Now this is “Getting Things Done” — From Touchdown to Medical Attention in 20 minutes

I don’t remember which news program told this story, but among the first doctors arriving in Haiti was a plane load of doctors from Miami.  And the reporter who told the story said that 20 minutes after landing, they were treating the wounded in a United Naitons makeshift hospital at the airport.

20 minutes!  Now that is getting things done!

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If you have not yet donated to the relief effort, there are many ways to do so.  (I donated through the Red Cross, while my son was texting his donation on his cell phone)  You can donate through the Red Cross here.

How to create awareness to create change

According to Judith M. Bardwick, in a great majority of organizations, “decision-makers don’t know that the single most important route to success is to make commitments to valuable employees so that employees reciprocate with strong feelings of commitment to the organization. Ignorance of these facts leads to callous [practices toward employees, who become too scared for either their own or the organization’s good.

“A critical leadership task is to create widespread awareness of this information throughout an organization as the first step in reinstating employees as stakeholders and as assets. The key message is simple: When employees are viewed and treated as critical resources, and commitments are made to them [and kept], financial success is probable.”

Bardwick recommends a ten-step process to complete change initiatives:

1. Open the books. Create a financial frame-of-reference.

2. Identify the core business.

3. Identify the most important goals.

4. Identify the organizations most important core values.

5. Create simple, open, honest, and transparent channels of communication.

6. Establish line-of-sight goals at all levels and areas with deadlines.

7. Reward the “angels” and fire the “snakes.”

8. Fire troublemaking stragglers.

9. Fire chronic nonperformers.

[Note: As Jason Jennings suggests, “If it’s DOA, bury it.”]

10. Start again. Remember Murphy’s Law. “If anything an go wrong, it will” is bedrock truth.

From The AMA Handbook of Leadership co-edited by Marshall Goldsmith, John Baldoni, and Sarah McArthur and published by AMACOM in 2010.

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Judith M. Bardwick is one of the great management thinkers of our time as well as a highly regarded speaker and management consultant. She is the author of several books and countless articles and her most recent book is One Foot Out the Door in which she explains “how to combat the psychological recession that’s alienating employees and hurting American business.” In fact, her insights and recommendations are relevant to almost any workplace, almost anywhere in the world.