Holiday Gift Suggestions

Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University

It is that time of the year again when family members and friends ask me to suggest business books (published in 2009) that could be holiday gifts. Here’s my rule-of-thumb: Suggest only those that will (in my opinion) have enduring value in years to come. They are listed in alpha order.

Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results
Morten T. Hansen

The Essential Bennis
Warren Bennis and 20 Guest Contributors

Freedom, Inc.: Free Your Employees and Let Them Lead Your Business to Higher Productivity, Profits, and Growth
Brian M. Carney and Isaac Getz

In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing
Matthew E. May

Maestro: A Surprising Story About Leading by Listening
Roger Nierenberg

Management Rewired: Why Feedback Doesn’t Work and Other Surprising Lessons from the Latest Brain Science
Charles S. Jacobs

The Power of Collective Wisdom: And the Trap of Collective Folly
Alan Briskin, Sheryl Erickson, John Ott, and Tom Callanan

The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World
Ronald A. Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky

Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto
Adam Werbach

Walk the Walk: The #1 Rule for Real Leaders
Alan Deutschman

Do you have any suggestions of your own to share?

Q #132: How to explain the work to be delegated?:

In this series, Bob Morris poses a key question and then responds to it with material from one or more of the business books he has reviewed for Amazon and Borders.

In one of the volumes in the Harvard Business Press “Pocket Mentor” series, Thomas L. Brown, author of more than 400 published articles as well as The Anatomy of Fire: Sparking a New Spirit of Enterprise, offers some excellence advice on how to delegate effectively. It is no coincidence that, during exit interviews of highly valued employees who have accepted a job elsewhere, three of their most common complaints are that (1) performance expectations were either vague or inconsistent, (2) there was insufficient feedback (e.g. constructive criticism) from supervisors, and (3) performance appraisals were unfair and/or inaccurate. The advice that Jordan offers in this volume can help to reduce (if not eliminate) these complaints. Better yet, immediate and significant improvement of performance management at all levels and in all areas of the given enterprise will help to reduce (if not eliminate) the loss of highly-valued employees. To say that a worker has “high potential” and then do little (if anything) to develop that potential is unconscionable.

Here is Brown’s response to the question posed: “How to explain the work to be delegated?”

1. Select the person best qualified and schedule a one-on-one, face to-face meeting. Immediately express trust and confidence in that person. Explain why you selected her or him. Establish a cordial and collegial tone. Maintain direct eye contact. Avoid melodrama.

2. Clearly and specifically explain the work to be done. What’s the objective? Why is it important? Desired results? Value of those results? Relevance to overall goals of the organization? Negotiate or set benchmarks re progress reports qand deadline. Explain resources available, including your assistance on an as-needed basis.

3. Establish agreed-upon standards of performance, measures of success, and levels of accountability. How will progress by measured? With whom will progress reports be shared? Review contingency plans (e.g. when an unexpected problem develops).

4. Review the resources that will be available. Also, explain whatever protocols may be relevant. “Here’s what’s available. What else will you need?”

5. Identify the need (if any) for any special training, coaching, equipment, clearances, etc. More often that not, the person to whom you delegate may have concerns of which you are unaware. Now’s the time to discuss them.

6. Clearly define the level of authority being delegated. This is critically important, first to prevent any serious problems but also to avoid any behavior or situations that could prove embarrassing to the person to whom you delegate the work.

7. Agree upon parameters for feedback during the assignment and follow-up upon its completion. People to whom work is delegated should be a full partner in a discussion of how it will be done. They need to feel independent but not abandoned, empowered but not in control (you are), and trusted but working within limitations and parameters.

Those in need of wider and deeper coverage of this important subject are urged to check out:

12: The Elements of Great Managing (based on Gallop’s ten million workplace interviews)
Rodd Wagner and James K. Harter’s

Great Business Teams: Cracking the Code for Standout Performance
Howard M. Guttman

Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition
Guy Kawasaki

Growing Great Employees: Turning Ordinary People into Extraordinary Performers
Erika Anderson

The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World
Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Martin Linksky

Comments, questions, requests, or suggestions? Please share them. They will be most welcome and I thank you for them. Best regards, Bob

Q #123: How to manage through a downturn

In this series, Bob Morris poses a key question and then responds to it with material from one or more of the business books he has reviewed for Amazon and Borders.

That is the subject of one of the volumes in the HBR series, “Ideas with Impact.” Here are excerpts from three of the eight articles in the anthology.

From Moving Upward in a Downturn: “After a painful time, executives often hope they can mend the damage by flipping on the spending switch. Their rationale is simple: since draconian cuts have seriously damaged the loyalty and morale of beleaguered employees, generous spending is now essential to regain their affections. In addition, heavy marketing, promotion, and service investments are needed to win back customers who defected when they grew exasperated with quality reductions and service cutbacks. Unfortunately, as companies in the motor vehicle and oil and gas industries have discovered, spending increases in this situation often outpace growth, forcing companies to make dramatic cuts again when the next downtown hits.” Darrell Rigby

From When Growth Stalls: “Talent bench shortfall merits careful definition, because it has become a fact of daily life in many industries and functions. Indeed, at this writing [March 2008], shortages of critical talent are the primary concern of human resources departments globally, not just in high-growth markets but in a range pf specialty skill categories, and they are expected to get worse. What stops growth dead in its tracks, however, is not merely a shortage of talent but the absence of required capabilities – such as solutions-selling skills or consumer-marketing expertise – in key areas of a company, most visibly at the executive level.” Matthew S. Olson, Derek van Bever, and Seth Verry

