How to Stop Circular Discussions about Decisions

One of the ways that meetings can be both frustrating and inefficient is when participants are faced with a situation and are going around and around debating alternative solutions.

I’ve found it’s very helpful to remember that decision making has three components:

The objectives or results desired
Alternative options to achieve the objectives, and
Risks inherent in the alternatives.

When faced with a problem, people often skip the objectives and jump right to the alternatives and get mired in the pros and cons. At that point, it’s best to interrupt the discussion and get clear on the objectives or desired results. Usually, that moves the entire decision process along.

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I am a trusted advisor on strategy implementation and executive effectiveness to leaders of Fortune 500 companies, mid-size companies, nonprofits, education, and government. My work helps leaders drive strategy, lead successful change, develop high performance cultures, improve individual and organizational performance, and produce faster, sustainable growth and value.

If you want to seize new opportunities, dramatically improve your leadership effectiveness, and free-up more time for yourself and your family, give me a call.

My website is www.boblegge.com

How to Improve Accountability

The word “accountability” can have a lot of negative connotations for people, including managers. In most cases, that’s because they either don’t understand accountability, or had a bad experience with a boss who used accountability as a cudgel.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

It’s not that people don’t want to be accountable. It’s that they don’t want to get belittled or punished. In companies where accountability is strong, people feel the opposite. They feel energized and empowered.

When a company has weak accountability, there are usually three key attributes at work:

First, the concept of accountability has not been well-defined.
Second, there is no clear system of accountability.
Third, there exists distrust about how accountability will be managed.

And given all three, there can be a high level of resistance to accountability.

Yet, in highly productive organizations, employees find accountability to be energizing and motivating.

Here are the keys:

Accountability has a strong focus on results, not activities.
Management sets direction with clear priorities defined by a few objectives and targeted results.
Employees have significant freedom to determine how to achieve objectives.
Managers know how to both validate results, and productively address situations where performance is lagging.

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If you want to seize new opportunities, dramatically improve your leadership effectiveness, and free-up more time for yourself and your family, give me a call.

My website is www.boblegge.com

The Implementation Advantage

Strategy fails when it’s not implemented well – when it’s not connected to what goes on in people’s jobs day-to-day. You need to connect it. And you also want decisions to be made consistent with strategic intent. Strategy implementation has to be part of the daily fabric of the organization. It’s not done once a month, it’s not something you do once a week; it must be the daily fabric of the organization. And, by the way, it doesn’t need to add to day-to-day work. But it does take smart implementation.

When you’re ready to launch the strategy, you need to make sure that you’ve got everything ready to go: Your communications, your top team fully on board, your organization structure and key processes in alignment.

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If you want to seize new opportunities, dramatically improve your leadership effectiveness, and free-up more time for yourself and your family, give me a call.

My website is www.boblegge.com

3 Leadership Themes for 2019

A quick observation: My best clients, the ones who get the most value from our work together, take the ideas we discuss and put them into practice instead of thinking about them or dwelling on why they can’t act. They are also already effective leaders with an ongoing desire to get better and stronger.

As you go forward this new year, put emphasis on the following:

Your vision. Give your people the “why” behind what drives you and should drive your business. It can be a vision statement (like Apple) or a rallying cry (like FedEx.) Make work something more than the day-to-day operations.
Your ability to articulate the vision. Posting a vision statement or values is okay, but the most effective leaders are continually communicating the vision and strategic theme over and over in different ways.
Focus. Keep the organization focused on the few things that really drive value for customers. All else is added cost. Organizations have an amazing ability to add complexity, go off on tangents, and get caught-up in policy and procedure. Simplify and keep your organization sharply-focused.

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If you want to seize new opportunities, dramatically improve your leadership effectiveness, and free-up more time for yourself and your family, give me a call.

My website is www.boblegge.com

Make Your Strategy Work

Getting the most from your organization and yourself

Monthly Archives: January 2019

How to Stop Circular Discussions about Decisions

How to Improve Accountability

The Implementation Advantage

3 Leadership Themes for 2019