Corporate Culture | Bovo-Tighe

19
May

Time to Rehire Yourself?

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Remember that feeling? Recapture it!

While we were researching a recent blog post about the marketing company HubSpot and its intensive focus on developing a highly productive corporate culture, one of us came across a related post on LinkedIn by the CTO of HubSpot, Darmesh Shah, which deserved a little attention of its own:

Ten Ways to be Sensationally Successful at Your New Job

This is very compelling, because everyone starts a new job with a head of steam, full of energy and ready to contribute at a high level. Most people quickly lose that head of steam, and end up cruising along with the pack, as Shah says “where every day feels the same and your new job quickly seems just like the old job.”

How do you avoid that sub-optimizing trap? It’s all up to you.

We will summarize Mr. Shah’s points and add our own take, as we always do!

NOTE: If you are a seasoned employee, you can benefit from these ideas, too. Simply embed the mindset that you have just been hired, and think about how your job and your work environment look to a new hire. What would you see? What action would you take to improve things? Think about the following advice with that in mind:

1. Pretend you are still interviewing for the job for the first six months. Work hard to prove that your skill set and leadership are worth keeping and developing.

2. Start a project that leverages your experience to solve issues in your new organization. Involve peers in the work, especially those who may benefit from the result.

3. Embed the mindset that you are “here to help.” That means helping everyone:

Work on your boss’ challenges without waiting for a direct invitation.
Volunteer to join a work team with a big project that is struggling.
Seek help from others, then offer help to those same people immediately thereafter.

4. Take action without prompting. Seek areas that could benefit from new thinking, and focus your personal projects on those areas of opportunity.

As Shah says:

“You don’t have to wait to be asked. You don’t have to wait to be assigned. Pick a side project where, if you fail, there’s no harm and no foul, and take your shot. You never know how it will turn out… and what it will do for your career.”

Some of you would say that this is not ground-breaking stuff, yet too many employees fall into a cruising rhythm and lose that “head of steam.” So covering this topic seems like it still has a great deal of utility. In fact, we talk about it regularly.

When you get to work tomorrow, rehire yourself and assess your situation as a new employee would, especially one with a skill set like yours. What project would you start first?

Let us know what you figure out!

14
May

HubSpot and Netflix Offer Insights on Building Productive Organizational Cultures

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We find useful information about talent management and corporate culture in all sorts of places. Just this week our marketing guy got an e-mail from a marketing company he follows called HubSpot. It surprised him with this headline:

“Advice on Corporate Culture From Netflix’s Former Chief Talent Officer”

Wait. What? Why is a marketing company like HubSpot sharing thoughts on corporate culture?

The answer is simple, and informative: HubSpot takes its culture very seriously, and feels that all their clients (small companies for the most part) could benefit from the productivity gained by building their own consistent, transparent organizational culture. Continue reading →

12
May

Why We Love May at Bovo-Tighe

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Tulips of all colors capture the spirit of May!

May is an energizing month in the Northern Hemisphere, and many of us here at Bovo-Tighe make a special point to enjoy the longer days and the warming temperatures. Our staff is scattered across the country, and we experience the renewal of Spring at different times, but by May 1 we are all in about the same energizing place. Here is what we all love about May:

Long evenings allow fuller days: We simply seem to get more done, personally and professionally. The days in May are as long as those in late July and early August, which most people do not realize.

More sun in our lives: As the wet weather of April gives way to sunnier days in May, we feed off the energy of all that sunshine! We have ways to stay energized in the shorter days of late Fall, Winter and early Spring, but the copious natural energy that starts in May makes it so much easier to get early starts and keep moving well into the evening.

Feeding off other’s energy, which we all should do every day as a matter of course: This gets easier when everyone is full of their own Spring-inspired energy!

How should you capitalize on this high-energy month?

Emphasize early rising to take advantage of early sunshine. Move workouts a half-hour earlier and keep them there through the summer. (Grant yourself permission to move them back 30 minutes come Fall!)
Move meals (and meetings?) outside before the Summer season officially kicks off around June 1. Why wait for everyone else? It might still be a bit cool, but you can bundle up against any lingering Spring chill.
Take evening walks with friends or family to fully enjoy later sunsets, instead of just peeking at them through the window. This is a great way to wind down after a busy day, and gets you out in the fresh air if you have been in an office all day.