From Finding Your Next Core Business: “The real question, then, is how to open management’s eyes to the hidden assets in its midst. One way is to identify the richest hunting grounds. Our research suggests that hidden assets tend to fall into three categories: undervalued business platforms, untapped insights into customers, and underexploited capabilities…Hidden business platforms and hidden customer insights are assets that companies already possess; in theory, all that remains is for management to uncover them and put them to work. Capabilities – the ability to perform specific tasks over and over again – are different. Any capability is potentially available to any company. What matters is how individual companies combine multiple capabilities into `activity systems,’ as Michael Porter calls them, meaning combinations of business processes that create hard-to-replicate competitive advantage.” Chris Zook

Suggested readings:

Harvard Business Review on Managing Through a Downturn

Chaotics: The Business of Managing and Marketing in the Age of Turbulence
Philip Kotler and John Caslione

The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World
Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Martin Linsky

Leading in Times of Crisis: Navigating Through Complexity, Diversity, and Uncertainty to Save Your Business
David Dotlich, Peter Cairo, and Stephen Rhinesmith

Transforming Performance Measurement: Rethinking the Way We Measure and Drive Organizational Success
Dean R. Spitzer

Enterprise Architecture as Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution
Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill, and David Robertson

Comments, questions, requests, or suggestions? Please share them. They will be most welcome and I thank you for them. Best regards, Bob

Q #74: For both organizations and individuals, why is “adaptability” so important?

In this series, Bob Morris poses a key question and then responds to it with material from one or more of the business books he has reviewed for Amazon and Borders.

Opinions vary about that. My own opinion is that significant changes are occurring in the business world faster now — and in greater number — than ever before. Although no one I know has read Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859), most business executives are familiar with his concept of natural selection. Darwin defined it as the “principle by which each slight variation [of a trait], if useful, is preserved.” This concept of natural selection among species also applies to organizations and even to individuals within an organization. Those that do not adapt do not survive; only those that do adapt thrive. Therein lie two of the greatest challenges now facing those entrusted with leadership responsibilities: How to prepare, launch, sustain, and then successfully complete change initiatives? How to respond effectively to change initiatives that originate elsewhere?

In their recently published book, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World, Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky respond to these and other questions when sharing their thoughts about what adaptive leadership involves and what it requires of those who practice it. Almost immediately, they focus on the relationship of adaptive leadership to thriving: It is specifically about change; builds on the past rather than repudiating it; achieves organizational adaptation through continuous experimentation; heavily relies on diversity (i.e. talents, skills, experience, and perspectives); ensures that new adaptations significantly displace, re-regulate, or rearrange whatever is defective, obsolete, or irrelevant; and usually requires (as do biological adaptations) both time, patience, and persistence.

Heifetz, Grashow, and Linsky observe, “There is a myth that drives many change initiatives into the ground: that the organization needs to change because it is broken. The reality is that any social system (including an organization or a country or a family) is the way it is because the people in that system (at least those individuals and factions with the most leverage) want it that way…As our colleague Jeff Lawrence poignantly says, ‘There is no such thing as a dysfunctional organization, because every organization is perfectly aligned to achieve the results it gets.’”

In Q&A #75, I summarize some key points about organizational adaptability that William Rothschild makes in his recently published book, The Secrets to GE’s Success: A Former Insider Reveals the Management Strategies of the World’s Most Competitive Company.

Comments, questions, requests, or suggestions? Please share them. They will be most welcome and I thank you for them. Best regards, Bob

Q #66: How to lead change when others resist following?

In this series, Bob Morris poses a key question and then responds to it with material from one or more of the business books he has reviewed for Amazon and Borders.

Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky are co-authors of just published The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World. Here is their advice:

The key is to realize that the resisters are not monolithic; they are only allied in their resistance. Think politically. While they may appear to be an undifferentiated mass of opposition, they actually constitute multiple and overlapping factions, each with its own set of values and concerns. You need to tailor your interventions as much as possible to those different interests.

For example, people who have been in the system for a long time have figured out how to make it work for them and deep change can be very disruptive and challenging. Your insight provides the first way to deal with some of the resistance: that is, empathize with their feelings of fear. For some of the resistors, a little empathy is all they really want. Get off of your moral high ground and acknowledge that you are asking them to do is really difficult. Some will come along just because you feel their pain.

Next, as we am sure you have done with your allies, inspire them by infusing their work with meaning. Having spent a lot of time in the public sector ourselves, we have never met a career civil servant who doesn’t have some noble feelings about their work. Remind them every day in every way possible about the good they do and why they are doing what they are doing. For some, those reminders will trigger long suppressed feelings, inspire them, and help them move forward.

Third, model the behavior you are asking of them. For another faction, they justify their resistance because they feel as if you are asking them to do all the hard work. If you are asking them to make a difficult adaptation, they need to see you doing something they know is difficult for you to do, something that is beyond your comfort zone, something that forces you to disappoint some of your own supporters.

Fourth, try to orchestrate the conflict within the bureaucracy, managing the dialogue between your supporters and your opponents, so that you are not the issue. Such conflict is good and healthy, as long as it is not personal to you, but within the ranks and about the issues you have raised.

Finally, it’s not all about carrots. Use sticks, too. Some will respond to them. Turn up the heat in ways that are likely to get to them. For example, mobilize service recipients to put pressure on the resisters to cease and desist. Make them uncomfortable in their own communities, with elements of their own factions, so that it begins to feel easier for them to go along with your reforms than to take grief from some of their own.

Good luck, and don’t give up – right now, more than ever, we need leaders in our local, state, and national government that are willing to take on resistance and work hard with the many factions to affect real and lasting change. The future of our nation, is depending on your perseverance.

Comments, questions, requests, or suggestions? Please share them. They will be most welcome and I thank you for them. Best regards, Bob