do about it? I would contend that the best investment you can make is in talent management. Every organization is looking to create and protect its competitive advantage and those often come in two flavors – resources or capabilities – and talent (your people) help you create, sustain and protect both. However, it is common, that when we think about talent management, the systems we create around it are usually geared towards the long-term goals and strategy of the enterprise. In essence, we funnel people into the vision, goals and strategy we have for the company. That manifests itself in how we recruit, manage, appraise and develop talent. Through each of those phases the interactions are guided by the organization’s interest, language and prerequisites of what it believes qualifies an individual to fit into that vision.

I would argue that in today’s environment, which is probably best described as transient (e.g. the employer-employee contract of loyalty is gone), fluid (e.g. while people are still willing to grow in vertical path, many seek to grow horizontally and cross-functionally) and global (e.g. people can work anywhere physically or virtually) that employers need to create relationships with talented individuals and networks versus the historically route of creating jobs/roles and plugging people into them. In what I might describe as the passion-driven job market – where individuals are less concerned about achieving a post at the top of the chain in a fortune 500 company and are more concerned about enjoying what they do – for the long haul, employers need to re-pivot.

To re-pivot, employers need to genuinely engage talent on their terms, seeking to understand what they are passion about – beyond the job description for the role they are trying to fill. Employers need to understand what drives a person and why; where does the person ultimately want to go and how; and what experiences the person believes they need along that journey This approach is not about just creating a database of information on your talent, but is about being a part of that person’s journey – which is a departure from the ways of old (or the current) – which is largely about telling an employee how ‘fit’ into the corporation’s journey.

While it’s certainly still true that big brands can attract talent, it is also still true that the costs to replace talent is expensive and in a passion-driven job market, that cost will rise exponentially as passion seekers will follow their passion, not a brand nor the convenience of ‘hanging around’ a place that does not help them chase their passions and be a part of their journey.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]

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About the Author

James RosseauJames Rosseau is the author of Success on Your Own Terms: 6 Promises to Fire Up Your Passion, Ignite Your Career, and Create an Amazing Life (Career Press, 2014). James is President of LegalShield Solutions, as well as co-owner of Christian Media Properties (www.HolyCulture.net).

StrategyDriven Business Communications Article

The Advisor’s Corner – Are People Listening to Me?

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Are People Listening to Me?Question:

Is it me, or are people listening less and less at work and at home?

StrategyDriven Response: (by Roxi Hewertson, StrategyDriven Principal Contributor)

I have observed a continuous degradation in communication skills among leaders for over two decades, and yes it IS getting worse. This may not surprise you, but it should get your attention. Poor communications skills are rampant in the workplace. We wag our fingers at politicians who are not listening to each other and yet, we are doing the same things in our own workplaces all around the country. The results may be less catastrophic (or not); never-the-less, the impact on our people, businesses and society is huge! While technology gets a lot of blame, I suggest that, like any tool, technology can be used in positive or negative ways. What really matters is HOW we CHOOSE to communicate, and use our tools.

Tools work well for:

  • sharing information
  • setting up meetings
  • keeping a record

They do not work well:

  • when we need to build a relationship, have a dialogue, or make a decision
  • when we copy the world to cover our bases or boost our egos
  • when there is emotion involved

A recent Development Dimensions International (DDI) study, Driving Workplace Performance through High-Quality Conversations: What leaders must do every day to be effective, accurately reflects my work with clients, and reminds us that leaders, peers and direct reports, need to hold more effective conversations to get more effective business performance. Since communication norms are deeply woven into the tapestry of every organization’s culture, this challenge starts with the CEO and involves all her/his leaders. The DDI study validates how important emotional intelligence competencies, particularly self-awareness and social skills are in human interactions.

Everything we do happens through our relationships – at work and in life. When communication is poor or stops, the relationship is poor or stops and vice versa. In the DDI study they point out that senior leaders have not mastered these (communication) skills any better than other less senior leaders, even though they have been at it longer. What happens instead? Take a few moments over the next several days to see if you notice any of these poor interaction habits in leaders you know, including yourself:

1. Jumping to task before understanding the full picture.
One Solution: Take time to gather information and listen carefully.

2. Unskilled at or choosing not to have, effective conversations.
One Solution: Learn this skill or get out of leadership.

3. Failing to engage others in decisions that impact them.
One Solution: Ask yourself, “Who is impacted by this decision?” and
engage them early on.

4. Failing to demonstrate authentic empathy.
One Solution: Slow down and truly put yourself in another person’s shoes. What might it be like to be them right now? Don’t know? Ask them.

5. Ego and personal agenda driven.
One Solution: Ask yourself, “Do I really need to be or prove I am right? Or do I want my team to succeed no matter whose idea it is?”

6. Unable to facilitate a productive meeting/discussion.
One Solution: Learn these skills and/or engage skilled facilitators to help you.

The systemic solution to improving interaction and communication skills in your organization, is to make it matter. It’s quite simple to do. What you reward, is what you will get. What you don’t reward, you will get much less often. Leaders generally know what a good conversation looks like.

Knowing is the easy part. Doing is the hard part. Since the leaders’ number one responsibility is to create and nurture the desired culture to get the desired results, every leader’s choices and priorities will roll downhill. This is particularly true for the behaviors we model to our direct reports – all the way from the C-Suite to the front line. At the end of the day, when we are not truly listening… we are not leading. Period.

Access the full report here, Driving Workplace Performance Through High-Quality Conversations: What leaders must do every day to be effective

About the Author

Roxi HewertsonLeadership authority Roxana (Roxi) Hewertson is a no-nonsense business veteran revered for her nuts-and-bolts, tell-it-like-it-is approach and practical, out-of-the-box insights that help both emerging and expert managers, executives and owners boost quantifiable job performance in various mission critical facets of business. Through AskRoxi.com, Roxi — “the Dear Abby of Leadership” — imparts invaluable free advice to managers and leaders at all levels, from the bullpen to the boardroom, to help them solve problems, become more effective and realize a higher measure of business and career success.

The StrategyDriven website was created to provide members of our community with insights to the actions that help create the shared vision, focus, and commitment needed to improve organizational alignment and accountability for the achievement of superior results. We look forward to answering your strategic planning and tactical business execution questions. Please email your questions to TheAdvisorsCorner@StrategyDriven.com.