”Arbetsgivare som erbjuder sina anställda en hybrid arbetsplats kommer att bli vinnare. Att vara 100 procent på kontoret mellan 8-17 är historia”, säger Linda Hammarstrand, föreläsare, författare och inspiratör inom ledarskap och företagskultur.

Samtidigt menar hon att det är omöjligt att utvecklas i takt med omvärlden på en pall i köket.

”Du måste omge dig med människor för att växa.”

Linda Hammarstrand, hemmahörande i Göteborg, driver Culture Academy som erbjuder föreläsningar och utbildningar i hur man skapar en passionerad, högpresterande företagskultur. Hon lutar sig förstås på sina egna erfarenheter, senast med titeln Director of passion för Petter Stordalens Clarion Hotel.

”Mitt löfte var att göra det till Nordens mest attraktiva arbetsgivare, något jag allra ödmjukast måste säga att vi lyckades med.”

Men det var under hennes 20 åri Stenasfären som intresset för företagskultur föddes och växte sig starkt. Ett av hennes uppdrag var att kommunicera ägaren Dan Sten Olssons affärsfilosofi till bolagets 22.000 anställda runt om i världen.

Om det inte är en pall i köket som kommer att skapa framtidens arbetsmarknad, vad är det då? Linda Hammarstrand pekar ut tre begrepp som kommer att stå i fokus, tiden, platsen och värdet.

Tiden handlar om balans och mening.

”Arbetet kommer ses mer som en uppgift att lösa, än något vi gör mellan 8 och 17 och självledarskap kommer att bli fundamentalt viktigt. Balans i livet kommer att ställas på sin spets och tid för vårt eget välmående kommer att ta mer plats. Vi har blivit allt känsligare för saker som slukar tid men inte tillför mening”, säger hon och lyfter statistik som visar att hälften av den tredjedel som hade äran att jobba hemma under pandemin inte vill tillbaka till kontoret.

”Många har vant sig vid att arbeta med resår i midjan och de vill inte tillbaka till jobbet då det saknar mening. Det är illa.”

Arbetsplatsen måste istället liknas vid en laddstation, menar Linda Hammarstrand, ett ställe dit man kommer för att tanka energi och dela nyvunnen kunskap.

”Vi måste jobba hårt för att övertyga våra anställda att det alltid är värt att komma till kontoret, det går inte att vara dum och dålig längre. Kontoren blir mötesplatser där kreativitet föds. Vi pratar mycket om nätverk idag, det har blivit lika viktigt som att andas. Men det vi måste ägna tid åt är medmänskliga nätverk där människor träffas utan en egentlig avsikt. Att lyssna och vara nyfikna tränar oss på att vara empatiska. Den som har dessa egenskaper kommer att trumfa framtiden.”

Hon tittar tillbaka på hur det såg ut sent på 1980-talet.

”Vi mätte intelligens och trodde att det var lösningen på framtidens utmaningar. Ju mer högskolepoäng vi anställde desto bättre skulle det gå. Det visade sig med tiden att det inte räckte med bara poäng. Vad skulle vi med alla högskolepoäng till om människorna inte hade förmåga att samarbeta och göra kunskapen delbar?”

IQ har ersatts av EQ och snart ska Linda Hammarstrand åka till USA för att gå en utbildning i CQ, curiosity quotient.

”Jag ska få lära mig hur man skapar en nyfiken organisation som föder såväl engagemang och innovationer.”

Det tredje begreppet som kommer att prägla framtidens arbetsmarknad är värdet.

”Vi måste fråga oss vad vår organisation är lösningen på och vilket värde måste vi skapa för att lyckas. Det handlar inte längre om att bli bäst i världen, utan bäst för världen, inte om att bli bäst i teamet, utan bäst för teamet. Om att komplettera varandra och arbeta tillsammans – inte bara arbeta samtidigt.”

Förr handlade ledarskap om kunskap och makt. Men att leda i dag handlar om att orka menar Linda Hammarstrand.

”Att förändra en kultur görs inte genom en föreläsning, det handlar om att orka leda emotionellt. Att orka ta det där jobbiga samtalet, att orka vara synlig, att orka inspirera, att orka bry sig om hur vi mår och inte hur det går. Om att förstå att mjuka värden skapar hårda värden. Det är vår kultur som speglas på vår sista rad.”

