O'Brien Leadershift

Six Steps to High Performance Leadership
1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9943053-5-0
Verlag: Michael Hanrahan Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 216 Seiten

'LeaderShift' takes away the mystique that often surrounds the 'art' of leadership and delivers a fresh dose of optimism and a sense of real possibility to leaders everywhere. Peter O'Brien provides managers and executives at all levels with insights into why businesses perform below expectations, and - more importantly - what can be done about it. 'LeaderShift' is the answer for all of those leaders who have been struggling to find and activate the leadership 'light switch' in the people who work for them.

Autoren/Hrsg.

O'Brien, Peter

Leseproben

Changing the world of work ‘I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples.’ —Mother Teresa IS IT POSSIBLE THAT OUR COMPANIES are killing us, and that we – the leaders – are to blame? The relentless mantra ‘do more with less’ has been with us for decades and it doesn’t look like changing. The resulting increase in stress and decline in immune defence and health is literally killing people. And the survivors are turning up and going through the motions. Repeated studies show sustained low levels of employee engagement and satisfaction. Is this the way work should be? WHY DOES IT NEED TO CHANGE? I’m out to change the world of work for the better: one workplace at a time, one leader at a time. This is a book for leaders: for those who have already proven themselves to be high performance leaders; for those who want to become high performance leaders; and, most importantly, for those who want to develop high performance leaders in their business. Although it is absolutely true that work is killing people, you may be feeling that this smacks of hyperbole and focuses on the downside. So, now that I have your attention, I’ll tone it down a little, focus on some upside, and drill into a bit of the data, logic, cause and effect. In 2013 Gartner published a CFO Advisory titled ‘Employee Engagement Impacts Financial Outcomes and Business Risk’.1 Their findings and advice, resulting from analysis of multiple studies across recent years, include: Organisations with high levels of employee engagement significantly outperform those without.’ Specifically: those with engagement scores in the top quartile averaged 12% higher customer advocacy, 18% higher productivity and 12% higher profitability than those in the bottom quartile. ‘Conversely, high levels of disengagement can adversely impact operating income, revenue and shareholder value.’ Specifically: those with engagement scores in the bottom quartile averaged 31% to 51% more employee turnover, 51% more inventory shrinkage and 62% more accidents. ‘A Towers Watson study of 50 companies over a one-year period shows that organizations with high employee engagement had a 19% increase in operating income and nearly 28% growth in earnings per share. Conversely, companies with low levels of engagement saw operating income drop more than 32% and earnings per share decline 11%.’ ‘A similar study by Hay Group also finds that organizations in the top quartile in engagement generate revenue growth that is 2.5 times higher than those companies in the bottom quartile.’ Compelling statistics! And there’s plenty more too. The Gartner advice to CFOs as a result of this research? ‘CFOs must educate executives on the significant impact of employee engagement on organisational success, and make improving employee engagement a priority to reap the financial benefits and mitigate business risk.’ It will require a LeaderShift Okay. So, employee engagement is important to deliver seriously better, high performance business outcomes – not just to avoid killing people. Now, what does any of this have to do with leadership? Why am I suggesting that, to change the world of work for the better, it will require a LeaderShift? Let me now turn your attention to Aon Hewitt’s 2014 ‘Trends in Global Employee Engagement’ report and cut straight to the bottom line in terms of their findings: ‘Leaders hold the key to employee engagement.’2 They go on to emphasise that leaders – in effect – have a double impact on employee engagement. They ‘directly impact the engagement of others’ (through their own behaviours) and they ‘have an indirect “multiplier effect” on all the top engagement drivers and other best employer indices. Ultimately, leaders make decisions on brand, performance goals, pay and recognition, communication to employees, work processes and innovation.’ They conclude: ‘Time and time again, we find leaders own the employee engagement equation. Leaders who ignore their engagement responsibility will sub-optimize talent, business investments and outcomes. However, leaders who seize the opportunity to engage themselves, engage others, and holistically drive a culture of brand, reputation, performance and engagement will help lead their teams and organizations to growth and better business outcomes.’ There are many other studies over time that have highlighted this leadership-engagement–financial performance linkage. In working with hundreds of businesses and thousands of leaders over the years, I have seen it first hand. I’m imagining that you also have seen it in your own experiences. There you have it. Employee engagement correlates directly to financial performance and risk outcomes in a business, and leadership is the key to driving employee engagement. The really great thing in all of this is that employee-satisfying workplaces are high performance workplaces. Great leaders – high performance leaders – establish, develop and maintain great places to work. A great workplace doesn’t equate to a relaxed, easy, laissez faire environment. Like other truly satisfying dimensions of our life (think: functional families and civilised communities), great workplaces – where employees derive greatest satisfaction – offer belonging, challenge, boundaries, meaning, pride, growth, recognition and consequences. Now, let’s look at the leadership scenario in many businesses today. Around any boardroom, conference room, coffee machine or crew-room, we hear a consistent lament: ‘If only I could get my managers to step up and lead – so that I could focus on the work of my level!’ Beyond the obvious distraction away from a more strategic focus, the cost to businesses of leaders above choosing or having to ‘dip down’ to do the work of the leaders or workers at the level below is extraordinary, and is compounding the effects of the ‘more with less’ mantra. Given that you have picked up this book, I’m imagining that you have managers in your organisation who are failing to make quality decisions – managers who don’t seem to be thinking clearly or anticipating and dealing with issues. I’m curious as to whether you can relate to the stressful environment I referred to earlier? Is your business challenged with people feeling time-poor, with low levels of employee engagement and satisfaction, high absenteeism and/or increasing claims for stress-related illness? I’m wondering if you also observe in your managers an apparent lack of courage to ‘step up’, own their space and deliver on their accountabilities. Why is this happening? You’re likely wrestling with questions as to whether the issues here are a result of: poor recruitment, some fundamental deficiency in this next generation of ‘leaders’, your own shortcomings, or maybe a lack of appropriate organisational support. Or, is it perhaps that you have simply been too busy doing their work to identify and address the fundamentals of developing high performance leaders? To remedy these all-too-common issues, I contend that a LeaderShift is required to change the world of work for the better – better for the people who do the work, better for their clients and – critically – significantly better for shareholders. The nature of work, organisations and leadership Before I begin to explore what this LeaderShift might entail, let’s go back to basics and discuss what we really mean by work, organisations and leadership. I see an organisation as a living system. In its most basic form, an organisation is two or more people working together for a common cause or purpose. (Oh, but how readily we lose sight of that common cause or purpose as soon as an organisation starts to get a bit bigger.) The purpose is always about the creation of value – financial/shareholder value and societal value in the case of a commercial organisation, or simply societal value in the case of a government or not-for-profit organisation. Either way, organisations only last while they add more value than they destroy. A simple model for a business Referring to this figure and starting with the end in mind, shareholder value is created or destroyed depending on the experience of the stakeholders. If we delight the customers, employees, regulators, contractors, suppliers and others involved with the company, this will lead to higher revenues and/or lower costs – hence real shareholder value. Equally, upsetting stakeholders can very rapidly lead to escalating costs, falling revenues and the destruction of shareholder value. The stakeholder experience is a direct consequence of the behaviours of the employees in the business – what they say or do in the moment. Leveraging off the work of Elliott Jaques, I like to define work as ‘the exercise of discretion (decisions that people make) within prescribed limits to reach a goal within a stated completion time’.3 In your business, you and your people are making decisions every second of every day – decisions that are creating or destroying value. WORK =...