This Fri­day at 11:00 cen­tral I’m host­ing Ignit­ing Align­ment. This will be a free webi­nar on how to cre­ate laser focused align­ment (like the sled dogs pic­tured) with in your orga­ni­za­tion. What is align­ment and why do you want it?

First off, align­ment is not con­sen­sus. Con­sen­sus is gen­er­ally over­rated and is some­thing that is fre­quently sought be weak lead­er­ship. You can’t get every­one to agree all the time. What is needed is a recog­ni­tion of what is impor­tant and self guided behav­ior that sup­ports that priority.

An exam­ple:

I’m work­ing with a statewide fos­ter care orga­ni­za­tion. While meet­ing with the CEO he stated to me that no mat­ter what the senior lead­er­ship dis­agreed, any deci­sion they made had to be in the best inter­est of the child. Later the same week (in facil­ity hun­dreds of miles from the home office) I was speak­ing to a cou­ple that work as “house par­ents.” They are way down the hier­ar­chy from the CEO. And guess what they said was the most impor­tant thing to keep in mind while mak­ing deci­sions? The best inter­est of the child.

Every­one in the organ­i­sa­tion knew what the top pri­or­ity was and behaved in such a man­ner that sup­ported that priority.

That’s align­ment. Do you have that in your orga­ni­za­tion? It can be seen in a lot of dif­fer­ent areas:

1. How peo­ple are compensated
2. How peo­ple spend their time
3. Strate­gic decisions
4. How peo­ple treat co-workers
5. How peo­ple treat customers
6. And a bunch more.….

A key to know­ing if you have good align­ment is inde­pen­dent behav­iors. Mean­ing, what do peo­ple do when they are on their own. It ‘s align­ment if your always hav­ing to tell each per­son how they should make a deci­sion. Run­ning around play­ing mother hen by keep­ing every­one “close to you” is not align­ment. That’s one of the many fla­vors of micromanagement.

You cre­ate align­ment so peo­ple have freedom.

That’s right, align­ment cre­ates free­dom. It frees peo­ple up to think for them­selves. They know what is impor­tant so they can decide on their own!

So here is what we are going to cover:

1. Overview
2. How mis­align­ment costs you and how to spot it
3. 3 tips for cre­at­ing alignment
4. How to get employ­ees to think for themselves
5. Where does align­ment start
6. How to make mid-course corrections
7. Ignit­ing Align­ment, the secret to really turn­ing up the heat on your competition

To join me click here. For those that need it I can issue PDU’s, CEC’s, and also, PDQ’s

Recently I wrote about the migra­tion that is going to take place within the work­force. Sure enough, CEO’s are wor­ried about this phe­nom­e­non. Today there was an arti­cle in the Wall Street Jour­nal about CEO’s show­ing their employ­ees some TLC. They are show­ing the work­ers the love because they are wor­ried about los­ing staff.

Hello! Where have you been?

I know the arti­cle talks about cut­ting costs on travel but the down turn of last year was the worst time to clam up. I’ve advised an engi­neer­ing firm and one they biggest chal­lenges was that the lead­er­ship went mute last year. Tough times are the worst time to be quite. These CEO’s are wor­ried they will lose peo­ple and they should be wor­ried. Espe­cially the CEO in the air­line indus­try. I know pilots, they are not happy employees.

I’ve never met a happy cus­tomer of a com­pany with unhappy employees.

When things get tough it’s crit­i­cal to stay com­mu­nica­tive with your work­force. Don’t add the stress of uncer­tainty to the stress employ­ees are already feel­ing. But what if you don’t have all the answers? They don’t expect you to. They just expect you to be focused and to have a plan to get through what­ever it is your fac­ing. Stay con­nected and your employ­ees will be more likely to stay around.

Some­times pro­cras­ti­na­tion is a lit­tle more sophis­ti­cated than hit­ting the snooze but­ton, going golf­ing when the lawn needs mow­ing or even fir­ing some­one that is a drain on the busi­ness. Some­times we “just kick the can down the road.” We address a prob­lem, but not fully. Not to res­o­lu­tion. We’ll have to deal with it again. Wrestling a prob­lem all the way to the ground and “killing” it is the best bet. That said, we have to deal with prob­lems in real time and that means some­times we just have to adapt. The key is to take inten­tional action. How we address prob­lems can be bro­ken down into four dif­fer­ent categories.

1. Adapt to the problem
2. Cor­rect the problem
3. Pre­vent the problem
4. Pre­pare for the problem

Often we think we are doing one of these when we are really doing another. For exam­ple, a lot of the time we say we have fixed a prob­lem when really we have just adapted to it. Putting a bucket under a leak in the roof is not fix­ing the prob­lem! Which of these is the best action to take? Hmm, pre­vent­ing a prob­lem sounds the best, but some­times we don’t know we have a prob­lem until it is too late to pre­vent (that’s a deep thought!). The point is, all four actions are the right action at some point, but pre­vent­ing prob­lems and cor­rect­ing prob­lems both focus on cause and not the effect. So, if I was you, that’s were I’d put my energy and resources. Don’t just kick the can down the road. Take action to cor­rect it or pre­vent it.