To answer those questions, we identified 200 highly successful CEOs and conducted in-depth interviews with 67 of them. We found that there is no simple recipe for success, but there is virtue in simplicity. Indeed, the CEOs we interviewed could describe their business strategy in an elevator ride up Shanghai Tower.We also found that, in a sense, all CEOs have the same responsibilities, such as working with the board, engaging stakeholders, setting direction, and creating a positive culture. What separates the best from the rest is how they approach these tasks. All excelled at some, were good at the rest—and knew the difference. All are world-class integrators. And all applied a distinctive set of mindsets against these responsibilities. In our own effort at simplicity, we identified the six mindsets that characterize great CEOs.

Be bold. In times of uncertainty, it can be tempting to minimize the downside. However, that all but guarantees either mediocrity or decline. Successful CEOs want to avoid making mistakes, of course, but they also act boldly, actively seeking significant opportunities. They raise the aspirations of the company, and they look for intersections where the business and the market meet. In effect, they are excellent futurists and thus can define the right vision. While they will cut their losses if a move is a dud, they stick to the strategy. The vision comes first; financial performance flows from that.

Treat the soft stuff as the hard stuff. Only one in three strategies is successfully implemented—in large part because change generates resistance. That is why the “soft stuff”—that is, matters related to people and culture—can be the hardest stuff of all to get right. Research has found that companies that solve the soft stuff are more than twice as likely (from 30 to 79 percent) to execute a strategy successfully. To carry their organization with them, leaders need to make the case for change, and then keep track of results.

Solve for the team’s psychology. To build high-performing leadership teams, the best CEOs start with roles, not people, asking what the most important jobs are and then finding people who can do those jobs. And they design for overall functionality, bringing in a wide range of expertise. CEOs must engage with each individual while keeping some distance. And, again, the soft stuff counts.

Help directors help the business. The board is the CEO’s boss, but an awkward one—a lot of people, infrequently seen. Like any relationship, the bedrock is trust. That means being open, honest, and prompt about plans and problems. Bad news is, well, bad, but delivering it is also a chance for the board to help, which is its function. CEOs should establish a strong relationship with the lead director and check in with other directors once or twice a year. Finally, introduce the board to the company by connecting the board to managers. As Piyush Gupta, the longtime CEO of Singapore’s DBS Group, put it: “The board, to me, is a partner, and they can talk to anyone in my management team. I believe the free flow of information is helpful for complete alignment.

”Start with “Why?” Purpose can be difficult to define. At the very least, it should be powerful enough to inspire people, simple enough to be readily understood, and make business sense. And purpose matters: companies with a clear social purpose have significantly outperformed the S&P 500 over the past 20 years. The best CEOs ask themselves why their company exists, then make purpose an intrinsic part of the business model, knowing that testing strategy against purpose can open up new areas of growth. Leading with purpose can also enhance employee well-being and build loyalty.

Do what only you can do. Being a CEO is a 24/7 job, but no one can work that way. Great CEOs make it a priority to manage themselves to ensure that they are not being pulled apart. That is obviously personal, but we did find some commonalities. The most important is self-discipline, particularly regarding the use of time. Old-school techniques such as lists, stars, and color coding crop up often as time-management techniques. At the same time, the CEOs we spoke with also build flexibility into their schedule—to respond to the unexpected or simply to think. Many combine high-intensity work with recovery periods, whether that is a ten-minute break between meetings or playing the piano. Ultimately, managing personal effectiveness is about developing a sense of perspective, and then using that to see into the future.

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No book can create a great CEO, any more than a boxing manual can produce a Manny Pacquiao. But in business, as in boxing, there is such a thing as good technique. CEOs matter: we calculated that the 200 CEOs we identified created additional economic value of about $5 trillion. By identifying the mindsets that characterize great leadership, we believe that excellence can be cultivated—now and in the future.

This article originally appeared in Bloomberg on May 4, 2022, and is reprinted here by permission.

Source: McKinsey.com, 3 June 2022
Link

Source: McKinsey.com
Link

Shifting mindsets and driving behaviors.

The ability to execute is a principal quality of organizations that become and remain great.
As increasingly volatile environments pressure executive teams to adjust their strategies
more frequently, successful execution is more critical than ever.
Based on more than 30 years of experience working with executives leading strategy
implementation, there are three typical barriers that prevent execution: speed, siloes, and
the struggle to understand what a new strategy really looks like. We also uncovered three
key elements that make the greatest impact on employees’ ability to connect strategy and
execution: alignment, mindset, and capability.
In this paper, we’ll explore the three main challenges organizations face and the three critical
elements organizations need to ensure great execution.