May is truly a time to grasp a full measure of the energy nature has to offer. Don’t waste a minute of it!

What do you think? Has May always been a time of personal productivity for you? Let us know if you are as big a fan of May as we are!

22
Apr

Bovo-Tighe and Harvard Business School Are On the Same Page

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We enjoy it when great minds and we agree!

We recently received an invitation to an online leadership seminar to be run by the folks at Harvard Business School (one of our staff is an alumnus, who plans to check it out.)

We like the topic, and we see potential in the messages they seek to convey. Here is a short summary, culled from the invitation:

“An executive’s leadership journey begins with an intentional, focused investment. This investment takes the leader out of his/her comfort zone, and requires a focus on improving himself and others. Intrapersonal excellence is only part of the journey. The ability to create a high performance team requires alignment on the team’s vision and priorities.”

The focus on stepping out of a comfort zone caught our eye. When we mentor and coach executives, that is a big step to take, but a critical one if leaders are to cast off the old mindsets that hinder them from getting aligned with either their staff or the realities of their organization or industry.

We feel the phrase “focus on improving himself and others” needs expansion, which we will get to in a moment. The seminar’s “key takeaways” are also worth a look, as they align with our own leadership tenets:

Each individual has the power to drive transformative change within their organization
Resilient leaders have an inner ability to overcome obstacles to transform themselves, their teams and their organizations
Transformative leaders are committed to continuous learning by identifying their weaknesses and committing to develop those weaknesses
At the core of great leaders rests the positive energy to develop their teams, drive execution and deliver business results

Transform Yourself First

The very first bullet point is critical:

Every person, regardless of position or responsibility, can transform him or herself into a highly effective leader for the organization.
You must transform yourself before you can help your teams and organization transform themselves.
You cannot transform others. They can, however, transform themselves with your help.

Second, we stress that transformational leaders* promise to make life better for those who follow them, and fulfill that promise by helping the team achieve shared goals. These leaders:

Care about the success of their followers (whoever they are)
Focus on people first, tasks second

We see a highly productive virtuous circle here: If a leader successfully engages his or her team and clearly communicates how much he or she cares about the entire team’s success, the team will motivate itself to complete the tasks needed to achieve that success. This activity frees the leader to concentrate even more time on employee engagement and motivation, further enhancing productivity.

Mind the gap, but don’t fret over it!

Every person, including transformational leaders, have gaps in their skill sets. These gaps may or may not be “weaknesses,” as the business school e-mail labeled them. They are, however, areas where the leader needs to find help. This help comes from a number of sources, all of which the leader should tap:

Team members whose skill sets complement the leader’s, covering gaps in a mutually beneficial way.
The boss’ skill set, which can be transferred to the leader through mentoring.
A coach hired to address talent gaps and help the leader to fill them.

The key to “filling the gaps” starts with the awareness that they exist, and the confidence to admit that it is normal, that everyone has them. The key difference with transformational leaders is that they have a willingness to truly work on adapting mindsets and skill sets to fill the gaps in working with the people around them.

What do you think? Can everyone become a transformational leader? What have you done to take steps in that direction?

*We call our leaders “transformational,” while Harvard Business School uses the adjective “transformative” in its course description. It may be splitting hairs, but we feel that “transformational” better captures the emotional appeal of what we seek to accomplish within ourselves, and within the people around us.

17
Apr

Lessons on Leadership from Britain’s Royal Navy

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We have been writing over the last two weeks about the top leadership skill articles released by the management consultancy McKinsey in their quarterly online newsletter. In this post, we explore the ninth most popular article from the first quarter of 2013: Leadership Lessons from the Royal Navy. (Free registration may be required to read the full article.)

England expects that every man (and woman) will have a good story to tell!

Britain’s Royal Navy has been an effective fighting force for well over 200 years, and still “punches above its weight” in international engagements, the most recent example of which has been the multinational effort to eradicate the activities of Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean.

