March 28th, 2011
Welcome to the ongoing Quantum podcast series featuring Gershon Mader and Josh Leibner, co-authors of the best selling business book: The Power of Strategic Commitment: Achieving Extraordinary Results Through Total Alignment and Engagement.
In this podcast we are going to be discussing:
- How company politics manifest day-to-day in organizations
- What costs are associated with company politics
- What desirable outcomes politics make impossible
- 3 ways to transform politics into greater productivity and high performance
Listen here for our latest podcast on Office Politics
How have corporate politics impacted you? We would love to hear your comments.
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March 21st, 2011
The power of a vision lies in having people genuinely believe something is possible, and by investing themselves in that vision they behave and perform beyond what their past indicates is possible. Beliefs, after all, inform behavior.
- Book Excerpt, P. 57-58, The Power of Strategic Commitment
Tags: employee engagment, trust
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March 14th, 2011
Alan Kay, a former Apple Fellow, said, “The only way to predict the future is to invent it.” Steve Jobs has consistently said that his strategy relies on “looking for the next big thing and jumping on it.” This principle is a key part of what it takes to generate an environment of strategic commitment.
Tags: Strategic Commitment
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March 7th, 2011
People don’t rally around empty phrases and cute metaphors, no matter how memorable or clever. They rally around that which they buy into and believe, and which serves as a continuing referent point for their decisions and behaviors.
Book Excerpt, P. 57, The Power of Strategic Commitment
Tags: honesty, trust
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February 28th, 2011
A key principle of generating strategic commitment is that the future an organization is envisioning and committing to is more influential on its mood, actions, and performance than its history, no matter how satisfying or disappointing that history may be. We would have never gotten a man to the moon and back by asking the engineers, scientists, and politicians to fund and deliver what they believed was possible.
Book Excerpt, P. 56, The Power of Strategic Commitment
Tags: Strategic Commitment
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February 21st, 2011
Leaders must encourage sharing both good news and bad news, positive feedback and negative feedback. It is as dangerous not to exploit the
positive as it is to ignore the negative.
Book Excerpt, P. 53, The Power of Strategic Commitment
Tags: Leadership
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February 14th, 2011
“How many of you come to work with the genuine experience that you make the difference in terms of the overall direction, spirit, and
effectiveness of your organization?” While most people feel they make a difference within their own function or work environment,
most also say they have limited impact on a larger scale. In fact, most people express views that other areas, functions, levels, or individuals have more influence on bigger issues.
- Book Excerpt, P. 49, The Power of Strategic Commitment
Tags: employee engagment
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February 11th, 2011
When the economic crisis hit in 2008, John Cassaday, the founding CEO of Corus Entertainment Inc., proposed a plan to all of his employees. If they would agree to a few key elements – a wage freeze, between two and five unpaid days off (salary dependent), a pension hiatus, a hiring freeze, and no executive bonuses – then he would guarantee their jobs and, together, they would survive the recession. Cassaday took the same wage rollbacks and unpaid leave as everyone else.
According to a recent study by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and the World Federation of People Management Associations (WFPMA), this style of leadership works. The study found a direct link between a company’s way of handling workforce issues and its level of performance. More specifically, the global online survey of more than 5,500 HR and business-unit executives in 109 countries found that high-performing companies put much more effort and imagination into dealing with crises such as economic downturns than low-performing ones.
Read the rest of Gershon Mader’s article in The Mark here.
Posted in Employee Engagement, Leadership | Comments Off
February 7th, 2011
To what degree do employees:
1. Effectively address and resolve difficult issues?
2. Take ownership for solving problems rather than make excuses or point fingers when things go wrong?
3. Take risks and challenge the status quo?
4. Have confidence in the leaders of the organization?
5. Feel they can be honest with their leaders about negative or contentious issues—including about the leaders themselves?
6. Feel connected with, and empowered by, their leaders?
7. Communicate honestly and directly, without fear of retribution?
8. Trust each other and work together effectively across departments?
9. Come to work every day feeling that they make a critical difference to the future of the business?
10. Feel enthusiastic about their work experience?
11. Feel appreciated for the work they do?
- Book Excerpt, P 48-49, The Power of Strategic Commitment
Tags: confidence, employee engagment, trust
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January 31st, 2011
To what degree do employees:
1. Have a shared understanding and belief in the direction and objectives of the organization?
2. Have a shared understanding and belief in the role of their function in meeting the objectives of the organization?
3. Understand and believe in their personal role in helping to meet the objectives of the organization?
4. Have a shared understanding and belief in how organizational success is measured?
- Book Excerpt, P 48, The Power of Strategic Commitment
Tags: clarity, employee engagment
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January 25th, 2011
Generating commitment is possible for any leadership team willing to follow some simple rules. The first rule is the toughest: brutal honesty. We’re not talking about being brutally honest with others, but rather about being brutally honest with oneself. The top team must confront the need for commitment and the current lack thereof.
Managers don’t want to admit that they are leading a unit with less than total commitment, because emotionally laden words arise that threaten their self- image, issues such as loyalty, candor, trust, belief, values, and so forth. Yet only when leaders are willing to “own” the current state of affairs, and admit to themselves that they have caused the current levels of apathy, resistance, or resignation, can they begin to address and improve the situation.
Tags: generating commitment
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January 18th, 2011
As a rule, when performance and effectiveness begin to decline (quality of work, responsiveness, customer satisfaction, new sales, repeat business, and so on), the commitment factor isn’t tracked or challenged. Yet we’ve all seen commitment plunge at companies such as US Airways, Dell, Maytag, and Ford. And we have also seen
commitment be resurrected, as has happened at Apple, IBM, and Continental Airlines. (Interestingly, commitment never seems to vary from high ground at FedEx, GE, Levi Strauss, or Ritz- Carlton.) Once the indices decline, it is tougher and tougher to restore commitment. Organizational reality does not have to be this way. Including and
engaging employees so that they can fully commit to the strategy is the ultimate factor in whether strategy succeeds or not, because strategy never fails in its formulation, only in its execution.
Tags: declining company performance
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January 11th, 2011
Many CEOs avoid dealing with commitment issues, no less than a man on his twenty- fifth date with a woman who is impatient to make some more permanent plans. The CEO assumes that commitment is never a problem, largely because the CEO assumes everyone is equally committed. “Projection” is the psychological conveying of one’s own strengths and weaknesses to others. That’s never more dangerous than when executives believe that if they are committed, everyone must be as well.
- Book excerpt, page 30, The Power of Strategic Commitment
Tags: commitment issues
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January 4th, 2011
The inherent conflict and paradox, between organizations forced to deal with greater complexity and customers who crave minimal complexity, is one of the most significant demands for increased commitment facing organizations today.
- Book excerpt, page 28, The Power of Strategic Commitment
Tags: commitment, conflict in organizations
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December 27th, 2010
The default position is usually one of singular, insulated, noncollaborative determination, which is antithetical to the context required for success.
- Book Excerpt, Page 42, The Power of Strategic Commitment
Tags: Strategic Commitment
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