The strategy execution challenge
Strategy execution has never been easy. Research shows that 67% of well-formulated
strategies fail in execution.
Still, strategy execution remains a top priority and key challenge
for executives. Based on our work with executives, there are three common roadblocks that
executives encounter:
• Speed – execution is slow. People spend too long planning instead of shifting to
implementation.
• Siloes – people are disconnected and often misaligned. This makes strategy
implementation nearly impossible.
• The struggle – implementation is painful, especially when people can’t fully grasp its
effects on their individual roles.

Speed is the first issue. Strategy execution is slow because leaders get stuck in the
formulation stage, which is often seen as fun and gratifying, rather than moving to
implementation, which is perceived as more difficult and frustrating. This transition
demands that leaders substantially shift their mindsets, a hurdle that most strategies fail to
overcome.

Discussions about execution are commonly drowned out by operational
concerns, “Can we deploy strategy without breaking the operational
model?”; process concerns, “Do we have the right processes and systems in
place to reflect how we do things now?”; and finance concerns, “How do we
know we’re driving value?”

While legitimate, these questions miss the point, which leads us to siloes.
Strategy execution is as much of a people issue as it is a business one, as
the most critical element of its success is a strong, shared sense of direction
amongst the people responsible for executing the strategy. People tend
to work in siloes, struggling to reconcile individual goals with those of the
overall enterprise. With pressure to attain department-specific goals,
employees and leaders alike need a higher level of business acumen and
strong leadership to remain both connected and focused while executing
the strategy in their daily work.

Lastly, the struggle. It is often difficult for employees to fully grasp what
a new strategy means for them, which makes its execution painful. While
executives may benefit from the analytical boardroom debates that led to a
new strategy, employees not privy to those conversations will pay the price.
Successfully bringing a strategy from the boardroom to the front line
requires meeting these common challenges with the right alignment,
mindset, and capability to drive success.

Keys to successful execution
Alignment and capability are two of the most well-known and well-regarded
drivers of strategy execution.
1. Alignment accounts for employees’ understanding of the strategy itself.
To achieve alignment, regardless of their role, each employee must
understand how they can contribute to executing the new strategy.
They must also understand the impact of different trade-offs they will
face while executing strategy and organization-wide consequences.
This strategic foresight allows for cross-functional empathy and a more
intentional approach to collaboration driven by the understanding of
how a decision’s impact goes beyond one’s function thus driving stronger
alignment.
2. Capability, in this context, refers to the skills required to implement
strategy at all levels in the organization. Most organizations typically
regard capability development as the clearest path towards short-term
strategy execution.
Take, for example, a financial institution seeking to integrate a new
strategy. Firstly, the organization’s leaders needed to develop alignment
by better understanding how their decision-making impacted other business
units. To do so, leaders experienced a customized business simulation during
which they practiced making decisions in an environment directly modelled after
the business. This allowed them to develop stronger business acumen capabilities
and better comprehend the organization as a whole, thus accelerating strategy
integration.
However, capability development is more than just a short-term solution; it can also
support strategy execution in the long term.
In the case of a leading food-industry organization, capability development was
instrumental to strengthening value creation. After experiencing a customized executive
development program, focused on both leadership behaviors and strategy by using a
tailored, context-rich business simulation, the organization’s leaders developed a deeper
understanding of their end-to-end value creation. The leaders gained clarity around the
interdependencies of their differing functions and how decisions made by other parts of
the organization would impact the business overall.
In terms of strategy execution, alignment and capability development receive plenty
of attention. Leaders know that their strategic initiatives are futile without strong
organizational alignment, and many even go so far as to say that alignment is their
top priority.
This makes sense, as misalignment of senior teams has been proven to
negatively impact organization and employee performance. Similarly, capability
development is critical to organizations, whether in executing new strategies marking
a departure from past ways of working, or in stable strategies where the criticality
is around having a strong command of the value creation process across the entire
organization.
The final component of effective strategy execution is just as critical as alignment and
capability, but often overlooked: mindset.

