photo credit: alancleaver_2000

Upcom­ing Free Teleconference:

Opti­miz­ing Your Time (Learn the secrets of the super productive)

The econ­omy and job mar­ket have both been in tur­moil. Opti­miz­ing your time is a crit­i­cal suc­cess fac­tor now more than ever. Join me to learn the secrets of the super productive.

The prin­ci­ples revealed on this call will include:

• How to stop oth­ers from rob­bing you of your most pre­cious resource
• How to know where your day went
• How to get more out of meetings
• How to be self directed even when you have a boss
• How to gain an entire month of time each year

Click here to Reg­is­ter: Opti­miz­ing your time.

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

When you have lead­er­ship that isn’t func­tion­ing prop­erly don’t expect the team to work well. At best they will be wast­ing a lot of energy com­pen­sat­ing, at worst they’ll think it’s normal.