The author of this article, Andrew St. George of Aberystwyth University’s School of Management and Business, in the United Kingdom, has studied the Royal Navy extensively for over a decade, and draws what he sees as useful lessons from the leadership culture of the Royal Navy that any organization could emulate. Here is a brief summary of the leadership attributes to which he most attributes their success:

Relentless cheerfulness, which we might translate as optimism. He notes that the optimism starts with the captain and flows downward through the ranks. The evidence is not hard to spot: Happy ships fulfill their roles more effectively than gloomy ships.

A respect for open communication: Sailors are more comfortable “bantering” with admirals than junior executives are conversing with their CEOs. The navy fosters a community atmosphere that allows “the truth” to flow upwards as well as downwards. British navy captains probably get more reliable input from their subordinates than most senior executives do in business. As many of you know , this combines our own philosophies of “Pursuit of Truth” and “Communication that Counts.”

An emphasis on “story telling”: Sailors and officers at all levels are trained to exchange information during every encounter, and make it more engaging by encasing it in a tradition of story-telling. This has multiple benefits:

Institutional memory is better preserved.
Each team member can stand up at a moment’s notice and describe his or her role in fulfilling the mission. Can each member of your team do that clearly and concisely?

Professor St. George summed up his theme this way:

“Although few environments are tougher than a ship or submarine, I’ve been struck… by the extent to which these engines of war run on “soft” leadership skills. For officers leading small teams in constrained quarters, there’s no substitute for cheerfulness and effective storytelling. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that naval training is predicated on the notion that when two groups with equal resources attempt the same thing, the successful group will be the one whose leaders better understand how to use the softer skills to maintain effort and motivate.”

The last point is important: Given two equally talented groups of people competing for the same pool of customers, the more engaged and motivated group will win 90% of the time.

This was a fun article that taught us a lot about the British Navy (told a great story, in other words) and as a result more memorably communicated it primary thesis about the high value of the personal connections that drive transformational leadership.

What do you think? Is the example of the Royal Navy a useful one to apply to non-military environments? Let us know your perspective in the comments section.

15
Apr

Raise the Meaning Quotient for Employees to Raise Productivity

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We have been writing over the last week about the top leadership skill articles read in the First Quarter of 2013 in the McKinsey Quarterly, the online newsletter of management consultancy McKinsey. We are always struck by how many of these articles are focused on people skills and leadership. Clearly these issues remain perennial challenges for senior executives (and leaders at all levels).

In this post, we explore the fifth most popular article: Increasing the Meaning Quotient of Work. (Free registration may be required to read the full article.)

Our first response to this article was “What the heck is a “meaning quotient?” Next, we thought “Here we go again with extra buzzwords that repackage old knowledge.” But, just as the readers who put this article in the top ten found it worth reading, we also found something useful here.

Employee Engagement Demands Meaningful Work

The authors of this article, Susie Cranston and Scott Keller, have spent a lot of time researching work environments “that inspire exceptional levels of energy, increase self-confidence, and boost individual productivity.” Continue reading →

11
Apr

Employees Can Only Manage Their Time if the Organization Lets Them

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This is the second in a series of posts about the most read articles in the McKinsey Quarterly, the management consultancy’s free online business magazine. (Free registration is required to view the articles.)

OK, now fit two more projects into this day.
image source: mftrou.com

This article, ranked second on the most-read list, takes a new angle at the eternal Time Management issue by pinning the blame not just on the individual, but on the organization. We work with clients constantly on individual time management skills, but we do see the authors’ point: Employees can operate at the peak of time efficiency, and still not always successfully manage the endless number of projects that keep piling up.

The Organization Assumption: Every Employee’s Time is Limitless Continue reading →

10
Apr

Social Media Collaboration is Shaking Up How Employees Engage with Each Other

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The McKinsey Quarterly has released it top online articles for 2013’s first quarter, and four of the ten focus on interpersonal skill development. This confirms once again that senior executives are focusing on better engaging their human assets as a profitable area for investment.

Let’s take a quick look at the top-rated article that is focused on human asset management. It argues that old-fashioned hierarchical oversight and control must be replaced by a lighter, more trusting leadership style.