Mindset for execution
Mindset describes an individual’s worldview; it is their beliefs, attitudes, and physiology.
Mindset also plays a pivotal role in how one thinks, learns, and behaves.
Surveyed executives agree that mindset has the largest potential to impact an organization’s ability to execute strategy successfully. Therefore, shifting mindsets is an incredibly powerful way to
strengthen leaders for times of change.

At the organizational level, outcomes are shaped by the company’s collective mindset.
Adopting a shared mindset helps employees better understand the existing business and its
future direction, as well as buy-in to the collective momentum of the strategic shift.
For example, a global financial institution adopted an Agile way of working to support
its strategy of becoming more customer centric. This required a consistent, systematic
mindset shift from people at all levels within the organization. After identifying new ways to
contribute, employees brought the strategy to life through ownership, empowerment, and
self-organization.

While shared mindsets are critical at the organizational level, it is ultimately up to each
employee to shift their individual mindset to make a collective shift a reality. In the context of
executing strategy, a single person’s unique blind spots, experiences, personal worldviews, or
attitudes and beliefs can make or break a strategy. This is because each individual must buy
in to the collective mindset to implement the strategic shift.

For instance, imagine an engineer eager to devise more advanced and technically rich
product. The engineer’s sole focus is on the product and its features, rather than the
outcomes for the end-user. Therefore, the engineer struggles to adopt a customercentric mindset because they fail to put the customer first. Executing strategy requires a
corresponding mindset shift at both an individual and organizational level.

A shared mindset, when aligned with strategy, makes execution faster, better connected,
and less painful. In summary:
Strategy execution is….

So, how do the world’s leading organizations build the right strategy execution capabilities from the C-suite to the front line? And how do they do it in a way that both caters to their

organization’s specific challenges and drives tangible changes?
Safe and relevant interventions that target leaders and provide them with a powerful
coaching platform are key. Immersing leaders in a realistic environment that reflects board
room tensions and trade-offs, while allowing them to safely practice their new strategy, will
ultimately lay the foundation for the mindset shifts required by transformation.
Strategy execution is a complex, multi-faceted challenge that most organizations struggle to
enact. However, by focusing on people, developing the proper alignment and capabilities, and
integrating the required mindset, any organization can achieve strategy execution

Source: bts.com, March 2022
Author: Ignacio Vaccaro, Head of Strategy Execution and Business
Alignment for BTS Europe, Senior Director
Link

Source: Alumniglobal.com, January 2022
Link

Har du en dålig chef? Då är du inte ensam. Över 36 procent av svenskarna uppger att de utsätts för destruktivt ledarskap ”ofta eller alltid”, visar forskning från Umeå universitet.

Många kanske tänker att en dålig chef är en person som är aggressiv, hotfull och orättvis. Men ännu fler lider av en otydlig chef som är undvikande eller konflikträdd, visar forskningen av Robert Lundmark och hans kollegor på psykologiska institutionen vid Umeå universitet.

I en stor studie ställde SCB frågor för forskarnas räkning före pandemin. Nu är resultaten sammanställda och publicerade. Den visar bland annat att 8,7 procent har en hotfull, straffande chef som ställer orimliga krav. Medan nära 24 procent är drabbade av ett ledarskap som är otydligt och osäkert, så kallad passivt destruktivt ledarskap.

– Forskarna delar upp destruktivt ledarskap. Det är ett samlingsnamn för flera olika beteenden som får konsekvenser för medarbetare i organisationen. Man delar upp det i aktivt och passivt, förklarar Robert Lundmark.

En chef som är aktivt destruktiv kommer med hot, orimliga krav, bestraffar, tar åt sig äran och behandlar medarbetare olika.

En chef som är passivt destruktiv undviker att ta tag i saker eller beter sig förvirrat och ostrukturerat på ett sätt som gör att det inte går att förstå vad som förväntas.

– Till skillnad från vad man kan tro så visar det sig att det är det passivt destruktiva ledarskapet som vi måste vara mest observant på och som utsätter de anställda för störst risk. Det aktiva, som har direkt negativa konsekvenser, är betydligt mer ovanligt, säger Robert Lundmark.

Hur kommer det sig att så många chefer är passivt destruktiva? Robert Lundmark menar att man inte riktigt har undersökt det ännu, men att många chefer kanske tänker att de delegerar och väcker engagemang genom att lämna över ansvar.

– Har man då inte varit tillräckligt tydlig kan det slå fel och det upplevs som om chefen abdikerar från sitt ansvar och lämnar över det i knäet på medarbetaren, fortsätter han.

