Travis Smith

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July 12, 2009 by Travis Smith Leave a Comment

Leaders Challenge the Process

Andy Stanley, Senior Pastor of Northpoint Community Church in Atlanta, GA with approximately 23,000 people, said, “When you stop challenging the process you stop leading, and you’ve begun managing .” Managing is not bad and people. Please don’t get me wrong here. We need managers. We need people to oversee the administration of various programs or processes. However, if you have been gifted to lead, then you have no business managing. And if you have been gifted as a manager, then you have no business leading. Too often people aspire to places beyond their ability. Too often companies promote simply because that person was good at their job. Just because someone is good at their job, it doesn’t mean that they are ready for the next level. They may think so, and I surely have. But in reality, if they move up, they will eventually move out either from self-selection or termination. I’ve always coached people, players, and even myself: Know your abilities. This means knowing what you can do, what you can’t do, and what you sort-of can do. Beyond knowing your abilities, you need to know the situation, and based on that situation, knowing your abilities, what can you do or what can you sort-of do?

Leading always means challenging the process. It is part of the Leadership Challenge and The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership®. It never settles. It pushes and pushes and pushes some more. Continuous improvement requires challenging the process. It’s essential to any sort of improvement.

Usually challenging the process comes quite easy at the beginning of any adventure. However, what do you do when you have everything where you want it to be, when you have arrived!? What do you do when you have your ducks in a row and everything seems to be working like a fine-tuned machine? Most of us switch from leading to managing. We stop challenging the process. We have arrived!

Instead, we must force ourselves to be open to change. We must allow our ideas to be challenged. But why is this so hard? Because most of us confuse someone challenging the process as a challenge of authority. Why? Because when someone challenges the process, they are challenging my idea. I feel challenged personally. And when we feel challenged we begin seeing those rising leaders as arrogant and rebellious. However, at one point, we were just that. And it is arrogant to not listen to them. It is a disservice to them and your organization. We must realize that every time someone challenges the process, someone is challenged, and that may include us. At one point someone came up with that process. Someone put their heart and soul into the creation of that process. It is someone’s baby. At some time, the process that was created was considered a good or decent idea. It was revolutionary and probably went through a battle or two to win the day. And, the better someone thinks the idea is the more they will feel challenged.

Have you ever found a process that you thought was ridiculous? Have you ever heard someone say, “Well that was a dumb idea,” or “Who came up with that?” I have been guilty of saying those phrases countless times, not thinking that the person who came up with the idea may be in the room or the next office. Have you seen those ideas and think, “How could this have ever been thought of as a good idea? What problem did this solve?” Hind-sight is 20-20 or even better. Whenever we are looking at a what we think is a “broken process,” at some point, and maybe even now, it wasn’t broken (my rebelliousness wants to say “so broken” or “as broken”). And it may not even be broke! And it definitely isn’t to other people, especially the “owner.” Instead, all we are doing is trying to improve the process. Make it more efficient. Make it better, simpler, or whatever. It’s not that it isn’t good, it’s just not great! And as leaders, we are looking to make things great!

So what do we do? Well, there are two extreme responses: Shutdown or Rebel. Obviously both eventually lead down a road of death and destruction. If we shutdown, we become irrelevant and die as leaders. If we rebel, then well, we have chosen our fate, and it is only a matter of time before we are moved out. Instead, we must walk the balance between the tensions. We must challenge the process but we also must come across as respectful and humble. So how do we do that?

Well a few things. If we are the boss, then:

  1. Continue to challenge the process yourself.
  2. Reinvent yourself.
  3. Encourage your workgroup, the leaders under you, to challenge your processes.
  4. Train them on how to properly challenge a process.
  5. Reproduce yourself in them in this manner.
  6. Engage in healthy debate not allowing yourself to be angry.

If we are not the boss, then:

  1. Learn how to challenge the process & challenge everything.
  2. Bounce your ideas off your colleagues and/or those in your discipline (through Twitter, Social Networks, Conferences, etc) depending on the security of the information.
  3. Come up with a strategy to educate the right people.
  4. Execute the strategy expecting resistance.
  5. Utilize the 5 principles of adoption found in Diffusion of Innovations by Everett M. Rogers. They are (links to Kevin Jones’ Blog regarding Social Learning organizational adoption):
    1. Relative Advantage
    2. Compatibility
    3. Complexity
    4. Trialability
    5. Observability

So are you challenging the process? Are you still leading? Have you given up? Are you rebelling? Where are you in this regard in your leadership? What would you add to this? Start by challenging this blog. What would you improve?

