Friday, March 05, 2010

Workshop Follow-Up - GE Leadership Values in Action - Washington DC

Thanks so much to everyone who participated in our first public offering of this workshop Hosted by American Office at the impressive Herman Miller showroom in Washington, DC. Below, attendees can find a link to download the presentation slides and other materials from the workshop at our protected file site. Workshop Materials for Download The information is protected with the password distributed at the meeting (found on the bottom of the Team Assessment Tool). Feel free to use this site to make any comments or ask follow up questions for continued group discussion under this blog entry or in the password protected area (link above). You can also e-mail me directly (e-mail link to the left) with follow up questions if you'd prefer. I thoroughly enjoyed the excellent discussion and appreciate your active participation in the session. Don't forget to do your quick and easy follow up homework!

Thursday, February 04, 2010

The GE Leadership Values in Action - at the John Deere Project Management Forum

Deere PM Forum participants:  below you can find a link to download the presentation slides and other materials from the February 2010 workshop at our protected file site.  The post is protected with the password distributed at the meeting.

Workshop Materials for Download

Feel free to use this site to make any comments or ask follow up questions for continued group discussion under this blog entry or in the password protected area (link above).  You can also e-mail me directly (e-mail link to the left) with follow up questions if you'd prefer.

Thanks for your participation in the session!

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Every Company Should Have a Master Calendar

Rhythm of Review was one of the most important management concepts I learned while at GE. Every manager (and most employees) knew the dates of the monthly financial closes as well as when the major strategy sessions with corporate were scheduled. These were big events where success or failure was objectively measured and the future of the company was energetically planned.

Regularly scheduled rigorous reviews of results against plan (finance, sales, project status, inventory, etc.) are critical to ensure companies stay focused on their most important metrics. In particular, your IT department needs this rhythm to align their efforts well with the business strategy and flow.

In my years as a consultant, I've been surprised to find that many companies of all sizes have no single calendar that shows when all their important management meetings are scheduled. And often these aren't planned at the macro level at all, so there is no communicated rhythm of review in place.

If you're doing everything ad hoc, then chances are you're missing some necessary disciplines around both strategic planning and tactical execution.

I've searched several times for a good calendar template and found none, so I created this Excel tool and have used it for several clients and my own consulting practice:

visular---company-master-calendar-example---v02.xls

This example is populated with dummy data for demonstration purposes - feel free to customize to meet your needs. Read on for instructions:

Friday, May 01, 2009

Have to give that uncomfortable bad performance review? Let your employee talk first.

No matter how experienced you are as a manager it's never fun to give a negative review to an employee, much less fire someone.

I recently gave some advice to a colleague who was lamenting going into a performance review for one of his people who was delivering far below expectations. It was at the point where if major improvements weren't made soon he would have to be fired. My approach helped and he just e-mailed me saying the discussion went much better than expected, so I thought I'd share the leadership tip.

When you sit down face to face with that problem employee for the dreaded bad review, before you go into your documented laundry list of their problems, weaknesses, and failings - let them talk first.

There's a good chance they know that at least some bad news is coming and they'll feel better if they get a chance to articulate the problems right up front in their own words. An intro like "Bill, before I go into the details of this review, why don't you tell me how you think you've performed over the past X months" is a great way to kick off this session.

It will give your employee a bit of empowerment during an uncomfortable situation and may also give you some examples you can refer to later where you know they already agree with your assessment. If you have a formal document with your feedback and scores in writing, turn it over face down on the table during this first part of the chat. Then, when it's your turn to talk you can show the ugly details after the ice has been broken a bit.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Goals for conducting a successful software vendor search

Finding the right software or other technology solutions to meet your needs is critical. There are more and more options available to solve all kinds of business problems arriving on the market every day. So many companies and managers still have an "old school" overly competitive mentality when it comes to dealing with vendors. They tend to use the "I'm the customer" approach to a fault, driving such hard bargains and beating up tech vendors to the point where they are doomed to failure once the contract is signed. Ironically these same folks often abdicate their responsibility to vendors for their own business processes and defining requirements saying things like "you're the experts in XYZ, you tell me how it should work".

As anyone who has seen me in action will tell you, I tend to hold technology vendors to an extremely high standard and can be pretty tough on them, especially when I find instances of a supplier being lax or unprofessional. Fundamentally, however, I take an approach of setting up vendors for long-term successful relationships and am just as hard on company managers who don't take full responsibility for their business processes. After all, it's their choice where to spend money on technology.

Here are my goals for conducting an effective vendor search:

• Find and evaluate as many vendors / solutions / options as possible - quickly and with minimal cost and effort
• Make your search process repeatable to save time (create clear documents so all you have to do is send the same stuff over and over as new vendors are identified)
• Educate vendors (especially your short list) for highly effective demos and proposals
• Enable vendors who are not a strong fit to self-select out early (saving time)
• Set up key vendors for success to build an effective long-term relationship and avoid surprises later
• Demonstrate your company's tech and business savvy throughout to encourage great vendors to want to work with you
• Be a very tough, but very fair customer

As you do your prep work to create a Request for Information (RFI), Proposal (RFP) or Quote (RFQ), keep these goals in mind and test everything you're doing against them. I plan to post more vendor management best practices here on our blog over time. Feel free to contact us for help in building the solid vendor relationships that are so critical to your company's success.