Åsa Kruse är psykolog på Feelgood företagshälsovård och har under många år hjälpt personer som har haft problem med sina chefer.

– Många mår väldigt dåligt av det som kallas aktivt destruktivt ledarskap. Känner man sig ofta angripen, utskälld och blir fråntagen saker så börjar man lätt tvivla på sig själv, säger hon och fortsätter:

– Riktar det sig till en viss grupp så kan det underlätta att man är flera kollegor som ser samma saker och tycker samma saker.

Ofta söker personerna hjälp för att förstå sin situation. Har man en manipulativ chef kan det pågå saker bakom ens rygg som man inte förstår anledningen till.

– Vi börjar med att försöka ta reda på om det är en konflikt mellan de två, eller om chefen beter sig så här mot flera. När det låter som om chefen går över alla gränser så behöver vi samarbeta med hr, och förstås chefen själv. Men vi kan inte kontakta chefen om personen inte vill det. Och många vill inte det för att de är oroliga för att det ska bli ännu värre. Känner man sig ofta angripen, utskälld och blir fråntagen saker så börjar man lätt tvivla på sig själv, menar psykolgen Åsa Kruse. 8,7 procent har en chef som ofta hotar, enligt forskningen från Umeå universitet. Illustration: Elin Lindwall

När Åsa Kruse bjuder in till trepartssamtal får medarbetaren berätta om hur hen upplever sin situation. Ibland har man helt olika olika uppfattningar om saker.

– Det kan ju vara en medarbetare som har misskött sig, förklarar Åsa Kruse.

Men om samtalet inte leder framåt blir tyvärr medarbetarens sista alternativ att söka sig därifrån.

– Om det är fler som har samma upplevelse av chefen går det kanske att stanna kvar och få till en förändring. Men känner man att man är den enda utsatta så är det knepigare. Då kan man få det kastat tillbaka att ”det är du som inte fungerar i den här rollen”, berättar Åsa Kruse.

Men många som Åsa Kruse möter lider i stället av en passivt destruktiv chef. De blir stressade av otydligheten.

– Att inte veta vad som förväntas, att inte veta vilken ambitionsnivå man ska lägga sig på eller vilken roll man ska uppfylla kan vara otroligt stressande. Eller att ha en chef som glider undan och inte vill medverka till att lösa konflikter. Det kan man känna sig väldigt utsatt i, förklarar Åsa Kruse.
”Det är inte alltid man vet att det ingår i chefsrollen och en chef kan behöva handledning”, säger psykologen Åsa Kruse.

Vad kan man ge för råd när det handlar om en otydlig chef?

– Jag ger rådet att själv vara tydlig med vad man behöver. Var väldigt konkret. ”I den här specifika situationen vet inte jag vad jag ska göra. Jag behöver tydliga besked av dig.” Det kan ofta underlätta, säger Åsa Kruse.

Det är inte alltid en passiv chef är medveten om problemet. Chefen kanske inte har förstått vad medarbetaren behöver eller så vet hen inte vad som krävs i en chefsroll. Men vad gör man om man har en chef som inte hjälper till att lösa konflikter?

– Som chef är man faktiskt skyldig att hjälpa till. Man har ett arbetsmiljöansvar och ska hjälpa till att utreda vad en konflikt består i och försöka hitta en lösning. Men det är inte alltid man vet att det ingår i chefsrollen och en chef kan behöva handledning och stöd i hur man ska göra det här på ett bra sätt, säger Åsa Kruse och fortsätter.

– Många chefer har inte heller fått någon ledarskapsutbildning, vilket man kan tycka är lite anmärkningsvärt för det är så många olika ansvarsområden man har som chef, både juridiskt och mänskligt. Det är ingen lätt roll, framför allt inte att vara mellanchef och pressad både uppifrån och nerifrån.

Forskarlaget i Umeå kom fram till att över 90 procent har upplevt destruktivt chefsskap någon gång, vilket kanske inte är så konstigt. Inga chefer kan vara perfekta. Men att nästan 8,7 procent ”ofta eller alltid” har en hotande chef är mer anmärkningsvärt. Och även att 36,4 procent ”ofta eller alltid” upplever en destruktiv ledare.

