Steve Jobs

A friend sent me this today and it captures how this great innovator led his life - an inspiration to us all.

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice.

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle."

Does your goal setting measure up? Putting the 'M' in SMART

Read any book on performance management and you will soon come across a chapter on the importance of goal-setting.  A mnemonic that is familiar to students of this topic is SMART – making your goals Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic/Relevant and Timebound.  This article considers the importance of Measurement in the goal-setting process.  Two oft-quoted phrases around good management practice are:

‘If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it’ and, ‘You get what you measure’

So if it is so important, why is measurement of performance either neglected or just misunderstood?  Perhaps it is because not all measures are the same, and so we need to carefully select what type of measure is best for the particular task we are trying to manage.

Why do we need measures?  I think there are three main reasons:

• To give someone a target to aim for (That is telling them what a good job looks like)
• To have a system for tracking progress.
• To have a system for taking corrective action, when required.

To read our 7 key messages for effective measurement, visit our Executive Lounge at http://www.enthiostraining.co.uk/ and click on Downloads. 

Miles

Performance Management

We've been doing some really interesting stuff around performance management with a client of ours who is launching their new performance review process.  A few questions to ponder on:

What is the difference between a goal and motivation?  Sometimes 'SMART' is not enough, and sometimes we can be motivated by a goal which isn't well defined.

How should you measure success?  How do you do this in a busy world?

How do you give feedback which will change attitudes? 

When is it best to use a coaching style and when should you be more directive?

Over August, we will be putting up some of our own thoughts on these questions and performance management in general.

Feel free to add to the debate!

Talent Management by Attracta Mooney

This article appeared in the ILM news in June, announcing '1 in 3 workers not achieving their full potential'.  Who says that soft skills development doesn't deliver tangible, measurable performance - just look what people say when they are missing!

"A lack of communication between upper management and employees is leading to low motivation levels, a study from European Leaders shows.In total, 64% claimed they would work more efficiently if they were better motivated by management.

Bosses need to be more aware of the skills employees have and what expertise is being underused, the research also found.

Ashley Ward, director of European Leaders, said management needs to listen more to the views of their workforce and utilise their skills."A seemingly negligible investment can get teams much closer to their full potential performance, resulting in a happier workforce and significant financial benefits," he added.

A recent study by engagement specialist Peter Wilde for Activitymix found that employees are generally happy with their jobs, but their opinions of their bosses have worsened over the last couple of years."

Surely organisations cannot afford to stick their heads in the ground while such potential is going untapped?
Kate Peacock 

Happiness at work

Interesting article in the Guardian by Prof Cary Cooper & Stephen Wood on the importance of well-being at work and what makes happy workers.  The rules for creating positive working environments are quite simple, but often ignored.  You can also take a quick quiz to measure your own level of happiness.  Fascinating insight into the topic and how it links with the current drive for employee engagement.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/jul/15/happiness-work-why-counts
Miles

The Right Coach: Howard Morgan, Phil Harkins and Marshall Goldsmith

Executive coaching is a precision tool for optimising the abilities of leaders.  Most often, coaching focuses on the leader’s individual effectiveness.  In other cases, the coaching aims more at the leader’s effectiveness within a team environment or at this or her capabilities to drive organisational change.  Regardless of where coaching aims on the leadership spectrum, the executive coach works in close, trusted partnership with the leader.  The coach applies experience, know-how, and insight to key areas, and judiciously pushes the client beyond his or her comfort zone to reach levels of performance greater than the client would have achieved alone – all within an accelerated time frame.

Coaching is not just for problems anymore.  Ten years ago, coaching primarily concentrated on people with performance issues.  A coach came on board because a leader’s personal style had a negative impact on peers and reports, or because his or her skill set was inadequate – conditions that were leading to derailment.  Today the impression has turned 180 degrees.  As the marketplace has become increasingly competitive and fast-moving, organisations now realise they must work with speed and precision to enable key people to achieve critical business objectives.  In response, coaching has embraced a whole new focus: how to take good people and make them the best they can be, positioning them to work more effectively and cohesively in their environments, and making the most of their capabilities.  In other words, coaching is now most often applied to top performers whose leadership and growth potential are highly valued by the organisation.

To define what coaching is, let’s examine what it isn’t.  Coaching often differs, for example, from consulting.  As outsiders, neither coach nor consultant is likely to understand the client’s business environment as well as the client does.  Both coach and consultant rely on data gathering to interpret the organisation’s or individual’s challenges.  However, although the consultant uses that data to prepare a path for others to follow, the coach uses it to build the critical capabilities of key people so that they themselves can forge their own paths.  Unlike the consultant, the coach works in partnership with the client to discover solutions together, finding them through careful listening, provocative questioning, enlightened guidance, and the right level of prompting at the right time.  To a great degree, the coach’s goal is to enable the client to find the right answers by him- or herself.

Although coaching may sometimes feel like something halfway between the couch and the confessional, coaching is not therapy.  The orientation is very different.  The coach may use some of the listening and analytical tools of therapy to build connection, trust, and openness.  But although personal issues or deeper problems are likely to arise in the course of working together, the coach is not meant, and is usually not qualified, to provide more than supportive, confidential advice in those matters.  A coach will maintain the focus of the engagement on moving the client forward, in line with business objectives.  The coach is not a substitute colleague or fellow executive.  Many coaches have been successful in business in earlier incarnations.  This provides a sense of comfort and familiarity in the client’s world, allowing him or her to communicate in the same language.  It also provides key insights into the complex and competing pressures of the client’s work environment.  The coach’s stay in the organisation is meant to be short.  A best practice coach, by design and ethic, is not in the business of creating a dependent relationship.

Thanks to Simon Whitehouse for finding this article! Kate Peacock

Kings Fund Publishes NHS Leadership & Management Report

The King’s Fund set up a commission on leadership and management in the NHS with a brief to:

• take a view on the current state of management and leadership in the NHS
• establish the nature of management and leadership that will be required to meet the quality and financial challenges now facing the health care system
• recommend what needs to be done to strengthen and develop management and leadership in the NHS.

The Commission has found that high-quality, stable management to be key to high-performing health services - no surprise I hear you cry! 

Taken from an except of NHS Innovation and Improvement the report says 'across the NHS, the average chief executive spends just 700 days in post. In part, this reflects a culture where ‘heroic’ leaders grapple with problems only from the top of the organisation, or are ‘parachuted in’ to replace individual managers and ‘turn around’ troubled NHS services. The report advocates a new type of ‘shared leadership’ involving leaders at different levels of the workforce working collaboratively with all those involved in patient care to lead change and improve services, rather than only tackling problems inside specific institutions.'

This brings me to one of my favorite quotes (thanks Chris) from Bob Nelson, head of Corporate Management Development, BBC who said, " Some leaders are at the top of their organisations, although the behaviours of leadership can be exercised at any level.  Where ever we are in an organisation, most of us are leaders, subordinates and colleagues.  Resent research has also found paradoxically, that there is more freedom to act at lower levels in organisations than at higher, where constraints and other influences can be more complex.  The knowledge and skills necessary to make organisations work are decentralised - so power is decentralised and leadership is needed at all levels.  An organisation that permits people to manifest and develop these kinds of power without regard to their official status is nurturing leadership."

It's quite disturbing that even now it appears it needs to be pointed out that there is talent throughout our organisations and more than ever we need to tap into it and give people the responsibility and recognition that they deserve.

Kate Peacock

For the full report http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/nhs_leadership.html