It’s the end of 2011 and a perfect time to prepare for success in 2012. Activate Group, Inc is hosting a Webinar that will prep leaders for a big year ahead.
The Four Pillars of Great Management
Webinar
December 13, 2011
12:00 – 1:30 pm
Visit our Upcoming Events page for the details.
The Penn State scandal has been all over the news these past few weeks and it got me thinking. I wondered how such a respected and seemingly professional establishment could have allowed this situation to go so far. How did these secrets stay buried for so long and how could an organization with such moral conviction let these decades-long accusations fester in the dark without follow-up?
Looking from the outside in, I can only assume that the internal communications and processes for handling crises are severely flawed on many levels. Here’s what I think we as business leaders can all learn and apply to our own organizations after watching the Penn State scandal unfold.
1. The truth will always come out.
It’s the golden rule of public relations: attempting to hide a negative, potentially damaging situation within the company only makes it worse. By trying to bury the accusations against Sandusky, Penn State made the entire situation far worse by being exposed after it festered beneath the surface for years. I’ve seen it happen in many organizations. If someone in your organization—I don’t care who it is—is involved with something unethical or illegal, it must be dealt with immediately. Damage control processes need to be activated with your corporate communications folks and a crisis plan needs to be created. Because the truth will always come out, even if after many years in hiding.
2. The open-door policy must be lived, not just talked about.
Most companies have an open-door communication policy but many don’t live up to it. In the Penn State situation it was clear that Sandusky’s improprieties were witnessed and reported to superiors. Nothing was done about it. But something made the whistleblower stop there. Was he told to let it go? Was he made to feel like a detractor for blowing his whistle? Whatever the case may be, we can all learn that when an employee comes forward with something it must be taken seriously and there must be absolutely no element of discouragement or retribution for being the one that came forward. An open-door policy that is lived is one that instills a sense of comfort and safety for employees that need to bring bad things to light.
3. No one is immune from responsibility.
Joe Paterno is probably the most loved college coach of all time, and clearly a pillar of the Penn State organization—not just the football team. Yet even he is not immune from doing the right thing when faced with a difficult situation with one of his employees. All leaders should take this to heart. As a leader, you are responsible for the wellbeing of your company first. Personal relationships must take a back seat to the law.
Have you ever faced a difficult legal or ethical situation in your professional life? How did you choose to deal with it?
Howard Shore is a business growth expert who works with companies that want to maximize their growth potential by improving strategy, enhancing their knowledge, and improving motivation. To learn more about him or his firm please visit his website at www.activategroupinc.com or contact Howard Shore at (305) 722-7216 or shoreh@activategroupinc.com.
At Thanksgiving it is a time to gather with friends and family and to give
thanks for our many blessings.
With our deepest appreciation we wish you a
Happy Thanksgiving!
I like motivational quotes, especially those attributed to highly successful entrepreneurs. The other day I was reminded of this one from Anita Roddick, the English entrepreneur and founder of The Body Shop:
“Passion persuades.”
Simple and true. The greatest salespeople I have ever seen are the ones who are truly passionate about the product they sell. Okay, maybe assembly-line equipment or fiber-optic cables aren’t their passion in life, but they find something special in their product and sell it with passion.
Are your people passionate about your product? If not, how can you inspire that passion by helping them discover what is truly special about it?
Activate Group, Inc. would like to invite you to participate in our upcoming workshop and webinar that would be beneficial to you in helping you become an effective leader in your organization.
Workshop:
Keys to Forming an Awesome Strategy on Monday December 5th from 7:30-10:00 am.
In two short hours you will learn:
Sponsored By: BankUnited
Register today: Keys to Forming an Awesome Strategy
Webinar:
The Four Fundamental Pillars of Great Management (a.k.a. – A Successful Organization), on Tuesday December 13th from 12:00-1:30.
In less than 2 hours you will learn
Register today: The Four Fundamental Pillars of Great Management Webinar
Learn about all our upcoming events at: http://www.activategroupinc.com/events/
Many companies measure their success by revenues, income and other traditional accounting yardsticks. The problem is that the accounting approach measures how you did but not how you should have done. For example, take a company that grew 20% last year, and had $10 million in revenue. Its management team was weak, so it lost an additional 20% growth, missed out on another 5% in net margin, and had unnecessary turnover of 10% in client base. So this same company (assuming a 10% net margin) could have seen another $800K added to their bottom line. The one secret ingredient was “people.”