Trots det stämmer förhållandena ganska väl med vad forskning har visat om hur det är i andra skandinaviska länder, säger Robert Lundmark och fortsätter:

– Men med tanke på hur kostsamt vi vet att det är, både i form av lidande för de inblandade och för organisationens resultat, så måste jag säga att jag är förvånad över att man inte investerar mer i att åtgärda det.

Källa: DN.se, 20 januari 2022
Länk

With endless meetings, incessant emails, and casts of thousands, companies have mastered the art of unnecessary interactions. Winning in the next normal requires much more focus on true collaboration.

Have you ever asked why it’s so difficult to get things done in business today—despite seemingly endless meetings and emails? Why it takes so long to make decisions—and even then not necessarily the right ones? You’re not the first to think there must be a better way. Many organizations address these problems by redesigning boxes and lines: who does what and who reports to whom. This exercise tends to focus almost obsessively on vertical command relationships and rarely solves for what, in our experience, is the underlying disease: the poor design and execution of collaborative interactions.

It’s no wonder a recent McKinsey survey found 80 percent of executives were considering or already implementing changes in meeting structure and cadence in response to the evolution in how people work due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, most executives say they frequently find themselves spending way too much time on pointless interactions that drain their energy and produce information overload.

Three critical collaborative interactions

What can be done? We’ve found it’s possible to quickly improve collaborative interactions by categorizing them by type and making a few shifts accordingly. We’ve observed three broad categories of collaborative interactions:

• Decision making, including complex or uncertain decisions (for example, investment decisions) and cross-cutting routine decisions (such as quarterly business reviews)
• Creative solutions and coordination, including innovation sessions (for example, developing new products) and routine working sessions (such as daily check-ins)
• Information sharing, including one-way communication (video, for instance) and two-way communication (such as town halls with Q&As)

Below we describe the key shifts required to improve each category of collaborative interaction, as well as tools you can use to pinpoint problems in the moment and take corrective action.

Decision making: Determining decision rights

When you’re told you’re “responsible” for a decision, does that mean you get to decide? What if you’re told you’re “accountable”? Do you cast the deciding vote, or does the person responsible? What about those who must be “consulted”? Sometimes they are told their input will be reflected in the final answer—can they veto a decision if they feel their input was not fully considered?

It’s no wonder one of the key factors for fast, high-quality decisions is to clarify exactly who makes them. Consider a success story at a renewable-energy company. To foster accountability and transparency, the company developed a 30-minute “role card” conversation for managers to have with their direct reports. As part of this conversation, managers explicitly laid out the decision rights and accountability metrics for each direct report. The result? Role clarity enabled easier navigation for employees, sped up decision making, and resulted in decisions that were much more customer focused.

To make this shift, ensure everyone is crystal clear about who has a voice but no vote or veto. Our research indicates while it is often helpful to involve more people in decision making, not all of them should be deciders—in many cases, just one individual should be the decider (see sidebar “How to define decision rights”). Don’t underestimate the difficulty of implementing this. It often goes against our risk-averse instinct to ensure everyone is “happy” with a decision, particularly our superiors and major stakeholders. Executing and sustaining this change takes real courage and leadership.

Creative solutions and coordination: Open innovation

Routine working sessions are fairly straightforward. What many organizations struggle with is finding innovative ways to identify and drive toward solutions. How often do you tell your teams what to do versus empowering them to come up with solutions? While they may solve the immediate need to “get stuff done,” bureaucracies and micromanagement are a recipe for disaster. They slow down the organizational response to the market and customers, prevent leaders from focusing on strategic priorities, and harm employee engagement. Our research suggests key success factors in winning organizations are empowering employees and spending more time on high-quality coaching interactions.

Take Haier. The Chinese appliance maker divided itself into more than 4,000 microenterprises with ten to 15 employees each, organized in an open ecosystem of users, inventors, and partners (see sidebar “How microenterprises empower employees to drive innovative solutions”). This shift turned employees into energetic entrepreneurs who were directly accountable for customers. Haier’s microenterprises are free to form and evolve with little central direction, but they share the same approach to target setting, internal contracting, and cross-unit coordination. Empowering employees to drive innovative solutions has taken the company from innovation-phobic to entrepreneurial at scale. Since 2015, revenue from Haier Smart Home, the company’s listed home-appliance business, has grown by more than 18 percent a year, topping 209 billion renminbi ($32 billion) in 2020. The company has also made a string of acquisitions, including the 2016 purchase of GE Appliances, with new ventures creating more than $2 billion in market value.

