|
|
|
|
MAKE it a MAKE
IT A
|
Editor: Dr. Wolf J. Rinke ----- Feel free to forward this eNewsletter to others. ------- IN THIS ISSUE =================================================== =================================================== Hear ya, hear ya, hear ya. We interrupt this regular programming to share exciting news with you. Sorry for getting carried away, however for a change I'd like to share my own news with you, share a sample chapter of my BRAND NEW book and even provide you with a super-special pre-publication offer that I hope you won't refuse. (Otherwise I have burned up my computer for nothing.) First the news: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE………………. Don't Oil the Squeaky Wheel… and 19 other Contrarian Ways to Improve Your Leadership Effectiveness "Tells you what you need to know to win in the game of Don't satisfy your customers. Don't have goals and objectives. Be selfish. Sounds like leadership advice that goes against conventional wisdom. That's just the point. Don't Oil the Squeaky Wheel and 19 Other Contrarian Ways to Improve Your Leadership Effectiveness (to be released by McGraw-Hill in May, 2004, $14.95) challenges readers to break their tried-and-true assumptions about leadership that have worked in the past, but that need to be revisited, reevaluated and maybe even --- changed. Written by one of the nation's most well-known business contrarians,
management guru Wolf Rinke, Don't Oil the Squeaky Wheel offers unorthodox
approaches to mastering the complexities and contradictions of managing
and leading people --- constantly challenging readers to exploit counter
intuitive strategies that lead to ethical peak performance. Says Michael Golz, Vice President of IT for SAP America "Don't Oil the Squeaky Wheel destroys 20 leadership myths that continue to stand in our way of taking our organizations to the next level." And now a sample from Chapter 14. =================================================== CEO Janice Maloney was at the end of her wits. Her company, consisting of nine offices in the Baltimore-Washington area, I'll call it the Can-Do-Mortgage Co (CDM) was falling apart. Sales were down, and that was during the low-interest go-go years when all of her competitors were not just thriving, they were going through the roof. Employee morale was shot. Her VPs were outright depressed. They seemed to be spending more time blaming and avoiding each other than coming up with innovative ideas to solve problems and increase sales. Meetings with her VPs, the few she still had, were so negative, and downright antagonistic that Janice avoided them like a plague. Yet day after day her calendar was full, responding to requests to meet with employees all the way from VPs to front-line employees. Generally, all of the meetings seemed to have a common theme. People were blaming, whining, and complaining about each other. What So-and-So did and didn't do. When she did visit with branches--something she knew she had to do, even though she hated it like a passion--people continued the common refrain of blaming, protecting their turf, and generally expressing a sense of helplessness best expressed by Tom a veteran team member: "This company sucks, everyone bitches about each other and no one does anything about it!" Having come to the end of the road Janice engaged a consultant--alright so it was me--to find out what was going on. After completing an in-depth organizational assessment it became very clear to me that Janice had committed a number of leadership follies. One of the biggest, she had been paying a disproportionate amount of her available time to the troublemakers, the whiners, and the blamers--"oiling the squeaky wheel." When I went over my findings with Janice she protested that she had done exactly what she had learned in a leadership program that had advocated the importance of practicing Management By Walking Around. This professor, Janice said, started his program by asking everyone: What business are you in. He had made it around the room and executives were saying such things as: I'm in the real estate business; the banking business, the automobile business and so on. When he got to me, and I was pretty much the last person, Janice said: I answered: I'm in the mortgage business. At just that time he got really excited and admonished all of us in no uncertain terms: "All of you have it wrong! You are all in the people business." Because the minute you assumed management or leadership responsibilities you gave up being in the mortgage business and chose to be in the people business. Because the way you achieve results is not by what you do, but rather by what your people do. And since your people are responsible for 85 percent of your success, then it stands to reason that you must spend more time with your people. And, Janice continued, ever since then I've been doing just that, spending more time with my people. Visiting branches, establishing an open door policy, making myself available to listen to people in small group meetings. I even set up a "have breakfast with the boss session" on a weekly basis. And ever since I've been doing that, Janice continued, all I've been hearing is whining, blaming and complaining. When I asked Janice what she did with the information she said: I let people vent, listen very actively and try to be empathetic. And sometimes I talk to the other party to attempt to get the facts. And that is pretty much it, she said. At this point I asked Janice to analyze the consequences of her own behavior. When she got stuck, I asked her what the following truism meant to her: "What you reward is what you get." You mean to tell me it is all my fault, she said. Well, I responded, not all, but quite a big chunk of it. In other words you have been "rewarding" people for doing exactly the things you don't want: whining, blaming and complaining. And the people who have been taking advantage of that, I continued, are the people who have lots to whine, blame and complain about. What about, I then asked her, your top performers. You know your high performing VPs, your top sales people, and your "water walkers." How much time have you been spending with them? Janice looked at me startled. Actually, she said, very little. They are my good people--they don't have time to whine, blame and complain. In fact, Janice said, ever since I've been listening to the whiners they've been telling me how overworked and underpaid they are. And so I have been transferring more and more responsibilities to my top performers. (A strategy which had backfired since more and more of her top performers had left the company.) I get it, Janice finally exclaimed somewhat excitedly. I have been rewarding my troublemakers by giving them a lot of my valuable time. Not only that, I did not hold them accountable, and so they just saw me as a way to unload their worries, complain about their co-workers and get further rewarded by having more and more work taken away from them. Right on, I said. But what else did you do? What did you do with your top performers? I ignored them, said Janice. Actually, you did much worse than that, was my response, You "punished" them. First by shifting more responsibilities and work to them. And second, by ignoring them. The professor's advice was really good, I said, provided you spend more time with the people who make you look great, and spend less time with the trouble makers--the squeaky wheels. Time for a reality check Now don't sit there all smug--thinking that you never do anything like
that. Let's find out if you do. Quick grab your calendar, may it be
electronic or hard copy. Now figure out what proportion of your time
you spent with troublemakers and slackers during the past four weeks.
If you spent more than 5% of your time with troublemakers, you are messing
up. If you want your team members to be positive, trusting, turned on,
and tuned in, then you must spend the majority of your time with the
people who behave that way, and while they are doing it, help you succeed
faster. What about the troublemakers--the squeaky wheels? Glad you asked,
because I love to share a sure-fire smart step with you that will enable
you to address this more effectively than ever before. Here it is: In the next issue of this eNewsletter I will share the second half of this chapter with you--11 SMART STEPS you can take to make sure you don't oil the squeaky wheel. ============================================== Here is a list of full day seminars that I will be presenting in 2004 that may be open to you, especially if your company is a member of the Institute of Management Studies (IMS). Contact the Chairperson for additional information. Increasing Your Personal Effectiveness Winning Management: Building a Peak Performance Workplace =================================================== And now for that special offer. =================================================== NEW BOOK: Don't Oil the Squeaky Wheel and 19 Other Contrarian Ways to Improve Your Leadership Effectiveness, to be released by McGraw-Hill, early May, 2004, by W. J. Rinke. Publisher Price: $14.95. Advance praise: "Tells you what you need to know to win in the
game of leadership in these turbulent times." POWERFUL CD: How to Motivate Employees to Achieve Peak Performance. Publisher Price: $19.95. This LIVE audio by yours truly (~60 mins.) will teach you how to build a positive organizational culture that will achieve quantum leaps in performance, productivity and profitability. Both book and CD--$24.90 + s/h. SAVE $10.00! (Will ship ~5/1/04) ------------------------- Offer expires 6/1/2004 ------------------------------- =================================================== =================================================== If this was forwarded to you and you would like to receive your own
FREE subscription click above.
|