Wikis, jams and blogs make collaboration more productive

The explosion of social media tools that are available within an organization to foster and manage collaboration has started to shake up management control of knowledge, and challenges the assumptions that underpin past collaborative practices, according to Don Tapscott, a professor at the University of Toronto. Continue reading →

5
Apr

Goal Alignment Takes Work and Communication that Counts

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A recent Aberdeen Group study on human capital management trends found firms with HR departments that are aligned with business goals are able to better plan for future talent needs and integrate workforce and talent initiatives. If Aberdeen is going to call out what should be an obvious business success factor, they must have found that insuring business goal alignment is a competitive advantage that only some organizations achieve. In other words, most organizations are not managing to achieve goal alignment between senior executives and HR executives.

Here’s a common mistake: These arrows must point in BOTH directions. Information and recommendations flowing up underpin goals flowing down.
image source: www.peoplestreme.com

How can HR’s goals get out of alignment with organizational goals, if departmental goals are founded on strategic goals that come from “the top?” In fact, given that the Human Resource function is designed to support organizational goals through the sourcing and retention of talent, it should strike all of us as obvious that aligning HR goals to organizational goals would be a priority. Jack Welch, during his successful tenure as head of General Electric, famously had his top HR executive deeply involved in strategic matters to achieve that alignment.

How can such a clear connection be missed by so many organizations?

The most common way that HR goals drift away from strategic goals is when the developers of the strategic goals do not clearly and transparently communicate those goals (and their rationale) to the people running HR. Without clear and regular communication (Communication that Counts, in our Foundations of Excellence philosophy), a department head has to create their own goals in a vacuum.

Of course, great communication is a two-way street: HR leaders must actively seek this information, asking not only to understand the motivations behind the goals, but also for a chance to participate in their development.

How can HR best contribute actively to goal-setting? Here are a few ideas to consider:

Provide data to help senior executives understand the gaps that may exist between the human resources available, and those needed to achieve particular goals.
Work with other departments to help them provide productivity data to support strategic planning.
Gather data on the relative benefits of training and development targeted at retention, and the costs of higher turnover on productivity.

HR Daily Advisor provides a list of starting points for collecting HR metrics for C-suite impact. We think the training and development section should also include detailed tracking of individual productivity improvements during and after training initiatives, with dollars assigned to each item as either savings or new revenue.

At the end of every financial quarter or year, HR should be able to report how its activities supported organizational goals by improving skills, productivity, retention and cost-containment (for benefits, say.) Senior executives will appreciate the insight into how best to align human assets with organizational goals, and how the work HR does raises employee engagement and, therefore, productivity.

3
Apr

Our Philosophy about the Pursuit of Truth Includes Your Health

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Good Morning America Clip on Job-Related Health Issues

Business cultures around the world vary greatly between countries, and between organizations. One common trait among highly successful executives, however, is that they skew their work/life balance heavily toward work. They pour 10-12 hours each day into work, work on weekends, and think about work when they are supposed to be decompressing and “working” on their family relationships and friendships.

In our own work with clients, we stress a rebalancing of the work/life balance back toward life. This is not because we think family and friends are more important than your job (that is your decision to make), but because the truth is that a better balance actually makes you more effective at what you do as a leader.

As part of the Pursuit of Truth facet of our Foundations of Excellence leadership philosophy, you must be frank about how you are leading yourself! Part of leading yourself more effectively is listening to your body and responding to its signals. This LinkedIn post by Vivek Wadhwa, a serial entrepreneur who literally almost worked himself to death, drives this point home for us.

Why can’t hard-driving people stop and take a breath occasionally and recharge their batteries?

They fear the competition. (If someone is working harder than you, they might surpass you!)
They have a lot to do, and must get it all done.
They love to work, and struggle with personal time.
They struggle to delegate. (The idea that someone may be working an important part of your project without close supervision makes you nervous.)

We work with clients to help them work smarter:

They realize that true personal time gains you energy that makes working hours more productive.
We also try to instill greater trust in subordinates, most of whom are quite talented and just waiting to get a chance to perform independently.
Finally, time away spurs creativity. Again and again we see the people who take time off come back and solve perplexing issues more quickly and creatively because their mind had a chance to take a break, think in fresh directions, and reorder data more clearly.

It takes a while to instill this more productive leadership mindset into hard working managers and executives, but the proof is in the results: More and better work getting done in less time.

Have you had a unexpected event (positive ones included) that made you realize you had to reset your work/life balance. Let us know what the result was.