Empowering others doesn’t mean leaving them alone. Successful empowerment, counterintuitively, doesn’t mean leaving employees alone. Empowerment requires leaders to give employees both the tools and the right level of guidance and involvement. Leaders should play what we call the coach role: coaches don’t tell people what to do but instead provide guidance and guardrails and ensure accountability, while stepping back and allowing others to come up with solutions.

Haier was able to use a variety of tools—including objectives and key results (OKRs) and common problem statements—to foster an agile way of working across the enterprise that focuses innovative organizational energy on the most important topics. Not all companies can do this, and some will never be ready for enterprise agility. But every organization can take steps to improve the speed and quality of decisions made by empowered individuals.

Managers who are great coaches, for example, have typically benefited from years of investment by mentors, sponsors, and organizations. We think all organizations should do more to improve the coaching skills of managers and help them to create the space and time to coach teams, as opposed to filling out reports, presenting in meetings, and other activities that take time away from driving impact through the work of their teams.

But while great coaches take time to develop, something as simple as a daily stand-up or check-in can drive horizontal connectivity, creating the space for teams to understand what others are doing and where they need help to drive work forward without having to specifically task anyone in a hierarchical way. You may also consider how you are driving a focus on outcomes over activities on a near-term and long-term basis. Whether it’s OKRs or something else, how is your organization proactively communicating a focus on impact and results over tasks and activities? What do you measure? How is it tracked? How is the performance of your people and your teams managed against it? Over what time horizons?

The importance of psychological safety. As you start this journey, be sure to take a close look at psychological safety. If employees don’t feel psychologically safe, it will be nearly impossible for leaders and managers to break through disempowering behaviors like constant escalation, hiding problems or risks, and being afraid to ask questions—no matter how skilled they are as coaches.

Employers should be on the lookout for common problems indicating that significant challenges to psychological safety lurk underneath the surface. Consider asking yourself and your teams questions to test the degree of psychological safety you have cultivated: Do employees have space to bring up concerns or dissent? Do they feel that if they make a mistake it will be held against them? Do they feel they can take risks or ask for help? Do they feel others may undermine them? Do employees feel valued for their unique skills and talents? If the answer to any of these is not a clear-cut “yes,” the organization likely has room for improvement on psychological safety and relatedness as a foundation to high-quality interactions within and between teams.

Information sharing: Fit-for-purpose interactions

Do any of these scenarios sound familiar? You spend a significant amount of time in meetings every day but feel like nothing has been accomplished. You jump from one meeting to another and don’t get to think on your own until 7 p.m. You wonder why you need to attend a series of meetings where the same materials are presented over and over again. You’re exhausted.

An increasing number of organizations have begun to realize the urgency of driving ruthless meeting efficiency and of questioning whether meetings are truly required at all to share information. Live interactions can be useful for information sharing, particularly when there is an interpretive lens required to understand the information, when that information is particularly sensitive, or when leaders want to ensure there’s ample time to process it and ask questions. That said, most of us would say that most meetings are not particularly useful and often don’t accomplish their intended objective.

We have observed that many companies are moving to shorter meetings (15 to 30 minutes) rather than the standard default of one-hour meetings in an effort to drive focus and productivity. For example, Netflix launched a redesign effort to drastically improve meeting efficiency, resulting in a tightly controlled meeting protocol. Meetings cannot go beyond 30 minutes. Meetings for one-way information sharing must be canceled in favor of other mechanisms such as a memo, podcast, or vlog. Two-way information sharing during meetings is limited by having attendees review materials in advance, replacing presentations with Q&As. Early data show Netflix has been able to reduce the number of meetings by more than 65 percent, and more than 85 percent of employees favor the approach.

Making meeting time a scarce resource is another strategy organizations are using to improve the quality of information sharing and other types of interactions occurring in a meeting setting. Some companies have implemented no-meeting days. In Japan, Microsoft’s “Work Life Choice Challenge” adopted a four-day workweek, reduced the time employees spend in meetings—and boosted productivity by 40 percent.¹ Similarly, Shopify uses “No Meeting Wednesdays” to enable employees to devote time to projects they are passionate about and to promote creative thinking. And Moveline’s product team dedicates every Tuesday to “Maker Day,” an opportunity to create and solve complex problems without the distraction of meetings.

