Don’t meet, work!

On his blog Remarkable Leadership, Kevin Eikenberry cited an interesting study result in his article “Leadership and Meetings“: Almost no manager expects productivity to drop if meetings got banned for one day a week. About half of them even think productivity would increase!

In the OfficeTeam survey, 150 executives were asked “How would employee productivity be affected if your company banned meetings one day a week?” The results:

• No change: 46% (blue)
• More productive: 45% (green)
• Less productive: 7% (yellow)
• Don’t know: 2% (red)

My subsequent question would be: “So, why do you think those meetings don’t add value, and what are you going to do about it?”

Meetings have the purpose of fostering efficient communication. But just coming together in a room to talk doesn’t cut it. That’s the time, money and drive sink we all dread. As always, you have to do things right to reap the benefits.

Brian lists the most important things you should take care of to stop the waste by ineffective meetings:

• Have clear desired outcomes for every meeting that are communicated before hand.
• Use, and follow an agenda (that is focused on those desired outcomes).
• Hold people accountable for the action items.

So, there are two documents that are crucial for effective meetings: an agenda, sent to everyone in advance, and the meeting minutes (complete with action items and deadlines), sent to everyone after the meeting.

And hey, if you make your meetings really effective, you can have that no-meeting day anyway!

Mountaineer Leadership

In his German article “Was ich als Führungskraft durch Bergsteigen gelernt habe”, Rainer from the HaFAWo blog (“have fun at work and life”), describes how the lessons he learned as an alpinist can also be applied to his work as a manager:

1. Know your goals and their nature, for your job as well as your private life. (= Define your goals.)
2. Have a map and learn to read it right. (= Have a vision.)
3. Have a compass. (= Have reliable orientation points.)
4. Make sure to start at the right time to avoid time-dependend dangers. (= Have good timing.)
5. Expect the worst and be ready to handle it.
6. Be prepared regarding your shape, food, clothing and equipment. (= Have everything ready you may need.)
7. Know your skills and with how much of the impossible you can cope. (= Know your limits.)
8. If there are problems ahead, you maybe have to resort to teamwork. (= Have a supporting team.)
9. When problems arise, you depend on your equipment. (= Have reliable tools and know how to use them.)
10. You should know when to turn your back on the mountain and postpone summit victory. (Admit defeat in time, try again later.)

Thanks for the great analogy, Rainer!

Leadership tips

In “Ten Top Tips for the Innovative Leader“, Paul Sloane gives valuable recommendations to everyone who wants to be more of a leader than just being some levels above in the org chart.

He recommends:

1. Have a vision for change
2. Fight the fear of change
3. Think like a venture capitalist
4. Have a dynamic suggestion scheme
5. Break the rules
6. Give everyone two jobs
7. Collaborate
8. Welcome failure
9. Build prototypes
10. Be passionate

Many of his tips remind me of the concepts explained in “First, Break All the Rules“, a great leadership book I read recently (and have to review here ASAP). And looking at the fifth point, this doesn’t seem like a coincidence.

Especially the first two points resonate with me at the moment because I’m going to undertake a big change effort myself with my department.

Thanks to Paul for his great summary of important leadership qualities and practices!

New read: Leading Change

After listening to the audiobook version of John P. Kotter’s “The Heart of Change”, I decided to also read his book “Leading Change”. Kotter is an expert on change management, i.e. the management and leadership skills to lead an organization and make the necessary changes to adapt it to new situations and implement new strategies.

I’ve read chapter 1, “Transforming organizations: Why firms fail”, and I’m hooked. Kotter explains what errors are common causes of failing change efforts:

1. Allowing too much complacency
2. Failing to create a sufficiently powerful guiding coalition
3. Underestimating the power of vision
4. Undercommunicating the vision by a factor of 10 (or 100 or even 1,000)
5. Permitting obstacles to block the new vision
6. Failing to create short-term wins
7. Declaring victory too soon
8. Neglecting to anchor changes firmly in the corporate culture

Looking at some of the organizational changes I was in some way part of, I can see instances where most or even all eight of those errors were made — with the appropriate results. I want the changes I’m about to undertake to be a better success, so I’m curious what Kotter has in store in the following chapters.

Communicate to lead

Communication is (finally) one of my most important topics at work. Steve Roesler recommends to “add these four thoughts to your leadership communication kit”, and I can’t emphasize his points enough:

• Never assume that anyone knows anything.
• The larger the group, the more attention needs to be given to communicating.
• When left in the dark, people will fantasize their own reality. Do you want their fantasy to trump your reality?
• Effective leaders are obsessed with accurate, frequent communication.