April 2008

DON'T BE FOOLED

THE FUTURE IS NOW

It’s 2010 – do you know where your leaders are? Before dismissing this question beware of a growing crisis: the pending labor shortage and the negative influence it promises for succession planning. In fact, are you already seeing the clouds and hearing the thunder in the hallways from the coming storm?

Because the Baby boom generation is approaching retirement age, and the generation that following the boomers are 20 million fewer, many are predicting a critical leadership crisis is coming. By the end of the decade, U.S. population trends predict twenty percent fewer employees in the 35-44 age group, the typical breeding ground for the next generation of managers and eventual organizational leaders.

Question: Are you fooling yourself or do you have an effective leadership development program in place?

VISIONARY OR VIEWLESS

Organizational vision – Do you celebrate it, brand your organization with it, and most importantly capture it?

Like a kite without a kite string, you lose control when a vision is never captured and connected to day-to-day activities. If thinking about the future is an afterthought in your organization because daily activities and ‘firefighting’ steal the clock, you’re setting your team up for a tenuous future.

Questions:

(1) Do you want to spend your future reacting or proactively responding?

(2) Are your employees aware of the targets your organization would like to reach (and possibly exceed) by 2010?

(3) In what ways are you and the organization ensuring future success and vision achievement through focused action today?

NO NEWS, GOOD NEWS

The ostrich may find peace by burying its head in the sand, but that doesn’t mean the lion has gone away!

ADDRESSING RESOURCE ALLOCATION ISSUES

Only a fool would think results still improve even when we don’t address the organizational resource issues. The first step is to clearly understand what the critical issues are. Realizing and capitalizing on the various perspectives of those we work with create a powerful synergy.

Here’s an idea for your next leadership, departmental, divisional, or team meeting: Ask members to come to the meeting prepared to share the most pressing, real issue they face on the job. Define a real issue as something the member does not know how to resolve without additional allocation of resources – be it time, human or economic. Request members to continue preparing for the meeting by drafting a recommendation about what resources are needed to resolve their issues and where those resources might come from. Finally, ask the members to write what concrete outcomes they are trying to deliver by resolving their issues.

By allowing members to present their resource concerns to one another, all the right questions are raised:
---(1) What is currently obstructing our desired outcome achievement?
---(2) How important is this outcome(s) to our mission and vision achievement?
---(3) As the situation is assessed, do others agree it’s a time, talent (human resources), or treasures (economic) issue?
---(4) What can members do about it?

Shielding team members from active resource discussions hurts morale and often starts rumors. When team members are a part of seeing available resources weighed against needs and outcomes, they better understand why organizational decisions are made. And more often than not, such discussions lead to better ways to allocate key organizational resources – like our time, our talents (human resources), and our treasures capital).