Finally, no meeting could be considered well scoped without considering who should participate, as there are real financial and transaction costs to meeting participation. Leaders should treat time spent in meetings as seriously as companies treat financial capital. Every leader in every organization should ask the following questions before attending any meeting: What’s this meeting for? What’s my role? Can I shorten this meeting by limiting live information sharing and focusing on discussion and decision making? We encourage you to excuse yourself from meetings if you don’t have a role in influencing the outcome and to instead get a quick update over email. If you are not essential, the meeting will still be successful (possibly more so!) without your presence. Try it and see what happens.

Source: McKinsey.com, 10 January 2022
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Your promotion to ​​leading a new team or function is simultaneously exciting and just a little bit nerve-wracking. The great news is that your boss has faith in your abilities and is betting her credibility that you’re the right person for the job. The butterflies-in-the-stomach part comes from knowing you’ve got a whole new set of challenges, including establishing yourself as a credible leader in the eyes of your team members.

By setting aside fears or excitement and instead focusing on some basic strategies, chances for success will be greatly improved.

Preparation

Spend time with your manager reviewing your team’s needs and expectations. Ask:

• How does this team fit with the firm’s overall strategy and key goals?
• How is the team’s performance evaluated, and what do recent measures/evaluations say about how the team has performed?
• Where are the strengths of the group?
• What are the perceived weaknesses?
• What are your manager’s expectations for you in this new role?
• What are the three most important things you can do to support your manager’s agenda during your first quarter?
• How deep is the talent on the team? Where are the gaps?

Engaging With Peers

Once your promotion has been made public, do your homework and solicit input from your new peers across the organization. Ask for their perspective on your team’s performance, strengths, and gaps. Focus on the interaction points between the groups and ask them to identify strengths and areas for improvement. Take great notes and strive to identify opportunities for early victories. It’s important to have your peers on your side.

Making It About Them

Too often, new managers step into a role and make a poor first impression by waxing poetically or nauseatingly about their own backgrounds and achievements. Resist the urge to make yourself the focal point. After a brief introduction, ask questions designed to help you better understand the team’s culture:

• What are you proud of that this group does particularly well?
• What have been the major accomplishments over the last year?
• What are the current goals of the team?
• What are the activities you would like to pursue that you haven’t found the time for?

Soliciting Input

This takes a bit of courage, but the feedback you gain will say a lot about your team’s situation and needs. Ask: “At the end of my time as manager of this group, what will you say that I did?” It’s a good question that will help your team members focus on identifying developmental and organizational needs. Listen and take notes without commenting or judging. ​

One-on-One Meetings

Pre-publish this simple agenda outlining just 3 questions:

• What’s working?
• What’s not?
• What do you need me to do to help you succeed at your job?

Ideally, conduct the meetings face-to-face. However, telephone or video conferencing work great for your remote colleagues. Take notes, strive to identify and offer immediate help with tactical problems such as not having the proper tools.

Sharing Input

Remember to ensure anonymity. These meetings offer great opportunities to hear from team members and to get to know them, and learn about their ideas, interests, and needs. They also offer you and the group ideas on opportunities to collaborate in pursuit of early improvements and needed changes.

Establishing Protocols

As part of your early assessment, review the existence of regular status or operations meetings. If there are regular, timely scheduled sessions, consider sitting in and listening. If the prior manager ran these sessions, rotate the meeting leadership among team members. Once you have a feeling for the effectiveness of the operating routine, you can make adjustments. Unless the team is in crisis, there’s nothing to be gained by immediately asserting your own agenda. Of course, if there is no regular routine, you have ample opportunity to create. Ask your team members for input.

As for your communications protocol, let your team members know how to reach you. Help them to understand your desired level of involvement. Develop a sense of their communication needs—some individuals prefer daily or frequent interaction and others prefer to engage with their manager infrequently or when guidance is required. Be flexible and adapt to their needs.

Work with team members to refresh group and individual goals during the first 30 to 45 days. If the team is in a crisis or turnaround situation, accelerate this timetable.

The Bottom Line

The point in time when you assume responsibility for a new team should be a period rich in relationship building and collaboration. Resist the urge to assert that you’re the “new sheriff in town,” and use questions to gain context on talent, operations, and opportunities. You need your team’s help to succeed and the right way to start out is by making all of your team members a valuable part of the process. You’ll have ample time to make changes as you gain context and credibility. In the beginning, it’s a good practice to observe and ask without judging.

Source: thebalancecareers.com
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