The reality is companies are making big mistakes in their hiring practices. They say things like “I have gotten my money back on this salesperson because we got enough deals to cover his/her salary.” This ignores the fact that the person did not reach quota, sucked up a lot of management time and energy, hurt company reputation, and created a hole in the organization when they suddenly left. Had the company hired correctly, the “A” player would have met quota, still be there, and have a lot of momentum right now.
“A” players are those people in the top 10 percent of talent available at the pay grade you have defined, for the tasks you want them to do, and willing to do it in your market. In many cases organizations are already paying for “A” players, but the lack of discipline in their people processes allowed them to hire “B”s and “C”s. Here are some good ideas to follow to dramatically improve your people processes:
Contact us for help with your hiring process.
Howard Shore is a business growth expert who works with companies that want to maximize their growth potential by improving strategy, enhancing their knowledge, and improving motivation. To learn more about him or his firm please visit his website at www.activategroupinc.com or contact Howard Shore at (305) 722-7216 or shoreh@activategroupinc.com.
In my line of work, I see a lot of what I like to call “organizational mismatch.” I see it often, especially in companies that have experienced significant growth in a short amount of time. What it means is that you have the wrong people with the wrong skill sets for their positions. (more…)
The first step in successfully executing a goal is to state it properly. You know your goal is well stated when anyone who reads it knows exactly what you are trying to accomplish and in what time frame. The better a person states the goal, the easier it is to create the action plan. An acronym commonly used for stating a goal properly is SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistically high, and Time-based).
Very briefly, let us discuss what each of these criteria really means:
Once you have stated your goal in a manner that meets all of the SMART criteria, you then need to consider whether they achieve WAY (Written, Aligned, and Yours). If a goal is yours, it is much more likely that you will be internally motivated to achieve it. It is hard to get excited about somebody else’s goals. When we achieve goals, it increases energy, which has a positive impact on results, thus further increasing energy, increasing focus on goals, increasing results, increasing energy, and so on. It is that simple!
If you want to achieve more goals, make sure that you state them in a SMART WAY!
Howard Shore is a business growth expert who works with companies that want to maximize their growth potential by improving strategy, enhancing their knowledge, and improving motivation. To learn more about him or his firm please visit his website at www.activategroupinc.com or contact Howard Shore at (305) 722-7216 or shoreh@activategroupinc.com.
Join us on December 13th at 12:00 for our Webinar on The Four Fundamental Pillars of Great Management (a.k.a. – A Successful Organization)
In less than 2 hours you will learn:
Learn More and Register Here
As leaders, we are trying to make the whole organization equal to more than the sum of its parts. In today’s business environment, it is essential that we find ways to make our organizational resources more productive. In many organizations, the most prominent and expensive resource we have is our people. As a result, a lot of time is spent on creating processes and conditions that drive and motivate our employees.
Over the years, I have noticed leaders trying many ways to motivate their people to higher levels of performance. Even the best leaders have experienced the frustration of leading someone who seemed to refuse to live up to expectations. The fact is, the leader was not recognizing that motivation develops internally from a personal desire to achieve goals that are important both to the individual and to the organization. Motivation is the force that prompts you to take action. While pay, fringe benefits, and working conditions are important, research has shown that absence of these factors produces a lack of motivation, but their presence has no long-range motivational effects. The long-range motivation factors are recognition of a job well done, sense of achievement, growth, participation, challenge, and identification with the company’s goals and vision.
Here are a few ideas to apply in your business:
Howard Shore is a business growth expert who works with companies that want to maximize their growth potential by improving strategy, enhancing their knowledge, and improving motivation. To learn more about him or his firm please visit his website at www.activategroupinc.com or contact Howard Shore at (305) 722-7216 or shoreh@activategroupinc.com.
In John Maxwell’s book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership he identified “The Law of Influence”, which states that, “The True Measure of Leadership is influence – nothing more, nothing less.”
