Creating effective organizations through effective leadership

When a football team is losing more than it is winning, the team’s owner looks to the team’s leadership for accountability and usually fires the head coach.  Likewise, when a company is failing, new owners will fire the top managers.  Leadership will make or break an organization.  Leadership can solidify a company’s future through vision, planning, morale building, and teamwork.  Leadership can also cause a company’s demise.

The manager is a mentor in one of the many facets of management. He indoctrinates the new hire in the operations and other functions of the business, and he works towards the development of all individuals.  While a good manager is a mentor, a good manager can improve his employees' development by assigning an additional mentor.  The benefits are many.

Your organization should put energy into problem solving. Deming would approve.

We have developed into a blaming society. Mom blames the older siblings when problems arise in the household. Teacher finds someone to blame when things go out of control in the class room. Management and unions blame each other. Political parties use blame in the extreme, and it is disruptive, subordinating national goals under political aims. Spouses unfortunately play the blame game to the destruction of marriages and families. Experts in many realms teach that making things better should be the focus of our energies. The barrier to this is blame.

Following the lead of experts - what is expected; how to do it; how actions affects others

   One of the hallmarks of a quality company is published work processes and procedures in place in all company departments. Sales, marketing, engineering, operations, and other departments will have their tried and true processes and procedures. This is a living compendium of work processes that have been found to be effective in the past, and it is updated periodically to reflect new tools or improvements. Updates are in the form of managed and controlled changes.

Announce what will be, and then do it.  Then employees may trust management.

Surveys show that employees have serious doubts about company leaders. Only 40% trust top management to always communicate honestly. The same level of confidence applies to confronting issues to prevent major problems, honesty, vision of the future, and establishing clear objectives. While employees may feel pride in the company, they do not have trust in the management running the company. The scandals of the immediate past have fed the cynicism and lack of trust of management.

Middle Management Development

Developing Leaders and Empowering Them to Sell with Confidence

You have a group of middle managers who understand management of people on their level, having been there before, but although they can handle the functional, technical and administrative side of the job, the leading and developing of their people is highly variable. Prior to being middle management, their attitudes have become defensive through feelings of lack of support and a sense of criticism from all directions. The result is incomplete middle management development and untapped strength and potential. The road to improvement and middle management development is in the boosting of potential and confidence through exercises in effective presentations, coaching and mentoring, and feedback driven sessions using video images of subjects in training and audience reaction, too.