Filed Under: Leadership

July 12, 2009 by Travis Smith Leave a Comment

The Fred Factor

So this weekend, I read The Fred Factor by Mark Sanborn. It was a very interesting book, deductively written (he tells you what he’s going to tell you, he tells you, & then he encourages you to tell others), so you generally know what’s coming after the second chapter (so if you are pushed for time, just read the second chapter or this blog post or go to his Fred Factor website for a synopsisl; it’s basically chapter 2). However, the material was good, and unlike many deductive books I read, it was not repetitive. He taught his point expanding it each page, each chapter, and each section. Here are what Mark Sanborn calls the Fred Principles (with some subsequent quotes from Chapter 2):

  1. Everyone makes a difference.  “Nobody can prevent you from choosing to be exceptional” (9) “People give work dignity. There are no unimportant jobs, just people who feel unimportant doing their jobs” (10).
  2. Success is built on relationships. “Relationship building is the most important objective because the quality of the relationship determines the quality of the product or service” (11).
  3. You must continually create value for others (without spending any money). “Refocus their attention from being employed to being ’emploable'” (13). “The trick is to replace money with imagination, to substitute creativity for capital…Sanborn’s Maxim says that the faster you try to solve a problem with money, the less likely it will be the best solution” (13). “There is another less observable competitor: the job we could have done. That competitor is mediocrity, a willingness to just enough and nothing more to get by. And while mediocrity will not beat you out for a job promotion or take away corporate market whare; med will just as surely diminish the quality of your performance and the meaning you derive from it” (14).
  4. You can reinvent yourself regularly. “You can make your business, as well as your life, anything you choose it to be. That’s what I call the Fred Factor” (15).

 After visualizing a few Freds at the end of the first section, in Section 2, he discusses each of these principles in more detail giving practical guides and steps to accomplish these principles (33-75). In Section 3, he writes how to Develop other Freds (76-98), and finally in Section 4, Sanborn encourages and motivates his reader to follow and spread the Fred Spirit (99-108). 

I highly encourage people that want to learn more about servant leadership and good customer service to read this book!

Filed Under: Leadership

July 12, 2009 by Travis Smith Leave a Comment

Twitter and Business

LawyerCasting lists some leading brands are now using Twitter in some great ways (post on the Search Engine Journal, with some changes/additions):

  • To update customers on company deals, promotions and coupons (Dell, DellOutlet,  Starbucks, Popeyes, Southwest Airlines)
  • To offer customer support (JetBlue, ComCast, TheHomeDepot)
  • To converse with customers (Southwest Airlines [runs non-official entertaining discussions], Best Buy has built Gina Community)
  • To invite customers to upcoming events of possible interest (Whole Foods Market)
  • To run ask-and-answer sessions (HRBlock)
  • To offer an alternative subscription option (ATTNews, Forrester Research)
  • To post company news and discuss with listeners (BreakingPoint, Ford [FordCustService; FordDriveOne; FordDriveGreen; FordTrucks; FordMustang; FordRacing; FordRacingNWide], Samsung)
  • To promote the corporate blog (Kodak Chief Blogger, GM, FedEx)

Interesting stuff, esp. from Ford Motor Company! See other Brands on Twitter, Companies on Twitter by Industry. See also BuisnessWeek’s Article.

Yammer is a fantastic Twitter enterprise version (TechCrunch). TechCrunch writes:

The purpose is to allow co-workers to share status updates. You post updates on what you are working on. You can post news, links, ask questions, and get answers for people in your company.

You can see most the most prolific people and the most followed people. It is a good way to discover who is the most influential in your company.

It is also possible to follow specific people or topics (as defined by tags). Conversations can be viewed in threaded mode, like FriendFeed. By keeping up with Yammer, employees can see what everyone else in the company is talking about over the past 24 hours, week, or month.

This is a private Twitter only for employees of a specific company. Just like Facebook in the early days, which required a university e-mail address to join, Yammer requires a corporate email address to join.

Unlike Twitter, Yammer actually has a business model. It is free to use for employees, but if a company wants to claim their network and get administrative tools to remove messages and users, set password policies, or set IP ranges for who can use it.

Reference: Lexblog, 50 Business Ideas, Church of the Customer, Lawyer Casting (RT)

Filed Under: Leadership

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